Did Zuckerberg Steal Facebook?

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook.com, has found himself in the news yet again. This is nothing new for the 22 year old who took the Bill Gates route and dropped out of Harvard to build his empire. I have to give it to him, he turned a simple idea into a successful business more or less overnight. At one point in late 2006 the WSJ reported Yahoo had offered around $1 billion for Facebook. Many thought rejecting that offer was foolish, but I have a feeling Mark will get the last laugh. Just this week one of his venture backers said a $1 billion offer would be "way low."

The history of facebook as portrayed by Zuckerberg in bios written about him, and what really happened is still unclear. He claims that he developed the site because he felt there was a need for something like it on Harvard's campus. That part of it is indisputable. At the time a Harvard student lucky enough to live in Dunster House down on the river had no way to go online and look up a student living in Cabot House in the Quad. If this doesn't sound like a particularly bad thing, allow let me put together a more detailed thought experiment: if Mark Z. had met a cute sophomore who lived in another house there was no way for him to find her email address to follow up. Now you probably understand the utility of a site like facebook. The administration at the time was against providing such information to all students. So, the party line is that in comes Mark Z. with the idea of an online facebook with information that students fill out themselves. The end result is a company that could ultimately be valued at closer to $2 billion. Sounds pretty simple right?

The problem is, on September 2nd, 2004, seven months after Facebook launched, three Harvard students filed a legal suit against faceboook and its founders. These students, Divya Narendra (pictured), Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss claim that they hired Mark (albeit without pay) to help them build a social networking site called Harvard Connection. You can read all about the original suit on the Harvard Crimson website via this link. They allege that Mark wrote code for their site, but then turned around and used that code to set up thefacebook.com. The original suit was dropped because of a lack of evidence. However, the Winklevoss twins and Mr. Narendra haven't given up yet and most recently filed suit in Massachusetts on March 28th, 2007. I didn't see the actual documents but something tells me this second suit will seek damages well in excess of the $75,000 sought in the first suit back in 2004. Just where this case might lead is unknown, but one thing that is known is that Mark Z's story about the founding of Facebook may need to be re-written.