Redsocial is not a "Facebook clone"

There was a recent announcement of a Cuban "Facebook clone" called Redsocial. But, Redsocial is not a Cuban Facebook for the following reasons.

1. Access is limited: A URL was published, then quickly went dead. According to a comment by Irving Leonard, access to Redsocial is confined users on a "/8" (up to 16,777,216 hosts) local network that connects Cuban universities. In this Redsocial is a clone of Facebook when it was first launched -- restricted to a few univerity students.

2. Size is limited: Redsocial claimed 7,000 users had registered up in one week. One tenth of the world population uses Facebook.

3. Facebook is a platform: I did not get a chance to see Redsocial before they cut access, but I would be amazed if it provided anything like the open development environment, which allows one to create applications that are used inside Facebook.

4. Anonymity: One can create a Facebook account without divulging their real identitiy, but if one must access Redsocial through a university account, their identity is discoverable.

If Redsocial is a Facebook clone, it is a clone of Facebook in 2004, not of today's Facebook.

A Cuban Facebook?

The blog La Chriinga de Cuba reported that Cuba had launched a Facebook clone called Redsocial.

La Chiringa later reported that the Redsocial URL had changed from http://facebook.ismm.edu.cu to http://neko.uclv.edu.cu/index.php/, but both were broken when I tried to follow them.

The site tag line is "A virtual meeting place for Cuban universities," which sounds more like Facebook 1.0 than today's Facebook. ISMM is a school of mining, geology and metalurgy and UCLV the Central University of Las Villas, indicating that this is a university oriented site.

I tried pinging ISMM and UCLV. ISMM is not pingable, but, from my computer, UCLV has an average ping time of just over 1.8 seconds, so it is clearly not connected to the ALBA cable.

Has anyone seen Redsocial?

(The Huffington Post also covered the story).