Diaspora founders Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg , Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy
Just as a new batch of invites to the much-anticipated open source social networking platform Diaspora were issued, the sad news emerged that one of the platform’s co-founder’s, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, has died. He was only 22.
The causes of Zhitomirskiy’s death are unknown to the public at this point.
New York-based Diaspora, a social networking rival to Facebook, had raised $200,000 through public support via Kickstarter.
Diaspora was set up by four New York University students – Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg , Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy – who complained of being frustrated by Facebook’s privacy policy.
The project began as a “call to arms” and the team originally asked the internet user community on the Kickstarter website to help them raise US$10,000. Instead they raised US$200,000.
According to TechCrunch, Diaspora had last night sent out a new round of invites to a redesigned alpha version of its open source social network, just as news broke of Zhitomirskiy’s passing.
