 (Left, Globe Photo / Joe Tabacca; Right, Globe Staff Phto / Justine Hunt) |
Online adversariesRivalry between college-networking websites spawns lawsuitCAMBRIDGE -- Few trends have swept college campuses with the speed and force of Thefacebook.com, a website that allows students to create a personal page and then network with classmates.
Launched last winter by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard sophomore, Thefacebook has 284,000 users at 99 colleges, and on many campuses it has become the primary tool to get someone's phone number, form a study group, or scope out interesting new people. Flush with the website's success, Zuckerberg, 20, is fending off buyout offers and has taken a semester off from school to expand the site. But earlier this month, Zuckerberg and his team were slapped with a lawsuit that alleges he stole the idea for Thefacebook from three fellow Harvard students. The three, creators of a similar website called ConnectU.com, assert in a federal suit that they hired Zuckerberg to help them program their site, and then he stalled for months before unexpectedly surfacing with his own version of their idea. "It's sort of a land grab," said Tyler Winklevoss, one of the founders of ConnectU, which ended up launching three months after Thefacebook. "You feel robbed. . . . The kids down the hall are using it, and you're thinking, 'That's supposed to be us.' We're not there because one greedy kid cut us out." Zuckerberg denies he stole their idea, saying both his concept and computer code were different from ConnectU's. There isn't yet much money at stake -- Thefacebook.com is breaking even, according to its staff members -- but the lawsuit is testament to the market frenzy around college students and the time they spend online. "In virtually any category where people are making money on the Web, college students are a key target for marketing," John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, wrote in an e-mail. Palfrey pointed to the race among music-downloading services, such as Napster, to cut deals with colleges. Thefacebook is working out investment deals now, said spokesman Chris Hughes, a Harvard junior and former roommate of Zuckerberg, who has set up an office in Palo Alto, Calif. Winklevoss, his twin brother, Cameron, and another friend, Divya Narendra, all of whom graduated from Harvard in the spring, said they conceived of the idea of an online network for Boston-area students more than a year and a half ago. But none was a serious programmer, so they enlisted the help of several students. One of those students, referred by another programmer, was Zuckerberg. The ConnectU creators said they had an "oral contract" with Zuckerberg to finish building their site. He was not paid to do the work, they said, but he was a full member of their team and would have reaped any future rewards. They said he dragged out the work for more than two months. Continued... |
