Internet privacy, a new area of focus for startups
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 01 June 2010, 22:44 IST   |    6 Comments
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Internet privacy, a new area of focus for startups
San Francisco: The issue of privacy on the internet is in the spotlight now. Hence, many companies start to use it as a business differentiator. The issue of privacy on the internet has become an inspiration for a number of startups, who are aiming to enter into fields of social networking and search focusing on privacy, reports Alejandro Martinez-Cabrera for San Francisco Chronicle. In April, four students of New York University set out to create Diaspora, an "anti-Facebook" sort of platform, which will aim to provide the same functionality as the popular social network. But unlike Facebook, it will run on open-source software, without depending on centralized servers. The four students used Kickstarter, a fundraising Web site to collect $10,000 to cover their summer expenses. They could gather the whole amount in less than two weeks. As of now, an amount of $190,000 has been collected from several donors. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has also contributed to it. There are other privacy-oriented projects also, such as, Appleseed and OneSocialWeb, that are working on alternatives to Facebook. Zuckerberg last week announced that the social networking site would remove simplified controls that would allow users to configure their privacy settings with fewer clicks. According to Tim Jones, an activist and technology manager at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the field of search and social networks is a competitive market now. As consumer awareness on privacy issues increases and big companies lose credibility, startup companies would definitely try to take advantage of that, he added. Recently, Google was criticized for collecting private information from users' Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries through its StreetView offering. Though the company said it to be unintentional, it had to face a lot of criticism from regulators and lawmakers in the United States and Europe. There are search engines like Yauba and Ixquick, which have already offer to observe the Internet without collecting private data. Duck Duck Go, a search engine startup, started promotion with a strong focus in privacy. Privacy concerns would be strong enough to attract people to a new service and retain them, according to Josh Bernoff, a Forrester Research analyst.

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