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New York. It sounds like a kamikaze mission: an upstart with a meager number of users and no capital squaring off against Facebook, a social networking juggernaut with more than 400 million members, valued at $15 billion.

But despite those odds, a handful of startups are eyeing the social networking industry with renewed interest.

The newfound infusion of confidence comes, in part, from the recent scrutiny focused on Facebook over revisions to its platform and privacy policy that encourage its members to make personal information accessible to anyone on the Internet.

“Right now is the perfect time for us,” said Leo Shimizu, co-founder of a company called Pip.io, which he describes as a social operating system. “People are starting to understand the limitations of Facebook while we’re showing off a product with features that everybody is wanting and didn’t know existed.”

Pip.io is similar to Facebook and Twitter in that it allows its members to post status updates, send messages and connect with friends. But unlike its counterparts, the service allows users to keep more information private.

The service, which completed a test phase in February, has just 20,000 registered members — a drop in the bucket compared with Facebook. But Shimizu remains undaunted.

“The market opportunity is one of a kind, and it’s up to us to capitalize on it,” he said.

Analysts and industry experts are quick to point out that Facebook has dealt with a number of user protests in its six-year history and emerged unscathed, continuing to add users at a record clip.

But while there may not yet be any notable challengers to Facebook’s momentum, said Ray Valdes, an analyst at the research firm Gartner, the company could be accumulating enough damage that if a worthy opponent emerges, it will have a ready base of people willing to jump ship.

A primary reason that Facebook grew to become a central hub of the social networking world is its continuous effort to improve the service by adding features, said Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, a professor at the Harvard Business School who studies social networks.

“When you look back at how little MySpace changed between 2005 and 2007, it’s staggering,” Piskorski said. “For Facebook to be taken over, there would need to be a drastic slowdown in the rate of innovation. It would take a lot of work to undermine what Facebook has achieved so far.”

Michael Chisari, a developer in Chicago, said the escalating privacy concerns around Facebook spurred him to resurrect Appleseed, an open source project to develop free software that would allow users to set up their own social networking hubs.

“In the past month, there has been a sea change in the number of people looking for alternatives,” he said. “A year ago, nobody was interested in my project, and now I have about 80 supporters signed up.”

There’s also Diaspora, the brainchild of four New York University students who raised more than $180,000 in seed money through Kickstarter, a site that helps creative people find support. And there are several networks up and running, like OneSocialWeb, Crabgrass and Elgg.

Evelyn Castillo-Bach, an entrepreneur in Florida who created a small, subscription-based site exclusively for students called Collegiate Nation, said she was quickly introducing a version of the platform for everyone.

“As the drumbeat and awareness for Facebook’s disregard of privacy increased, I realized I shouldn’t delay this,” she said. “Clearly the time is now.”



The New York Times