"We're incredibly sad to announce that our close friend and co-founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy died," said Peter Schurman, a spokesman for Diaspora.
Local media cited the trail of a suicide to explain his disappearance, but authorities in San Francisco (USA) indicated that it would take several weeks to determine the causes of death, which occurred in this city.
Ilya Zhitomirskiy was one of four American students a year ago had launched Diaspora, focusing on flexibility and protection of personal data to get a place in an area dominated by Facebook.
"Ilya was a visionary"
Monday the home page of the site was decorated with the image of a giant dandelion dried, next to a photo of Ilya Zhitomirskiy sitting in what appears to be a classroom, an apple core by hand. Diaspora has also published on Twitter a link to an article in Techcrunch describing the apparent suicide would be reached Saturday.
The founders of the site Daniel Flu, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, students at New York University, had launched in the spring of 2010 an appeal for donations of $ 10,000 through the site Kickstater.com, a platform that allows projects to find investors. The results have exceeded expectations with over $ 200,000 raised. The boss and co-founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was among the donors.
The site was open to developers in September 2010, the public two months later.
"Ilya was a great friend and a brilliant personality, a visionary whose work for a better future has appporté hope to many people," said Peter Schurman, indicating that funeral services were scheduled Friday and Sunday in San Francisco and Philadelphia (USA). "Ilya will be missed more than we can say," he added.
Creating a blog to me then appeared as an essential complement to be able to add addresses, useful links, to speak more fully of my favorites products and obviously able to share my passion!