Facebook is now pretty settled down. Its use has changed the way people interact with each other. A whole new online life and activities have emerged, and it is difficult to see the future without social media.
However, Facebook has made the headlines of plenty of newspapers, due to privacy concern. Private data is a very touchy issue, and Facebook knows it. Facebook owns a large amount of users data, which makes it dangerous. Indeed, an appropriate use of private data by Facebook could be devastating. Hence in Ireland, a group has created a website which was identifying people’s status updates, letting know when they were away from home, to underline the problems that could occur if personal data goes into wrong hands.
Despite these private concerns, social media remains important into people’s life. Therefore, in order to keep control over personal data, a new project showed up not so long ago, which is call diaspora.
The idea is to create a Facebook like, which won’t be own by a private firm, but built on an open source model. By doing so, it will be impossible for no one to impose any kind of uses of private data. The concept is very interesting because it empowers user, as VRM would empower customers.
Now will it ever appear? What is fore sure is that they are very late on this. Facebook counts more than 50 million users, and the more users they will get, the harder it will be to get users interested. Right now, it is obscure what Diaspora will look like. The project is ambitious, but being so late on the market is definitely a handicap.
And you, what do you think about it?
