As 900lb gorillas go, Facebook is about as 900lb-gorilla-y as it gets in the internet world. That isn’t stopping former Veoh and Myspace Music exec Dmitry Shapiro from taking on the social network with a startup called Altly. He’s raised $1 million in seed funding from VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Myspace founder Tom Anderson to go head to head with Facebook. “For every Coke there is a Pepsi, for every Ford there is a Chevy, for every PC there is a Mac and for every Facebook there is…. a void! Facebook has such overwhelming power that practically no one believes that trying to build an alternative is possible,” explains the Altly manifesto, which makes privacy (rather than music) its intended USP. “There is clearly nothing wrong with Facebook making money, as all business has to do. What IS clearly wrong is when our privacy, our personal information, our digital lives are being subjugated for the sake of profit, without us having any meaningful capability to opt out, or even know the extent of such activity.” Source: All Things Digital
