Ilya Zhitomirskiy's Cause, Manner of Death Still Pending: Chief Medical Examiner

The cause and manner of death for Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the 22-year-old co-founder of Diaspora, is still pending Amy Hart, chief medical examiner at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in San Francisco, told International Business Times on Thursday.

Hart said Zhitomirskiy's case is still at the active investigation stage by her office and that more information will be available when the case is closed.

When the case is closed the information we have regarding the case is a matter of public records, Hart said in a telephone interview. During the active investigation stage that information isn't available for release.

Hart said the report will include their investigation, the autopsy result and the toxicology findings. However, it take several weeks to complete.

Hart said Zhitomirskiy died on Nov. 12.

The San Francisco police have confirmed his death but also didn't reveal a cause. Friends and associates of Zhitomirskiy, however, have told the media that there were indications of suicide.

Zhitomirskiy was a student at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 2010 when he and three other undergraduates decided to create a Web-based community that would give users control over the information they shared. The four students then created the start-up social network Diaspora, which has been described as the anti-Facebook, as a means to emphasize on personal privacy and decentralized data collection.

The idea behind Diaspora is that instead of creating a central database like that of Facebook's, they would develop freely shared software that allow every member of the network to own his or her personal information.

Diaspora launched Diaspora last year and the group raised more than $200,000 in donations through its use of a fundraising platform start-up called Kickstarter.

Zhitomirskiy was born Oct. 12, 1989, in Moscow to Alexei and Inna Zhitomirskiy. His father and his grandfather Garri Zhitomirskiy are mathematicians. The family moved to the United States in 2000 where Zhitomirskiy attended public schools in Massachusetts, Louisiana and Pennsylvania.