Diaspora, an open source alternative to Facebook, opened a private Alpha phase this past week. For those of you unfamiliar, Diaspora raised over 200k earlier this year from the crowdsourcing platform kickstarter.com.

Diaspora’s goal is to be the “privacy-aware” social network. The timing of their project couldn’t have been better. They capitalized on the woes and outrage of Facebook’s privacy debacles.

While currently in private Alpha, Diaspora states that they plan on inviting more users in the weeks ahead. An update from a Diaspora blog post reads, “By taking these baby steps, we’ll be able to quickly identify performance problems and iterate on features as quickly as possible.”

Some analysts do not give them or any other social network much of a chance at challenging Facebook any time soon. Let us know what you think about Diaspora in the comments section below.

Other stories we followed this week relating to privacy and safety issues of social networking sites are listed below:

Facebook Privacy Toolkit – by PC Magazine

Christmas Tree app virus hoax spreads on Facebook | Naked Security