Facebook is the leader in social networking now. Its estimated that 500 million unique humans use it. The world’s population is 7+ billion, in other words one out of 14 has a facebook account. Thats a significant number. But there is a catch.

Facebook is not a free software. That is it does not let its users know how it works. Neither its users know what facebook does with the data they submit to it. Facebook reserves some right over what it does to you. You have no control of the service it offers to you.

Activist of data neutrality and user freedom have longed for free software alternative and now we have one. Diaspora hosted in domain joindiaspora.com offers users all the freedom free software offers. The best features it offers are as follows.

1. You can upload your status and pictures.
2. You can delete any of your data and unlike facebook it will be permanently deleted.
3. You can download your data and pictures.
4. If you delete your account, it will be permanently deleted.
5. You have quite fine grained control on who can see what you post.

Apart from the user features mentioned above, Diaspora has very easy to use user interface and slick design compared to facebook. I have always felt that messages posted in diaspora is far better to read than facebook.

Diaspora is a free software ( http://fsf.org ), which means you know how exactly it works and what happens behind. There is no cheating, hide and seek, hidden board meetings. Its entire code is available to the public. You can obtain entire diaspora code from https://github.com/diaspora . If you are good at programming you can even contribute back to the project.

Not many users

There is however one thing Diaspora suffers. Unlike facebook, there are not enough number of users and those who are using it are not frequenting it because no one uses this excellent software.

My humble request to all those who like free living and value user freedom is to start using diaspora. I had 5 invites in Diaspora and I had invited 4 of my friends and only one out of it joined, and he won’t use this excellent software.

I am quiet disappointed how humans treat good things. Humans react like goats, they go where all others go. I can’t understand these humans. Somewhere down in history, I am going to win Noble prize for proving humans evolved from goats.