Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Dies at 22

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the co-founder of the open-source Facebook alternative Diaspora, has passed away at the age of 22. The cause of death is not yet publicly known.

Zhitomirskiy, along with Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg and Raphael Sofaer, created the open-source software as part of a project while they were students at New York University. Diaspora was created as a response to Facebook’s controversial privacy changes in 2010. The team was able to raise $200,000 on Kickstarter to launch the project.

Our thoughts and condolences go out to Zhitomirskiy’s family and friends.