Are you among the Facebook users whose concerns over privacy have seemingly gone unnoticed and have not been addressed, that you have chosen to give up on the whole social networking game altogether? If those concerns are the only thing that is keeping you from giving social networking another chance, Diaspora may be for you. And while it may not end up giving Facebook a run for its popularity, it may very well serve a niche market that is clamoring for a safer and more private alternative to Facebook.

A feature on Reuters shared that Diaspora is set to be launched on September 15th. It is the brainchild of four students from New York University, two of whom will not be hitting the books come fall in order to focus on taking Diaspora to wherever it can potentially go.

Diaspora, based on the description in the feature, can pretty much give the basic things that one can enjoy on Facebook – share content and status updates and photos. Users will be given the ability to scrape data from major social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Flicker. Users will download the software package and install it on a self-hosted website, or a website hosted by a web hosting service.

In addition to the basics, Diaspora will be including end-to-end GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) encryption, which will ensure that shared content is protected as it shuttles from one site to the next. After its launch, there are plans for Open ID integration, Voice Over Internet Protocol, and instant messaging.

Originally posted on Print Country Blog