Hello friends, here i am back again with some interesting things to share with you people.
How many of you know the exact story behind the creation of FACEBOOK ?
Well here is the story which i collected from
Wikipedia.
The main theme of Facebook was given by
Divya Narendra.
Mark Zuckerberg
In November 2003, upon the referral of Victor Gao, the Winklevosses and Narendra approached
Mark Zuckerberg about joining the HarvardConnection team. By this point, the previous HarvardConnection programmers had already
made progress on a large chunk of the coding: front-end pages, the
registration system, a database, back-end coding, and a way users could
connect with each other, which Gao called a "handshake".
[8]
In early November, Narendra emailed Zuckerberg saying, “We’re very deep
into developing a site which we would like you to be a part of and ...
which we know will make some waves on campus.” Within days, Zuckerberg was talking to the HarvardConnection team and preparing to take over programming duties from Gao. On the evening of November 25, 2003,
the Winklevosses and Narendra met with Zuckerberg in the dining hall of
Harvard's
Kirkland House,
where they explained to an enthusiastic Zuckerberg, the
HarvardConnection website, the plan to expand to other schools after
launch, the confidential nature of the project, and the importance of
getting there first. During the meeting, Zuckerberg allegedly entered into an
oral contract with Narendra and the Winklevosses and became a partner in HarvardConnection. He was given the private server location and password for the unfinished HarvardConnection website and code, with the understanding that he would finish the programming necessary for launch.Zuckerberg allegedly chose to be compensated in the form of
sweat equity.
On November 30, 2003, Zuckerberg told
Cameron Winklevoss
in an email that he did not expect completion of the project to be
difficult. Zuckerberg writes: "I read over all the stuff you sent and it
seems like it shouldn't take too long to implement, so we can talk
about that after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night."
The next day, on December 1, 2003, Zuckerberg sent another email to the
HarvardConnection team. "I put together one of the two registration
pages so I have everything working on my system now. I'll keep you
posted as I patch stuff up and it starts to become completely
functional." On December 4, 2003, Zuckerberg writes: "Sorry I was unreachable
tonight. I just got about three of your missed calls. I was working on a
problem set."
On December 10, 2003: "The week has been pretty busy, so I haven't
gotten a chance to do much work on the site or even think about it
really, so I think it's probably best to postpone meeting until we have
more to discuss. I'm also really busy tomorrow so I don't think I'd be
able to meet then anyway."A week later: "Sorry I have not been reachable for the past few days.
I've basically been in the lab the whole time working on a cs problem
set which I'm still not finished with." On December 17, 2003,
Zuckerberg met with the Winklevosses and Narendra in his dorm room,
allegedly confirming his interest and assuring them that the site was
almost complete.
On the whiteboard in his room, Zuckerberg allegedly had scrawled
multiple lines of code under the heading “Harvard Connection.” However,
this would be the only time they saw any of his work.
On January 8, 2004, Zuckerberg emailed to say he was "completely
swamped with work [that] week" but had "made some of the changes ... and
they seem[ed] to be working great" on his computer. He said he could
discuss the site starting the following Tuesday, on January 13, 2004.
On January 11, 2004, Zuckerberg registered the domain name
thefacebook.com. On January 12, 2004, Zuckerberg e-mailed
Eduardo Saverin, saying that the site [thefacebook.com] was almost complete and that they should discuss marketing strategies. Two days later, on January 14, 2004,
Zuckerberg met again with the HarvardConnection team. However, he
allegedly never mentioned registering the domain name thefacebook.com
nor a competing
social networking
website, rather he reported progress on HarvardConnection, told them he
would continue to work on it, and would email the group later in the
week.
On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com, a social
network for Harvard students, designed to expand to other schools around
the country.
On February 6, 2004, the Winklevosses and Narendra first-learned of
thefacebook.com while reading a press release in the Harvard student
newspaper
The Harvard Crimson. According to Gao, who looked at the HarvardConnection code afterward,
Zuckerberg had left the HarvardConnection code incomplete and
non-functional, with a registration that did not connect with the
back-end connections. On February 10, 2004, the Winklevosses and Narendra sent Zuckerberg a
cease and desist letter.
They also asked the Harvard administration to act on what they viewed
as a violation of the university’s honor code and student handbook. They lodged a complaint with the Harvard Administrative Board and university president
Larry Summers; however, both viewed the matter to be outside the university's jurisdiction
. President
Summers advised the HarvardConnection team to take their matter to the courts.
Facebook lawsuits
In 2004, ConnectU filed a lawsuit against Facebook alleging that
creator Mark Zuckerberg had broken an oral contract with them. The suit
alleged that Zuckerberg had copied their idea
and illegally used
source code intended for the website he was hired to create.
Facebook countersued in regards to Social Butterfly, a project put out
by the Winklevoss Chang Group, an alleged partnership between ConnectU
and i2hub, another campus service. It named among the defendants
ConnectU, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, Divya Narendra, and
Wayne Chang, founder of i2hub.A settlement agreement for both cases was reached in February 2008, reportedly valued at $65 million. However, in May 2010, it was reported that ConnectU is accusing
Facebook of securities fraud on the value of the stock that was part of
the settlement and wants to get the settlement undone. According to
ConnectU's allegations, the value of the stock was worth $11 million
instead of $45 million that Facebook presented at the time of
settlement. This meant the settlement value, at the time, was $31
million, instead of the $65 million.
On August 26, 2010,
The New York Times
reported that Facebook shares were trading at $76 per share in the
secondary market, putting the total settlement value at close to $120
million. If the lawsuit to adjust the settlement to match the difference goes through, the value will quadruple to over $466 million. According to Steven M. Davidoff, "Facebook never represented its
valuation in this negotiation, and so there is no prior statement that
the company needs to correct."
Source :-
WIKIPEDIA.ORG