Google are, apparently, developing a social networking platform to rival Facebook by, erm, copying Facebook.

Clearly Google Buzz hasn’t worked, Google Wave died on its arse and so now we’ll get Google Me. But how is copying Facebook going to CHALLENGE Facebook?

Ok, Google are running scared of FB at the moment and clearly want to make some impression on its 500 million+ users but this can’t be the right way?! There’s no sense in it.

They could simplify FBs still ridiculously complicated privacy settings, they could import some of their other functions – risking complicating the format in doing so – and they will, no doubt, make it a much prettier place to be. But if it’s still going to be an FB clone I’m really not seeing the logic.

Still…I WILL check it out, I WILL use it and IF it turns out to be another Google flop I WILL abandon it just as quickly as I did Buzz and Wave.

Make or break time for Google on the social media front, either way.

So four students from New York City think they can build a rival social media platform to Facebook and have received the money to do it. I am intrigued.

My feelings about Facebook change constantly. Sometimes I love it. Sometimes I hate it. And sometimes I wonder what the point of it is. But I continue to use it, both personally and as a way of promoting my own website with a Fan Page.

I sometimes feel that Facebook gives too much, shares too much, but the beauty of it is, of course, that you only share what you want to share. It just doesn’t feel like that sometimes. 500 million users can’t be wrong though, right?

Back to these students and Diaspora though. They bill it as “The privacy-aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network”. There’s little else as yet to give us a clue as to what that actually means. Sure, there’s a blog that gives a few hints, but in the main the whole thing is a mystery.

Obviously the guys are picking up on Facebook’s recent privacy problems, promising to give complete control of data to the user. But in all fairness, Facebook do try that – just not very well, not very user-friendly and they probably lay too much open to search engines and the like.

So Diaspora presumably won’t do that. Which is a good thing. But what will it do?! I want to know. And I want to know NOW, dammit! The guys aren’t giving much away as yet and will be spending the summer writing the platform now they’ve got about £160,000 of funding, plus offers of support from all over the place.

Visit joindiaspora.com for an explanation and, unless you are technically gifted, you are left feeling more confused than before you arrived. It’s software. You host your information wherever you like. You’re a seed. I have no idea what they are talking about to be honest. Nevertheless, as I said, I am intrigued.

I have had run-ins with similar things before that never went anywhere. A friend tried (and may still be trying for all I know) to build his own social networking site. Google Wave was supposed to bring a number of technologies into one but it hasn’t done a damn thing, as I ranted about a few weeks back.

I can only hope Diaspora proves more successful.

I don’t for one minute think they will manage to challenge the dominance of Facebook. It’s too entrenched in the world’s psyche now. If you’re not on Facebook, who are you? There are, of course, pockets of resistance, MySpace die hards and the technically inept who will never get on Facebook. Could they be tempted by Diaspora? Possibly. Hard to tell when we know nothing though!

I’ll be keeping an eye on it. It could be the next big thing. It’s good to know people are still pushing the boundaries, at least.

Sort yourselves out, Facebook!

I’ve set up and managed Facebook Pages for two companies now and there is one thing about them that really bugs me. You cannot switch ownership to another Facebook user. This is surely a glaring oversight from the Facebook team and I cannot believe they haven’t addressed it.

There are plenty of people with the same problem on Facebook’s forum pages and many, many requests have been sent via their suggestion facility.

Not only is it annoying but it is potentially damaging for companies. When the employee who set up the page in the first place moves on, your only recourse is to delete the page – or trust that he or she will do it. This could mean thousands of man hours wasted, all your content gone and you have to begin again.

Worst case scenario, your former employee and Facebook Page manager leaves under a cloud and exacts revenge through the page. They, after all, own it and you cannot switch it.

In my case, I deleted the page set up for the first company. There was no other option. I could have been far more malicious – as far as I was concerned I was treated badly when I left that company and it would have been a simple task to ruin the reputation of that particular online company. Instead, a lot of work just ended up going down the toilet and they had to begin again.

As it happens, I would have happily just handed ownership to whoever they wanted me to – but I couldn’t.

In the case of the second company there are two Facebook Pages to consider. But again, all I can do is delete them. There hasn’t been as much work put into these and the company in question is unlikely to want to take ownership anyway, so no harm done overall.

That doesn’t make it right though, does it? What makes it worse is Facebook offers the option of being a business user, which might seem like the solution – but only if you don’t already have a personal account! And who doesn’t have a Facebook account these days? Not many.

So come on Facebook – you’re leaving a lot of companies with no option other than NOT have a Facebook presence and that’s damaging to your business, surely?

So this is what happened to Twitter today, causing trouble the world over. To lighten your mood, post-Twitterpocalypse…

The social media world is in a state of disarray as Twitter remains down and out – by my own reckoning it’s been unobtainable for almost an hour. Surely the longest time in its history? Even in the dark days of 2007?

Either due to their link up or the thousands and thousands of users flocking to it from Twitter, Facebook too has been struggling. They, however, appear to be handling the problems much better. Normal service was resumed in less than 20 minutes for myself, though it does remain unstable to say the least.

Twitter does not know what is wrong, as they freely admit on their status blog, but the top two trending topics were “Tweets Created” and “Twitter Zombies” – I assume referring to the random new Twitter accounts following people (I had six in less than two minutes this morning”) and the random Tweets some accounts are producing (only one of those for me and I found it amusing).

Someone, it seems, has decided to attack and disable Twitter. One commenter on Mashable.com did, however, point out that the DEFCON hackers convention took place in Vegas only recently…