Recently a couple of New York college students made a stir when they announced that they would write an open source and distributed social network server as an alternative to Facebook. This is really in the true spirit of the internet, where everyone can set up his or her own server and have them commicate, compare e.g. how email works. Incidentally, this is the way Instant Messaging should work but only SIP and Jabber (used by e.g. Google Talk) actually implement. Evidently they have raised about $170 000 in three weeks using Kickstarter, their initial target was $10 000.
I sympathize 100% with their stated goals and will make sure I set up a Diaspora Seed once they make their first release.
More information on the Diaspora blog.