Looking at where Facebook is today, there are no alternatives to it. It’s doubtlessly a social media behemoth. It’s extremely difficult – if not impossible – to beat the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Diaspora is a community powered social media app center. It’s more like the open-source alternative to the combination of Facebook and Twitter. You can host it yourself, you can download and keep the data, use hashtags(#), mention others, reshare (much like “retweet” in Twitter). Collect photos from around the web and share them with your network, among other things. It also allows you to link to Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and even have others subscribe to your feeds.

As I see it, it can be used to power your own specific communities. It’s more like your own private social media network for your community, business, family, or other specific groups.