Facebook is so big and ubiquitous now that it may be hard to challenge, but four U.S. college students have gotten some publicity for giving it a try.

It’s called Diaspora, and bills itself as "The privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network."

According to BBC News, Diaspora now says it will launch on Sept. 15.

"The project was started by three computer scientists and one mathematician from New York," the article says. According to the Diaspora website, the four are Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer, and Ilya Zhitomirskiy.

The article says the four have raised $200,642 from nearly 6,500 people–with the help of the fundraising site Kickstarter–and that "Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, reportedly donated to the project."

The word diaspora means a group migration. With a capital "D" the tern generally refers specifically to Jews living outside of Israel having being forced to leave the Holy Land centuries ago.