A new Facebook for Muslims?

The ongoing ban of Facebook in Pakistan has prompted some entrepreneurs to jump at the opportunity with the creation of an alternative social networking site, Pakfacebook.com.
Launched on May 19, the ‘kosher’ alternative to Facebook has become the 488th most active site in Pakistan according to search analytics website Alexa.

A new Facebook for Muslims?

Controversy has surrounded the newly launched website however, as SMS messages being forwarded in Pakistan have warned users that the site is hosted in Canada and has been set up by a US citizen to, “take advantage of you, and earn money that they are losing from the original site”.
The site has also been plagued by downtime for most of Sunday, possibly due to the sudden load of traffic to its servers.

Alternatives are being sought by Pakistanis online:

“This situation is a golden opportunity for any Pakistani web developers to design a web like Facebook and if their site serves like Facebook, it will become a huge success for that developer, Muslims and Pakistan” said Hasham in an online comment to The Express Tribune.

So what are the options?

Some alternatives to Facebook do currently exist on the internet. Among the most popular of these is Muslim social networking site, Salam which offers many of Facebook’s features such as photo sharing, events, groups and videos. The site also adheres to the concept of modesty as indicated in its Community Guidance section.
Weblog TechMambo also provides a list of the Top 10 Facebook clones available online.

Privacy first:

Facebook has also seen competition crop up due to the ongoing controversy surrounding its privacy settings. The New York Times ran a recent report on four students who have set up Diaspora*, a social networking alternate to Facebook with personalised privacy settings for users.
70 percent of Pakistanis want permanent ban on Facebook: Poll

A new poll has revealed that 70 percent people in Pakistan want a permanent ban on the social networking website Facebook, while another 15 percent support the Lahore High Court's order to ban the website till May 31.
According to the 'ProPakistani.pk' poll, the participants expressed their sheer anger on Facebook for displaying blasphemous drawings of Prophet Muhammad.
In the first three days of the poll, which is still running, eight percent participants were of the opinion that a single URL ban was enough, while the remaining seven percent said they did not want ban on Facebook at all.
Acting on the court's decision the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had earlier directed all Internet service providers in the country to shut down Facebook, as protests over the Prophet Muhammad issue had intensified across the country.
Commenting on the poll results, Jabran Rafique, a student, said that thousands of people had complained to Facebook to remove the blasphemous content through the website's standard reporting procedure, but no action was taken.
"But on the other hand they only took 20 minutes to shut down a page against Jewish on demand of some so-called Jewish cyber force. Does it not a discrimination against only one race and religion? We must not use Facebook ever again," The Nation quoted Rafique, as saying.