According to the New York Times, the afore-mentioned events took place some time before the release of either Facebook or its competitor, ConnectU. Facebook was to hit the Web six months later, while ConnectU would be on hold for eight months.
Last but not least, Greenspan’s archive feature several email that prove his side of story.
In the mean time, Mark Zuckerberg is still busy fighting with three of his former Harvard classmates. The trio (Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevos and Divya Narendra) accuses Zuckerberg of having stolen the Facebook idea from them and filed a lawsuit against him at a Boston Court.
The lawsuit was launched in 2004 and, according to the filing, Zuckerberg is accused of copyright infringement, stealing trade secrets, fraud and breach of contract.
The plaintiffs’ story goes like this: back in 2003 Zuckerberg was asked to join the trio and help them launch a social-networking site called ConnectU. Zuckerberg took the job but, in the mean time, he also bought the Facebook.com domain. The trio goes on accusing Zuckerberg of deliberately slowing down the progress of ConnectU so he could favor Facebook’s launch. Last but not least, the Facebook founder is “credited” with stealing the idea, business plan and coding behind ConnectU.
ConnectU was launched eventually, but failed to reach the same popularity level as Facebook.