02138, a Harvard alumni magazine, has published a lengthy piece about the early days of Facebook, including the controversy surrounding chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s work for ConnectU, the company that has sued him.
It is one of the more in-depth pieces so far, and unearths material we haven’t seen before, though it’s possible it may have been surfaced elsewhere without our knowledge. Particularly interesting is how nearly all the early code base for Facebook has disappeared, with Zuckerberg saying it was wiped from outside servers long ago or lost on missing or corrupted hard drives.
This is strange because only last year he was saying the code base could be used to defend himself against allegations that he stole it from ConnectU. “We know that we didn’t take anything from them,” he told the New Yorker last year. “There is really good documentation of this: our code base versus theirs. At some point, that will come out in court.” And so now, of course, it won’t be coming out in court.
Also noteworthy was Zuckerberg’s relationship with Eduardo Saverin, his early teammate in launching Facebook, and first CEO. Eventually Facebook and Saverin came to blows, according to the magazine:
Zuckerberg claims that Saverin tried to hijack the company by freezing its bank account when Facebook desperately needed cash in its formative months. Zuckerberg used money his parents had saved for his college tuition to keep the company afloat. Saverin, who originally owned a third of Facebook, has counter-sued. He claims that the approximately $20,000 involved was his money—Facebook seed capital that Zuckerberg promised to match and never did. Instead, Saverin says, Zuckerberg used the money to cover personal expenses. Then, when Zuckerberg incorporated Facebook and became sole director, he cut Saverin out of the power structure of the company and watered down his shares.
The saga continues, with the court ruling that outside consultants can image and analyze early Facebook memory devices for the early code.
5 Comments
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Aaronontheweb said:
I know people in the web 2.0 community are often hesitant to criticize the respective buzz leader but I’m just going to say it: Zuckerberg is an unethical, lying sack of shit. There’s way too much dirt on this guy just to dismiss it as sour grapes on the behalf of parties that missed out. The guy is scum.
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A. Smith said:
This is suspect, especially in light of the previous accusations. The old saying is “where there’s fire, there’s smoke”.
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JLoughlin said:
If he is the habitual backstabber that the article alleges, then his fate is inescapable. He will be held to his own rules. “Et tu, Brute?”
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ELS said:
The code base (circa 2004) is not what has made facebook successful.
The concept that “the idea” was defensible IP is laughable.
This case is going nowhere.
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Charlie said:
The picture from the article tells the story:
http://www.02138mag.com/asset/1065.jpgThese are the guys suing Zuckerberg. Ivy League competitve rowers who can’t/won’t write code.
Put yourself in Mark’s shoes. You’re a geeky kid who learned to code, maybe reads Slashdot and are looking to do something cool on the web. These jocks notice a thing you made and say they want your help with their company. You get excited and agree.
You’ve spent lots of time on the web and have developed a very good sense of what a good website is, and as you look over their idea, you realize that this it is a start, but that you could do better. You wouldn’t use the site they drew up, but with some tweaks and a good UI, it has potential.
What do you do? Maybe you could go back to them and tell them how it could be done right.
Maybe you feel like they don’t have the touch and you do, so you don’t feel any obligation to fix their project, and instead opt to make your own.
Maybe they’re arrogant pricks who wouldn’t listen to you, and your sense of things is that if they don’t know how to code, tough shit for them. I have no idea of course, but a few things jump out:
They’re ivy league jocks supported by their dad.
They sunk $800,000 into the project through a web development firm (wow! where’d they get that? Why didn’t they do that to start with? Somehow I doubt Zuckerberg would have done this)If this were a movie, they look the part of the guy that has everything, has no trouble getting laid, and gives Zuck a swirlie.
None of that proves anything but it does kind of fit an image, no?
3 Trackbacks
8:45 am
Did Mark Zuckerberg Steal the Code for Facebook? - The Unofficial Facebook Blog said:
[...] between Facebook and ConnectU. The details paint a new picture of Mark Zuckerberg. As Matt Marshall points out, the article brings to light conflicting statements by Mark [...]
8:06 am
VentureBeat » Facebook moves to force magazine to take down documents said:
[...] week, 02138 published an in-depth article, which we wrote about here. “We filed the motions to let the court know that its orders were being violated,” [...]
9:28 am
Facebook to settle with ConnectU » VentureBeat said:
[...] Zuckerberg to light — some of them casting doubt on his ingenuity and originality, like the disappearance of Facebook’s early code base (which was supposed to be a key part of Facebook’s defense), others just plain awkward and [...]