An image released to the public by Diaspora showing what the site will look like.

Four college students at NYU who have spent countless hours pecking at their keyboards continue to move toward the end of the initial development for their social networking idea called Diaspora.

The inspiration for the web network Diaspora began with complaints about the privacy issues that forced Facebook to simplify their security controls. The creators define Diaspora as a privacy-aware, personally-controlled, do-it-all, open-source social network.  

Diaspora retains many of the familiar aspects of social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook, including photo sharing, messaging, and status-updates.  The website also attempts to unify information from the popular social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm. The developers are currently working on integrating the new network with Facebook to make the new user sign-up and personal information input as easy as a few clicks.

Unlike most social networking sites, Diaspora users communicate with each other directly, without a third party.  Rather than forcing users to store information on the website’s servers, Diaspora allows its users to choose where they store their ‘seed’, which contains their profile information.  

According to the Diaspora blog, users can choose to store their profile on a traditional web host, a cloud-based host, an Internet service provider's server, a one-click hosting service such as WordPress.com, or even their own computer.  The information is distributed in a similar fashion to torrents, as the transmission relies on an encrypted code that extracts information from a given storage location.  This eliminates the idea that the website owns your information.

Ironically, many programmers claim that Diaspora’s open-source nature contributes to the difficulty of setting up a working security system. A PC-magazine article explains that a large challenge that Diaspora faces is establishing a security system that protects users from hackers while remaining open-source.

Owner of software company Bingo Card Creator, Patrick McKenzie, said in a tweet: “Don't use the #diaspora instances popping up. Don't host it publicly. Don't invite people to do either. It is screamingly unsafe.” Apparently, Diaspora’s code has a ways to go until its plethora of bugs is fixed and security system is revamped.

Diaspora’s vision may look promising, but until the code gets enough input and support from programmers with expertise in fixing security holes, Diaspora may not be worth joining.  

Lucky for the four students behind Diaspora, the project has received more than $200,000 in donations; among the donors is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said that he sees himself in the four of them.  

Despite the projects claims and impressive financial support, it seems like we will have to wait until the website's alpha release scheduled for October to see whether Diaspora can compete with the social networking giant.

To reach reporter William Leong, click here.

Sign up for Neon Tommy's weekly e-mail newsletter.