Time – Person of the Year
Zuckerberg is chosen as Time’s Person of the Year, for the role he played and still plays in founding and running Facebook. Runners-up are WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai, the 33 rescued Chilean miners, and the rightwing US Tea Party movement. Time journalist Lev Grossman says that Zuckerberg received the honor:
…for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives.
“The Social Network’ trailer released
The first trailer for the upcoming movie based on Facebook’s early days is released. The movie will star Arnie Hammer as both twins and Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg interview
Wall Street’s D8 interviews Zuckerberg about Facebook privacy. Zuckerberg says this on Facebook violating people privacy:
If I knew what I know now then I hope I wouldn’ve made those mistakes, but I can’t go back and change the past, I can only do what we think is the right thing going forward.
Palo Alto interview
Zuckerberg is interviewed at the Facebook offices in Palo Alto.
The goal that we went into it with wasn’t to make an online community, but to make a mirror of the real community that existed in real life. So The Facebook for your school isn’t somewhere where people actually go to meet, but where you go to see who knows each other. Like an icebreaker. You can find out something about people, and see who you want to meet, and maybe you can message them and make a really informal way to start a dialogue.
On future growth:
There really doesn’t have to be much more. Like a lot of people are focussed on taking over the world, or doing the biggest thing, or getting the most users. Part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.
Zuckerberg hacks into ConnectU
Zuckerberg hacks into ConnectU’s site and makes changes to multiple user profiles, including makeing a fake profile for Cameron Winklevoss. The profile lists Cameron’s height as 7’4″, his hair color as “Ayran Blond,” and his eye color as “Sky Blue.” He listed Cameron’s “language” as “WASP-y.” He also logged into the accounts of some ConnectU users and changes their privacy settings so they are invisible to other users. He also deactivates about 20 ConnectU accounts entirely.
Cease & Desist
The HarvardConnect team send a cease & desist letter to Zuckerberg.
Winklevosses find out about thefacebook.com
The Winklevosses and Narendra find out about thefacebook.com when they read a press release in The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.
Tyler: None of us knew about it until we picked up the [Crimson]. We read this article that says ‘thefacebook launched by Mark Zuckerberg,’ and we sort of stepped back and were like, ‘Well, that sounds like our idea…’
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.
Zuckerberg launches thefacebook.com
Zuckerberg launches thefacebook.com, a social network for Harvard students, designed to expand to other schools around the country.
Zuckerberg meeting: No mention of the facebook.com
In a meeting with the team Zuckerberg tells the HarvardConnection team that he will continue to work on the site and would email the group later in the week. Zuckerberg informs them that he is involved with another project. but does not elaborate. He does not mention that he has registered thefacebook.com nor that he is setting up a rival website.
After the meeting, Zukerberg has another IM exchange with his friend. He tells her, in effect, that he had wimped out. He hadn’t been able to break the news to Cameron and Tyler, in part, he said, because he was “intimidated” by them. He called them “poor bastards.”
Zuckerberg registers thefacebook.com
Zuckerberg registers the domain name thefacebook.com. The next day he emails Eduardo Saverin, saying that the site thefacebook.com was almost complete and that they should discuss marketing strategies
Meet with Zuckerberg
After several weeks of saying he was busy with other work, Zuckerberg meets 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,” and this would be the only time they saw any of his work.
Zuckerberg ‘F**k them’ IM
In early January Zuckerberg has the following IM exchange with a friend
FRIEND: so have you decided what you are going to do about the websites?
ZUCK: yea i’m going to f-ck them
ZUCK: probably in the year
ZUCK: *ear
Zuckerberg busy, skeptical
In emails Zuckerberg says he is too busy to work on the site
Sorry it’s taken a while for me to get back to you. I’m completely swamped with work this week. I have three programming projects and a final paper due by Monday, as well as a couple of problem sets due Friday. I’ll be available to discuss the site again starting Tuesday…I”m still a little skeptical that we have enough functionality in the site to really draw the attention and gain the critical mass necessary to get a site like this to run…Anyhow, we’ll talk about it once I get everything else done.
Zuck IM shows conflict of interest
An IM exchange with Zuckerberg’s friend shows he is conflicted about developing HarvardConnections (“that dating site) and thefacebook.
Z: So you know how I’m making that dating site
Z: I wonder how similar that is to the Facebook thing
Z: Because they’re probably going to be released around the same time
Z: Unless I f-ck the dating site people over and quit on them right before I told them I’d have it done.
D: haha
Z: Like I don’t think people would sign up for the facebook thing if they knew it was for dating
Z: and I think people are skeptical about joining dating things too.
Z: But the guy doing the dating thing is going to promote it pretty well.
Z: I wonder what the ideal solution is.
Z: I think the Facebook thing by itself would draw many people, unless it were released at the same time as the dating thing.
Z: In which case both things would cancel each other out and nothing would win. Any ideas? Like is there a good way to consolidate the two.
D: We could make it into a whole network like a friendster. haha. Stanford has something like that internally
Z: Well I was thinking of doing that for the facebook. The only thing that’s different about theirs is that you like request dates with people or connections with the facebook you don’t do that via the system.
D: Yeah
Z: I also hate the fact that I’m doing it for other people haha. Like I hate working under other people. I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebook and wait until the last day before I’m supposed to have their thing ready and then be like “look yours isn’t as good as this so if you want to join mine you can…otherwise I can help you with yours later.” Or do you think that’s too dick?
D: I think you should just ditch them
Z: The thing is they have a programmer who could finish their thing and they have money to pour into advertising and stuff. Oh wait I have money too. My friend who wants to sponsor this is head of the investment society. [He is talking about Eduardo Saverin] Apparently insider trading isn’t illegal in Brazil so he’s rich lol.
D: lol
Tells HarvardConnect he is busy
The week has been pretty busy thus far, 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.
Zuckerberg secretly delays HarvardConnection
Zuckerberg sends an IM to his friend Severin:
Check this site out: www.harvardconnection.com and then go to harvardconnection.com/datehome.php. Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I’m like delaying it so it won’t be ready until after the facebook thing comes out.
Zuckerberg works on project
Zuckerberg tells Cameron that he doesn’t expect completion of the project to be difficult. Over the next few days he sends a series of emails indicating he is working on the site.
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.
And on Dec 1:
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.
Zuckerberg, Winklevoss’ meet
The brothers and Narendra meet Zuckerberg in the dining hall of Harvard’s Kirkland House, where they explain 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 enters into an oral contract with Narendra and the Winklevosses to become a partner in HarvardConnection.
Although his attorneys have denied that any formal discussion about compensation or ownership of Harvard Connection took place, Gao would later tell the court:
I told him that [Narendra and the Winklevosses] would either pay him on a rolling basis or take him on as a partner with the possibility of taking an equal stake. He became visibly excited. He told me that he wanted the latter option … because he thought the Harvard Connection website had the potential to reach out to a very large user base.
He is given the private server location and password for the unfinished HarvardConnection website and code, with the understanding that he will finish the programming necessary for launch. Zuckerberg allegedly chooses to be compensated in the form of sweat equity.