One of the four creators of social networking security software "Diaspora" commits suicide

Four students from New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy started working on a software last year that would ensure
every social network site user full proof security.

They used Kickstarter- an online threshold pledge system for funding creative projects to gather enough funds for the developing purpose.

The required cost that was needed to build the software was $10,000 but surprisingly, they managed to accumulate massive $200,000 in less than 40 days thanks to all the 6500 donors including Facebook’s owner Mark Zucherberg.

The software named as “Diaspora” was launched later in November and was received pretty well in the beginning because of the Facebook’s ongoing privacy issues at that time however with time, all the hype faded down -a setback for creators as this is not
what the owners would have thought.

However a bigger catastrophe was waiting for them as just a few days ago, one of the developers, Ilya Zhitomirskiy was found dead in his apartment in San Francisco at the age of 22.

“It was a suicide”, a source close to the company told a renowned media channel reporter.

San Francisco Police Department officer confirmed on Monday that a police report about Zhitomirskiy’s death says officers rushed to the 700 block of Treat Avenue around 8:10 p.m. on Saturday. The department had received phone calls about a possible suicide.

The case was then given to the medical examiner’s office, SFPD Officer Alvie Esparza said

"In this case it appears to be a suicide, However, the medical examiner’s office will make the final decision" after conducting testing.

According to a police representative, the investigation could take few weeks.

His death stirred his partners and others who had known him and they expressed their grief through twitter and other social networking sites.

"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." wrote one of his acquaintances on twitter.

His death is a big loss for world as an intelligent individual like him could have come up with more sophisticated technological products in future as well. May his soul rest in peace

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Posted by Farhan Khalid on Nov 15 2011. Filed under Latest News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry