Diaspora, in loose definition of the word, is what can stop Facebook.

People need to LEAVE Facebook and move on to the next thing...the same phenom that lead to FB's influx of users after they opened it up to every idiot without a .EDU address.

Facebook seems to have a short memory. Their product (you, their user) is an entirely transient population.

As though the people who got in to Newsgroups back in the day didn't move on to forums, then to friendsters, and livejournals, and myspaces, and so on.

I get the sense that Facebook thinks it is "too big to fail" and is going to try to suck the value out of the product it believes it captured. (Hellooooo myspace circa 2 years ago!)

Maybe this site will be the next thing, though I doubt it.

will they ban parents on Diaspora? because I AM IN if they do. Opening it up to non .EDU totally ruined FB....

do you know how much shit I get during the holidays & family reunions for not adding parents, aunts, uncles, 10 year old cousins?

FB has gone from status updates that include hilariously obscure comments riddled with profanity to:

"I just drank a diet coke"

"timmy just smiled at the cat"

"Oh Mondays....."

LOL.

You actually believe anything on the web, once released ONCE, is secure?

Next thing you know you'll tell me you actually buy that "Cloud Computing is Secure" foofarah too.

Here's a lesson, kidlings - there is no such thing as privacy on the Net. Not so long as (OOPS) people can copy stuff.

I'm there. I hate Faceplant's utter disregard for my privacy, to say nothing of their shitty, shitty UI. The market is screaming for something better.

Love the idea, but hope they come up with a far more appealing name. Diaspora sounds like what happens to your ass after you chug a water bottle full of Cryptosporidium.

@5 try some Diatomaceous Earth in your filters.

ME WANTS!!! I deleted half of my FB friends last week because I'm just too sick and tired of constantly having to stay on top of FB's constantly changing and loosening privacy settings. Something like Diaspora, if down well, would likely get me to jump ship entirely.

Four years ago, I told friends that Facebook would eventually be added to the same pile as Friendster, Orkut, and similar. No one around me could conceive a world where FB wasn't on top. I said, "Give it time."

Four years really wasn't that long for something whose popularity was exceeded only by the internet(s) itself. Graciously, I never joined.

Why do people care so much about their facebook privacy? Are you really THAT important and in that much demand?

You are less valuable than you think you are.

@9: Except to aggressive online marketers.

Don't all be dense.

Privacy CAN be had on the Internet.

Encrypt on your PC. Encrypt on the target system you're talking to. Only use encrypted traffic to talk A>B. Maintain physical control over both the local and remote side. With a lock. But a lock can be broken, but that's OK. You got encryption. But what if they jack in something on USB? I can go on and on and on about what you have to do, but it's entirely possible to secure the shit out of something--until it displays on someone else's screen, then you need to redo the same steps. And hope they don't have a photographic memory. Or a screen that allows them to just take photographs.

But, short answer, if your community = just you, yeah, you can lock out even the NSA *if* you know what you're doing. But what's the fucking point, at that point, unless you're 008?

People need to not poo poo ideas like Diaspora just because it's not 100%. Nothing that would be reasonable for non-security freaks or extreme geeks to use will be. It's better than nothing.

The thing about aggressive online marketers is that they're aggressive, and they're already online. If you think making Facebook obsolete is going to stall them in their tracks, then you've going to be in for a series of terrible surprises over the next few years.

Facebook has the advantage over its predecessors of actually having a relatively clean and intuitive interface, even with all the garbage they've added. It's adjustable to the point where you don't have to see any of that if you don't want to. You can defriend people who you don't want knowing your most intimate movie preferences. Facebook does not have a privacy problem, just a great deal of sound and fury from people who think that we are already living in 1984. Facebook ads are less efficient than GoogleAds. If you have a smartphone, it's probably three times the privacy leak that Facebook is.

Also, I'm amazed at how many people are able to predict that Facebook will no longer be the *in* thing at x point in the future. It's almost as if it is following the standard path of all fads ever in the history of society. Did you also tell everyone how well you predicted that downfall of pogs and boy bands? I'm going on the record here as saying that in some amount of years, we won't have Superhero movies coming out every three months, and nobody here will make Justin Beiber jokes. Someone call CNN, because I'm about to be a famous commentator