It all started in the year 2003 when I was logged in to the Harvard website, where I was listening in to the conversations of the Harvard students. One of these students was Mark Zuckerberg who was talking about Face Smash and how he had just broken up with his girlfriend at the time, so I struck up a conversation with this Mark Zuckerberg. He was talking about creating a dating site. I thought this was a bit odd - a pie in the sky idea since he had just broken up with his girlfriend and he was slagging her off - calling her a bitch and a whore. I talked to Mark about the idea, and suggested he call it Face Mash. He was intrigued with my suggestion and thought it was a good idea. Mark wanted to call it Face Smash, because he wanted to smash his ex in the face. I convinced him that Face Mash was a good idea and he agreed, but one week later he changed his mind and wanted to call it Face Smash. When I queried him about this he replied 'f.... off you c...- I'm calling it Face Smash'. Two weeks after this conversation he came up with the name Mashable and when I asked him why he chose the word Mashable instead of Face Mash he said 'f,...off you bastard, Face mash is not your idea'. So I re-posted the conversations we had two weeks earlier and he had to apologise and said he was going with Mashable. I took this as a sign that he wanted to throw me off the scent and take the site for himself. I found the character of Mark Zuckerberg to be deceptive and dishonest and ended conversing with Mark Zuckerberg because of his dishonesty and lack of integrity.
After this, I started conversing with Dustin and Chris about an idea of mine called Facebook for an online service where students can post pictures and information on themselves and use it as a directory. They were very intrigued by my idea and wanted to know more. I told them that in the beginning, it would be an online service just for Harvard students, and then spreading through the other campuses in America, joining them up together. The idea was to make it easy for people to connect with other university students so they could get an idea of what other campuses were like, and even eventually spreading through the general public, giving them an idea of what was offered at the different campuses. Dustin and Chris were very intrigued with my idea and said they wanted to be on board. I talked extensively about my ideas of Facebook and went into great detail of how to get it set up and started. They queried about the finance of setting it up and I told them I was in contact with Tony Robbins, who was interested by the idea and we were having discussions regarding his financial backing of the project.
About a week after talking to Tony I was contacted by Dustin and Chris saying that they were too busy to develop my idea. Two days later, after receiving this email I contacted Dustin and Chris again and asked what the problem was, and asked them who else had access to their computer to which they replied that it was Mark Zuckerberg, and I believe that Mark impersonated Dustin and Chris on the email to fish for more information on my idea which he then stole and used. I kept in touch with Dustin and Chris and told them that I suspected what was going on.
I then found another contact at Harvard, called Eduardo Saverin and invited him to join me in developing my idea, and also to find out what was going on between Dustin, Chris and Mark, who were room mates. Eduardo was the odd person out. I started to receive more emails from (supposedly) Mark, Dustin and Chris saying they were no longer interested in my project and said they had other ideas to pursue, which was untrue (as it has turned out).
Another interesting person I made contact with was Sean Parker. At the time, he was running an online site called Napstar, and he was also working on another site called Wired Hog (where one could upload or download stuff and he had a copyrighted program to be able to do all this) and this is why I also invited him to join my project, as he had the program we needed. Sean wanted 55% ownership of the project for his input so I told him this was unacceptable and then he turned round and told me Mark Zuckerberg had made him a better offer. I told him that Mark did not own the idea of Facebook. He then got smart and asked me if I knew what emails were and whether I could produce any evidence. I took this as an attempt to see whether I could prove everything that took place and for him to use this as a weapon to see if he could gouge out as much interest in Facebook as he could, and he tried to play me off against Zuckerberg to get the maximum holdings of Facebook. I received an email from Parker saying that Zuckerberg had offered him 5% and was I interested in offering him more. At this point, I told him to **** off and that Facebook was not Zuckerberg's idea. I then told Dustin and Chris that I was no longer interested in pursuing developing the site with them and I would go elsewhere to do it.
I found a site at Harvard called Harvard Connect (later, in 2004 changed to Harvard Connect To You) run by Cameron and Taylor Winklevoss, and I explained everything about Facebook and my dealings with Zuckerberg, Dustin and Chris and how I believed that Zuckerberg was in the process of stealing my idea, and I asked if the Winklevosses were interested in running Facebook on the Harvard site. They expressed enthusiasm in the offer and liked the idea of running the site as they liked the concept of Facebook. They told me that they were going to change their site name and redesign it at that time (to Harvard Connect To You). The person they called in to help them redesign their site was Mark Zuckerberg who then stole their platform (Harvard Connect) and used it to start Facebook. I then went to Aaron Greenspan who was running house systems at Harvard and asked him (under an email non disclosure agreement) to run Facebook on his site which he agreed to do.
Some interesting footnotes that you should know:
1/ David Kirkpatrick, (who is the author of the upcoming book 'the Facebook Effect) - I made contact and sent him copies of the relevant emails and gave him the full story of how Zuckerberg stole Facebook but I recently found out that he is in bed with Sean Parker- you can see the interview on CNet. Kirkpatrick was of the opinion that the emails were 'red herrings' and the authors of them were just 'venting' their various frustrations. I had some long conversations with Kirkpatrick and he is fully aware of the facts, but I feel he has sold himself out.
Scout
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