Co-founder of Social Network 'Diaspora' dies at 22

Ilya Zhitomirskiy (far left smiling) with his Diaspora co-founders

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, a 22-years-old co-founder of the Diaspora, an open-source Facebook alternative that is fun and creative that puts an emphasis on privacy and user-control died over the weekend in San Francisco.

Zhitomirskiy, together with Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg and Raphael Sofaer were students from New York University’s Courant Instutitue of Mathematical Sciences, created the project “Diaspora” that was released on November 23, 2010 is intended to address privacy concerns related to centralized social etworks by allowing users set up their own server (or “pod”) to host content; pods can then interact to share status updates, photographs, and other social data.

The cause of Zhitomirskiy’s death wasn’t immediately known but source close to the company told CNNMoney on Sunday that he committed suicide.

According to this source, Zhitomirskiy’s mother had not hear his son in 3 days, so she called one of his roommates at the apartment and they found out a horrible and shocking situation after they broke down Ilya’s bedroom door.

It was indeed a carefully planned and executed suicide because Ilya left a detailed suicide note that explained why he decided to take his own life.

When Diaspora first went looking for funds, in a video posted on Vimeo in April 2010, Ilya Zhitomirskiy describes his vision “no longer will you be at the whims of those large corporate networks who want to tell you that sharing and privacy are mutually exclusive.”

According to the Diaspora’s spokesman Peter Schurman,”Ilya was a great guy. He was a visionary, he was a co-founder of a company that hopes to bring a better social networking experience and we are all very sad that he is gone. It is a huge loss for all of us, including his family.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as one of their supporters liked the open source project saying “I think it is cool people are trying to do it. I see a little of myself in them.”

As what Zhitomirskiy’s profile on Diaspora said, Ilya is “super p(–foul word(s) removed–)ionate about building a world of hacker spaces, maker culture, sharing, cycling, and life satisfaction.”

“Ilya was an incredible person,” wrote one user. “His heart was truly driven by bringing about positive change in this world. Diaspora was only the beginning.”

If Ilya didn’t exhibit any signs of depression or suicidal tendencies, what do you think could have driven him to the edge and convinced him to take his own life?

No matter what’s his reason behind, may his soul rest in peace…