A co-founder of the social network Diaspora*, pitched as an open-source Facebook competitor more concerned with privacy, committed suicide in San Francisco over the weekend, CNNMoney reports. Ilya Zhitomirskiy was 22 years old. Along with three fellow New York University students, Zhitomirskiy raised $200,000 for their project on Kickstarter, even earning a donation from Mark Zuckerberg himself, but the company has struggled some since. That initial burst of attention earned the young crew coverage in the New York Times, and here, in New York. In these pages, Zhitomirskiy was dubbed the idealist, “the most tinfoil hat about privacy,” and stressed that he wasn’t looking to cash-in on this endeavor. “There’s something deeper than making money off stuff,” he said. “Being a part of creating stuff for the universe is awesome.”
Related: Defacebook [NYM]
