After less than a year of operation and an explosion in popularity, an electronic social network for college students called thefacebook.com may be forced to shut down.
A rival website called ConnectU filed a lawsuit against the self-proclaimed "Founder, Master and Commander" of thefacebook, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg on Sept. 2.
The co-creators Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of ConnectU allege that Zuckerberg stole their idea and proceeded to create thefacebook.com before they had a chance to launch ConnectU.
They claim that Zuckerberg worked with them for four months to create ConnectU.
"Basically, this lawsuit is about principle, to right a wrong," Winklevoss said. "The whole essence of our idea and our service was to create a sense of community and to link people within a community and between communities."
"Mark tried to break this and we're trying to send the message that this is not acceptable and trying to put things back to the way they were supposed to be," Winklevoss said.
Winklevoss claims that he, his brother, and a fellow classmate at Harvard conceived of the idea for an online social networking system about two years ago in response to the poor social situation at Harvard University and the students' isolation from each another and other local students.
The Web site was designed to help connect students at Harvard and at all 50 schools in the Boston area. The project was not extended to include schools all over the country until later.
To start the project, Winklevoss and his partners sought people with the necessary expertise in computer programming. After working with two other students from Harvard, they enlisted Zuckerberg to help them finish the project in November of 2003.
Zuckerberg worked with the ConnectU team for four months, during which time the partners exchanged 52 e-mails and met three times.
Zuckerberg had full access to their source code during the months that he worked with them, Winklevoss said. Zuckerberg registered the domain for thefacebook.com on Jan. 11, a fact he did not share during a ConnectU meeting on Jan. 14.
The partnership with Zuckerberg ended after he launched thefacebook.com on Feb. 4, 2004, Winklevoss said.
Chris Hughes, a member of Thefacebook.com staff, sees things very differently. While he does not deny that Zuckerberg worked on the ConnectU project, he claims that "the original [ConnectU] site was focused on dating, while thefacebook has always been very different in that it has been an online database with social networking."
Hughes also stressed that "Mark's relationship with the creators of ConnectU was informal, in the sense that he was never paid, nor did he have a contract with them." He was confident that thefacebook.com would not be closed down as a result of the lawsuit.
This is good news for Thefacebook.com's devoted following.
"I love Thefacebook and it can't leave me!" Tufts freshman Allison Kornstein said. "[Thefacebook] makes it so much easier to stay in touch with old friends and to connect with people here at Tufts."
Tufts students are not the only ones who will feel the loss if thefacebook.com is shut down. Columbia University freshman Ashley Banks said, "Though this is my first time hearing of the lawsuit, I know that should word get around Columbia, thousands of students would weep to have their favorite procrastination method taken away."
