Altly: The Facebook Alternative Is Not Another Diaspora
Altly is building a Facebook alternative - because there are no good alternatives to Facebook and people think it's impossible to build a 'real' alternative to Facebook. Talking about the Facebook alternatives, the first name that pops up in our minds is 'Diaspora' - which started about an year ago and raised about $200k from fans & supporters. However, the product is still under development and on their #-Link-Snipped-#, they are still asking people to sign up for an invite. We are not sure whether Diaspora will actually become a Facebook alternative but in the mean time, Veoh founder (alternative to Facebook that didn't work out very well), Dimitry Shapiro started working on another startup - Altly that wants to bridge the gap. Why Altly? The founders say, "Because the privacy settings on Facebook are complicated that even an advance user would find them difficult to configure".
#-Link-Snipped-#
Shapiro wrote a lengthy #-Link-Snipped-# on why they are building Altly. Summarizing the blog post, he writes "Facebook is dramatically changing the way we communicate with our friends, family, business associates, and the other groups of people in our lives. We are pressured to become “friends†with people that we would not have had ongoing communication with prior to Facebook. We are also pressured to share more and more personal information with not only “friends†but “friends of friendsâ€. It's quite true that for every Coke users have a choice for Pepsi, for every PC there is a Mac and for every Ford users have a Chevy but for Facebook there's a big void. Altly wants to fill that void.
It would be interesting to follow up Altly development. The prime concern for Altly developers seems to be user privacy, enabling users to define who they share information with & how, what personal information is stored by the service and for how long and making the users own their own data. At this stage, the service isn't launching immediately. But the prototype has impressed the investors. Altly has secured undisclosed amount from a leading Venture Capital firm, name undisclosed.
#-Link-Snipped-#
Shapiro wrote a lengthy #-Link-Snipped-# on why they are building Altly. Summarizing the blog post, he writes "Facebook is dramatically changing the way we communicate with our friends, family, business associates, and the other groups of people in our lives. We are pressured to become “friends†with people that we would not have had ongoing communication with prior to Facebook. We are also pressured to share more and more personal information with not only “friends†but “friends of friendsâ€. It's quite true that for every Coke users have a choice for Pepsi, for every PC there is a Mac and for every Ford users have a Chevy but for Facebook there's a big void. Altly wants to fill that void.
It would be interesting to follow up Altly development. The prime concern for Altly developers seems to be user privacy, enabling users to define who they share information with & how, what personal information is stored by the service and for how long and making the users own their own data. At this stage, the service isn't launching immediately. But the prototype has impressed the investors. Altly has secured undisclosed amount from a leading Venture Capital firm, name undisclosed.
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