- One of four friends from NYU who launched Diaspora* site, meant to protect users' privacy
- Group raised more than $200,000 in donations
- Mark Zuckerberg praised his project A 22-year-old social networking pioneer and Internet privacy advocate who dared to challenge Facebook and Google is dead.
Ilya Zhitomirskiy died Saturday after San Francisco police were summoned for a reported suicide, police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said.
Mr Zhitomirskiy was one of the founders Diaspora*, a new social networking service meant to give users more control of their information online, and sought to lure people away from bigger sites like Facebook, Google and Twitter.
Police would not release other details of his death and a medical examiner's report could take weeks before it becomes public.
Mr Zhitomirskiy and three friends, Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, and Raphael Sofaer, launched a trial run of Diaspora* last year that attracted the attention of The New York Times and National Public Radio and left the tech world buzzing.