Privacy-conscious social network Diaspora

Can we say the days of Facebook are numbered?

Social Networks come and go.

You remember Myspace, right?

“Say what?”

Oh, they were big back in the day. Then there was Friendster.

“Aren’t those the game guys?”

Ugh, yeah, I think they’re still crawling on some rock somewhere.

Anyway, you get my point right? These places rise and fall faster than you can say “goodbye.”

Now, there’s really nothing wrong much with Facebook.

Much.

Sure you get annoying invites to harvest some digital crap. People seem to be enjoying clicking mindlessly all day on that. It might be one of the greatest stress transference features ever invented.

I mean, got stress? Farm it. Then transfer it to someone else by inviting people in your contact list to join in. It. Is. Pure. Genius!

Sure every couple of weeks, BANG! Zuckerberg zaps users with inane new privacy settings. Users are then forced to once more revist those settings and turn everything back to where they wanted them in the first place. Then quite recently, your profile suddenly goes public.

Is Facebook growth down because of these privacy issues?

Are these 10 reasons why you should delete your Facebook account for you?

The Faster Times asked, Are You in Danger from Facebook’s Privacy Changers?

“How am I in danger? Do people really care about what I post or like and dislike on a social networking site? If so, what are they going to do with the information? I don’t get it.”

Warden followed it up with this:

So why are the geeks so upset? They’re looking down the road and imagining all the things that the bad guys will be able to do once they figure out what a bonanza of information is being released. Do you remember in the 90’s when techies were hating on Windows for its poor security model? That seemed pretty esoteric for ordinary people because it didn’t cause many problems in their day-to-day usage. The next decade was when those bad decisions about the security architecture became important, as viruses and malware became far more common, and the measures to prevent them became a lot more burdensome. The geeks were proven right: you can’t start with a shoddy security model and just patch it into something secure.

That, and well, really, it is about protecting one’s identity. The issue becomes more salient for women, who get stalked. The issue becomes important for people who care to have a Facebook account, but doesn’t want the whole world to know about it. Just, you know, people whom he wants to know.

All these issues had gotten people to say, “Enough!”

Enter Diaspora.

As Boy Genius reported, Diaspora gives you the ability to share information with your friends while it gives you your privacy. Diaspora is a social networking platform. Diaspora is also open source. The user retains control of the information.

Release date is September 2010.

You can check out their website, Join Diaspora. You can follow them on twitter via @joindiaspora. You can also back them up with real money. They have a kickstarter account. You may pledge for as little as US$5 to more than US$2,000.

Diaspora promises to decentralize the web.

This is exciting stuff--- if these guys can deliver what they promised.

* * *

So what else is there across the web?

Citizen journalism

There is this great stuff from Monday Note: “The Oxymoronic Citizen Journalism.”

Filloux wrote:

Let’s fire a few missiles at politically correct ideas such as “Digital media makes all of us journalists”, “citizens will soon displace professional reporters”, and so on. That’s nonsense (I have more explicit words in mind). Does it means public input in news should be kept at bay? Certainly not. Quite the contrary, actually. Newsrooms have a challenge on their hands, they need to get better at handling such input.

It really is a great read. I quite recommend looking at it in its fullest to appreciate.

Another perfect salient point he makes:

The same kind of carelessness goes for comments. I do believe that opening news content to public feedback is a good thing. At its very core, journalism begs for argument; pundits need detractors. But most online editors satisfy themselves by opening the floodgate of comments, without a strategy, or even the slightest attention to content. As a result, everybody loses: the writer who sees painstaking work defaced by shouts; and the publication for allowing substandard, unmoderated feedback. Participation without relevancy is pointless. Unfortunately, in most news sites – including big ones, very little thought seems to have been given to raising the level of public contributions. (Emphasis mine)

Exactly.

More on Flash versus the world

Over at Zdnet asked Adobe, “How secure is Flash?”

What the CEO should be saying right now goes something like this: “Yes, we know there are security issues with Flash Player, as there are with all Internet-based programs. We think our adversaries are exaggerating their impact, but we take them very seriously.” At that point, he should turn the floor over to whoever is in charge of security development for Adobe, who can explain, in detail, what sort of processes are in place today to turn that trend line back downward.

Flash is the new Windows. And you know how Vista worked out for everybody. Those who could, simply bought Macs, and our lives are so much saner.

Mice trained to smell

Oh, and weird science now lets you command a rodent army to smell the chicken. A must read, I tell you. To quote:

“Weird Science Nirvana was the method used for distinguishing the eau de poule: "an automated olfactometer which assessed the ability of trained mice to discriminate between the odors." That's right: they trained the mice to pick up the scent of the birds, and then used an automated system to figure out what the mice thought about the stench.”