The world has never seen a Web site like Facebook, where a sizable chunk of its population — 1.3 billion people — share details and media about their lives to their circle of friends. On its login screen, Facebook notes that it’s free to use and always will be. But it makes money via targeted ads. That’s why there is always close scrutiny, and a lot of concern bordering on paranoia, about its privacy policies, particularly when they change.
For those who like the idea of sharing status updates of their lives with a circle of friends without the intrusion of ads or fear of privacy breaches that many Facebook users have, there is Neobase. Billed as the world’s first private network device, the small cylindrical home server has a 1 terabyte hard drive. As opposed to just being used for sharing files like previous products, Neobase runs Neone, a social network that doesn’t have any central hub but runs on different people’s Neobases.