Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, a company
based on a social networking website that was originally only open
to college students. Since opening its doors more widely a year ago
it has been a hit amongst older users than sites such as MySpace or
Bebo. Zuckerberg has said that he would not sell his company for
less than $10 billion.
Three former university acquaintances have recently claimed that
Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them when, they claim,
he worked on their college social networking idea, ConnectU.
Now Greenspan, another former student, has claimed that the idea
was his. Greenspan set up a Harvard-wide web system used by
thousands of students called houseSYSTEM in 2003, six months before
Facebook came into being.
He claims that he sent an email to Harvard students in September
2003 announcing a student-finder service within the system which he
called the Face Book. The original domain name for Facebook was
thefacebook.com.
Greenspan is not yet taking legal action against Zuckerberg, and
he told The New York Times that he had declined to appear as a
witness when contacted by Zuckerberg's lawyers in the ConnectU
case. He said that he had not wanted to become embroiled in the
case.
Greenspan has detailed his experiences in a book which remains
unpublished. Called Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions,
the book covers his creation of the system he invented and the rise
of ConnectU and Facebook.
In its introduction Greenspan says: "In all, it is not a happy
story. Those people who I have met who deserve to know shame will
find their due portions here … This book is partly a search for
justice. You don't write an autobiography in your early 20s unless
there's something you need to get off your chest."
In it he hints that he prefers the pen to the court room. "Since
our judicial system can't possibly know about all that surrounds us
– and it would be overwhelmed if it did – it is my hope that the
pages of this book will serve as an adequate, if less severe,
substitute," he wrote in the book, which is published online at
aarongreenspan.com.
In the book he claims that Zuckerberg asked him for some advice
while he was setting up a system which, at the time, he would not
reveal. He asked Greenspan to join his project, the book claims.
Greenspan declined.
The approach came not long after Zuckerberg had been in trouble
with Harvard authorities for using the photos from a university
year book to create a web application which allowed students to
compare each other's looks. The site was called facemash.
Greenspan quotes an email he says Zuckerberg wrote to him, which
said: "I was thinking of making an application that would use the
Harvard course catalog, but I'm a little worried about the
university getting upset after the whole facemash episode."
Greenspan says he suggested integrating Zuckerberg's application
into his own houseSYSTEM. "I actually did think about integrating
it into houseSYSTEM before you even suggested it, but I decided
that it's probably best to keep them separated at least for now,"
he quotes Zuckerberg as saying in reply.
