Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges | Hacker News Reader

Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges

nytimes.com

18 pointsrob14 comments

...And? Does it matter, really? A lot of people say it isn't really the idea that matters. It's execution. This guy would probably have done a lousy startup anyway.

What about Friendster? Didn't Abrams also clue into Social Networking before Facebook?

Anyone remember sixdegrees.com when Amazon bought it during the dot boom... I agree - this is stupid

he developed an automated system that generated personalized query letters to more than 800 literary agents nationwide

Spamming literary agents? Ouch. Your typical literary agent gets 100s of manuscripts a day, and accepts maybe 10 a year. (Much, much worse odds than applying a yc).

Obviously, the facebook idea was old, old, old even when Zuck got to it, so of course he's no innovator. Just threw the dice and won. (Plus, he's probably a good operator, despite his assholism).

mail merge? rocket science.

I actually founded Facebook. I called it thebookoffaces.com and built it in 1999. Mark Zuckerberg probably saw it when he did some summer school at the University of Akron and ripped it off from me.

Did anyone else here found Facebook?

You're deeply mistaken.

I actually founded Facebook. It was back in '96 when I realized gluing a book to my face was the best method in keeping me focused on my reading.

Looks like Greenspan is headed down the path I suggested in a previous thread [1]: fame as Mark Zuckerberg's Gary Kildall [2].

Even reading Greenspan's book account, it's clear that he dawdled while Zuckerberg executed. Greenspan frittered around with committees ("'Maybe we should put more emphasis on the Universal Face Book,' I thought aloud during a board meeting" [3]), kvetched about media unfairness ("'Can we get _The Crimson_ to give us any decent coverage at all?' I kept asking my board, week after week" [3]), worried idly delaying essential features ("I had considered creating detailed user profile pages at houseSYSTEM's inception, but it seemed like the worst idea possible when students began to fret openly about privacy"[4]), and engaged in redundant academic make-work ("'I can write [a version tracking system],' I offered, not wanting to be the only one without code to write" [5]).

If tempted to label someone a 'fraud' (as Greenspan did Zuckerberg in a previous HN thread[1]), consider instead that they may be expressing competencies in a dimension you can't readily perceive. Maybe even the very things you're criticizing ("Even though he was clearly smart, he seemed like he had the capacity to go off in a zany direction at any point in time, totally unconcerned about the consequences of his actions. I couldn't figure out any other scenario that would have allowed for the creation of the facemash site." [6]) are, in fact, strengths.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24742

[2] Though, Greenspan would still have to contribue a lot to the computer industry to hold a candle to Kildall -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall

[3] http://www.aarongreenspan.com/read/read.html?page=293

[4] http://www.aarongreenspan.com/read/read.html?page=299

[5] http://www.aarongreenspan.com/read/read.html?page=300

[6] http://www.aarongreenspan.com/read/read.html?page=296

What would happen to a site like Facebook if Mark were to lose the ConnectU lawsuit, or to Greenspan if he were to take action?

The proper way to find closure would probably be to found another billion dollar business. How hard can it be?

So the lesson is... investors decide who the winner will be.

It was Zuckerberg's brilliant marketing that made Facebook win, in my opinion.

How was it marketed?

Harvard had an internal facebook system that had pictures and brief descriptions of students. Via your dorm network, you could browse the other freshmen in your dorm.

Zuckerberg went and jacked into each dorm and downloaded all the data. Then, he put the pictures up on a site called Facemash. When you went to Facemash, you were given two pictures and asked to rate which one was hotter. This quickly became very popular and got Zuckerberg in trouble with Harvard.

He used the negative publicity (but remember that there's almost no such thing as bad publicity) to launch Facebook. From there, it's a case study in viral marketing, as Zuckerberg launched at the schools that had the most students that were friends with the Harvard students.

Posession is 9/10ths of the law.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com