Former MySpace Music CTO Dmitry Shapiro Raises Funding To Launch A Facebook Alternative

Dmitry Shapiro is the former MySpace Music CTO. Shapiro has raised funding from investors that include Draper Fisher Jurvetson to launch an alternative to Facebook called Altly. Altly will be a social network that has strong privacy controls and data ownership.

Below is a statement from the company.

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.

Is there another option? What are our alternatives? If we don’t like what Facebook is doing, what can we do about it?

Well, herein lies the problem. There are NO serious alternatives at this time. 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.

DFJ Managing Partner Josh Stein wrote in a tweet: “Incredibly excited to be an investor in Altly, my third adventure with @dmitry.” Some of Shapiro’s previous companies include Veoh and Akonix.

[AllThingsD]

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