Are there alternatives to Facebook?

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Facebook recently hit the 500 million user mark, and it looks set to continue its success next year. But concerns about privacy, Facebook’s ownership and use of user data, and also a need to create more focused communities has led to the creation of what we think are two very strong contenders for the hit new social platforms of 2011.

Jumo

The Haiti disaster was a key contributing factor in Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes’ development of Jumo, a kind of Facebook for the not for profit and third sector. It remains to be seen whether this will make a huge change to the way people make donations, but it will certainly be interesting to see whether providing charities and their supporters with one central location online will alter how they mobilise themselves offline. The opportunity to work collaboratively to gain more influence is definitely there.

Diaspora has the makings of a great platform. It’s open source, privacy aware, built upon distributed architecture and looks set to offer all the social functionality that Facebook provides, without selling your personal data to advertisers. The downside is that it’s still in Alpha and requires a degree of technical expertise to make best use of the framework. Expect the buzz around this project to continue in 2011 as people start wondering if the benefits Facebook provides are outweighed by the risks.