Who’ s The Daddy: Facebook’s Zuckerberg under attack once again by Harvard mates

By Gayl Murphy

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 3/10/08 — Crossing his fingers and clicking his heels three times, Facebook wonderboy billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is hoping to do some fast damage control by settling an unsettling lawsuit over who’s the daddy of the uber-successful social networking site.

According to the New York Times, sources close to the ultimately embarrassing case sketch it out it out as dueling lawsuits between the competing site ConnectU and Facebook, with a settlement by Facebook in the final stages.

The case looks like this, across the table from Zuckerberg are his Harvard mates, brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and colleague Divya Narendra of the site Connect U, who are claiming that it was they and not Zuckerberg that wrote “The Book” way back in ’03 when they were all students at Harvard.

The plaintiffs go on to say it was during that time that they hired, the then sophomore to help them create the campus-dating site called the Harvard Connection. They claim Zuckerberg took too much time to execute the site instead nurturing his own idea and ultimately launching Facebook.

All of which is not good news for Zuckerberg, casting doubt on his innovation and originality. Plus, discovery in the case turned up some rather embarrassing items, including his diary.

And in a similar case last year that also names Zuckerberg, another fellow Harvard alumni Aaron Greenspan, also accused the Zman of taking the idea from him. Discovery in that case produced not only email correspondence between the two, but Greenspan’s book “Authoritas” which chronicles the founding of the Facebook era, which also challenged Zuckerberg’s assertions.

A Facebook spokeswomen said the company wouldn’t comment on legal matters, observers agree that Facebook needs to save face on this legal kerfuffle and quickly, before it’s much expected initial public offering, which could come as early as next year – and will have an expected valued in the billions.