It sounds like the call for an open social network may get answered soon. Diaspora* seeks to be “the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.”
There seems to be plenty of interest out there for this project. The guys behind Diaspora* managed to get seed funding (and then some) through Kickstarter in just ten days.
Diaspora* is certainly worth keeping an eye on in the coming months.