hi, I'm the creator of swytch. Actually I don't agree that the interface looks similar - i assume you're referring to the screenshots they released? Besides the colours what else is similar and just how would you expect a news feed to look? What you see on my site is typical of what you might see on any site designed by a programmer. No frills and functional.
As for privacy, we're not the only ones working on addressing the privacy issue, that doesn't make us a clone.
I'm a little late to this thread but I'm trying to address this particular shortcoming with my startup, swytch.net
Users can have multiple profiles for each of the groups they communicate with e.g. one for family, one for friends and one for colleagues.
The privacy settings are also very simple. Public or private. Only followers get access to private profiles so you don't have to worry about friends of friends seeing something you don't want them to.
Currently under heavy development but a beta is up at http://www.swytch.net for anyone who wants to have a look
thanks for the feedback, very useful. Integration with other services is on the todo list but for the time being I want to focus on the core features and user experience.
I think it can be useful without a large existing social graph. For example, I went to a local tech meetup last month and met some interesting people. I wouldn't necessarily add them as facebook friends but I am following them on twitter. The downside is I now get updates on anything they post when I only really want updates on the things they're working on.
As I said in a previous comment I think social network is the wrong label for this product. It's more of a group communication tool. The broadcast/follow model is a very efficient and useful way for groups to communicate and that's the core of of swytch.net - it's group communication with less noise and more signal. Because it's not trying to be the 'one true network' it doesn't need a huge social graph. Just the people that you want to communicate with in a specific context need to be on it.
> Signup was easy, the username admin was available. Sweet.
As for privacy, we're not the only ones working on addressing the privacy issue, that doesn't make us a clone.