Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Altly Posts Anti-Facebook Manifesto, Gets Funding

Los Angeles-based Altly, the latest startup of Dmitry Shapiro, the founder of Veoh and former CTO of MySpace Music, has officially thrown down the gauntlet, saying in a blog post this week that it there is a need for an alternative to Facebook--and the firm is going to create that alternative.

In his post, Shapiro talks about how users are being "pressured" to become "friends" with people they would not have had ongoing communication with prior to Facebook, and also have had to share personal information they normally wouldn't comfortable sharing. Shapiro posted that Altly is taking a "dramatically different" view of rights to privacy and ownership of that personal information. The firm also reported that it has taken a round of investment from un-named venture capital funds and strategic angels to fund the effort, which is still in development; no details on that funding have been announced.

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