This is the same guy who claims Facebook was his idea, and tried to get Facebook's trademark revoked:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/17/greenspan_harvard_fa...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/17/greenspan_harvard_fa...
I don't think we've ever met, and I'm not sure what I ever did to you to merit repeated disdainful (and in this case, misleading) jabs in public forums, but I actually think 280 North is really cool and I look forward to seeing where Atlas goes.
In the meantime, my so-called claims (which are narrow and do not include the wild notion that I "invented social networking," but do involve execution and not merely an "idea") were verified by The New York Times and are publicly available for inspection, so they're really facts. The trademark dispute is in the middle of discovery right now, and ironically, there are posts on this thread that support my case--so "tried" wouldn't be the best word to use, either.
Anyway, if you want to selectively link to only articles that call me names, that's your prerogative.
Aaron
Congratulations on your small-claims win against an unprepared Google paralegal; Google should be held to account for cryptic and arbitrary policies that retract credited balances from users' accounts.
However, in your own writings and lawsuits, you give me the impression that you are a legal gadfly rather than an entrepreneur. That can be a fine niche in life, and the press loves it, but you shouldn't expect a warm reception from aspiring entrepreneurs. Successful businesspeople often have to waste precious time and money defending against, and sometimes even paying off, legal gadflies -- even when the claims are meritless.
Not that I expect to convince of anything, but your interpretation of my writing is awfully skewed. You claim I "dawdled...while Zuckerberg executed." I launched my Universal Face Book, which I coded myself, on September 19, 2003. thefacebook.com launched on February 4, 2004. Throughout those intermediate months I wrote thousands of lines of code, tried to get others interested in maintaining and growing the site, and secured partnerships. That Mark secured funding after using, speaking with me about, and then copying my work does not negate any of my actions.
The "fritter[ing] around with committees" is a phrase you used, not me. The "committee" you speak of was a few of my friends in college who were in the same club.
I didn't sit around "kvetch about media unfairness." I walked into The Crimson and waited until a reporter would talk to me so that I could show them the site.
The "redundant academic make-work" you refer to was a version control system for CS91r, a Harvard class that both Mark and I were in, and had nothing to do with any of your previous points.
Aaron
If I charge a reasonable amount of money for my work that involved risk to produce, I'm not being transparent enough, but I'm clearly an entrepreneur. If I make everything free, I'm in the good graces of the open source movement thanks to my perfect transparency, but then of course I'm not "really" an entrepreneur.
Come on people! You can't have your cake and eat it too.
The bit about the version control system was especially telling. You implied Zuckerberg was shirking classwork to work on his side project. Meanwhile, you volunteered to write a version control system to be used by fellow coders on a speech-recognition class project.
If an entrepreneurially-minded young coder was magically sent back to Spring 2004, what should they work on? A custom version control system to be used by teammates on a single class project, or a college-oriented competitor to Friendster, MySpace, and Orkut?
Let me paraphrase your sentiment here. You think that my fatal flaw is that while simultaneously pursuing the extracurricular interests that included houseSYSTEM and running my own company (which is presently more profitable than Facebook despite its relatively small size), I was diligent in completing my coursework? That's my huge mistake?
As I describe pretty clearly in the book, I worked on the version control system and houseSYSTEM and many other things (everything you now see on http://www.thinkcomputer.com) simultaneously. Even in hindsight, I'm glad I worked on those things. I just wish I hadn't talked to Mark about them.
Like anyone I've made plenty of mistakes, and I'm perfectly willing to discuss them in relation to entrepreneurship, but clearly you've got some sort of other issue with me. Despite my best efforts to figure it out, I still don't know what it is.
Best of luck.
Aaron
In your very first comment at News.YC, you called Zuckerberg a "fraud", and pointed to your book as evidence. [1] I've looked at your evidence, and think you're either imagining things, or exaggerating to promote your career. That's all.
You seem to be someone who enjoys ligitating, so in an effort not to get MY ass sued, I will take a leaf out of the book of Penn Jilette.
You, sir, are a fucker, a shit-stain and a crotch weasel. You're an asshole, a jerk and I probably wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.
Fuck you and the boat you sailed in on.
And you want to make sure he feels welcome on this forum?
I mean, admittedly, it's not like he's making his living by destroying the reputations of people who are making things people want (like Valleywag), but he's hardly making a positive contribution. If he had never been born, the world would be that much better for the rest of us.
While I agree with you on this with regard to the relative righteousness of a domain squatter suing Google, it's worth noting that Google offers a domain squatting service. They are participating in the very activity you and I consider abhorrent (while also doing productive things, too). In fact, Google very likely makes more money from domain squatting than anyone, since they have a very strong unfair search engine advantage over spam domains from any other provider.
(Ideas are worthless. Execution is all that matters.)
I don't know when Friendster launched, but i know people who've had profiles since 2002, so again, a "social networking site" had already been done and launched.
Writing a "tell all" book and trying to sell it?
Blatently violating the Google TOS, and then suing them because they wouldn't tell you what part of the TOS you violated?
That's 3 pretty big reasons.
First of all, it's a really really old idea.
Second of all, the idea is irrelevant. What made Facebook succeed was the execution. That goes for most of the other online successes as well. Selling books online, or search, aren't novel ideas. Amazon and Google, too, succeeded because of execution. They all did.
I think more people would feel that way if legal action wasn't involved. Suits & lawsuits tend to leave a bad taste in people's mouths...
Aaron
See now even I dislike you a little & I'm not an entrepreneur :)
I'd be curious to know the general thought on how often it's appropriate to get yourself into these types of legal issues. (AG seems to have a pretty loose trigger finger when it comes to serving papers.)