The Legend of Mark Zuckerberg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/the-legend-of-mark-zucker_b_732625.html

by thinkcomp • 16 years ago

96 29 16 years ago

huffingtonpost.com

jiganti• 16 years ago

Certainly the only time I've cited a movie trailer quote in this context:

"If you were the ones who invented facebook, you would've invented facebook."

davidu2• 16 years ago

Greenspan -- You need to "let go" of your Zuckerberg fixation.

I get it -- I think we all get it -- you think you deserve some or more credit for your role as a catalyst for Facebook. But you didn't invent Facebook, Zuck did. Zuck gets the credit. Sorry. :-(

Time to move on and invent something great. Leave his shadow (and don't name your products Face or Book).

As an aside, having read a lot of your writing -- you are way too verbose. It's really distracting from the point you are trying to convey and only detracts. Brevity, my man.

barmstrong• 16 years ago

He summed up the best arguments against himself with this:

"I did stuff like that in college, too," or "he was only twenty-something years old; give him a break," or "most college students are immature,"

Those sound perfectly reasonable. Also, copying good features you see on other sites is business as usual in the valley and responsible for a whole lot of progress in software. Reverse engineering is fine as long as you aren't stealing code.

Most innovation is just copying the best pieces you see in a variety of products all around you and putting them together in a new package.

tiffani• 16 years ago

Definitely in agreement with this. I remember reading about Aaron Greenspan a longggg time ago as a teenager and being motivated by his success with Think Computer and trying to do better myself. He'd won accolades for being so young, yet successfully running a business. That was admirable and really inspirational. This, however, isn't. Everybody has flaws, but it's getting to be a sad thing to watch an inspiration flail around repeatedly about how he's not getting credit for Facebook.

I think a lot of us, depending on what contexts we've been in (college, most notably), have had an idea "copied" with the copier, in some cases, going on to get more recognition for the idea than we. I had a friend who built what was the pre-cursor to Facebook Marketplace and then watched as another classmate yanked the idea from him down to identifiable lines of code (Javascript, comments, etc.) and proceeded to have some success with it. Instead of going on a rampage about how he'd been ripped off, my friend just kept building and expanding his user base. He got up to around 1500 users (way more than the other guy) before Facebook Marketplace really hit (and he ultimately shut the site down), but his attitude wasn't to go around publishing whiny letters in the campus newspaper about the unoriginal classmate.

I can't figure out why Aaron Greenspan can't take this route. If I'm missing something from a monetary/contractual standpoint, somebody let me know, but these posts look bad. :\

EDIT: Ambiguity on friend's marketplace app.

joegaudet• 16 years ago

"Time to move on and invent something great. Leave his shadow (and don't name your products Face or Book)."

Was this related to:

https://www.facecash.com/individuals.html

davidu2• 16 years ago

Yes. How dumb is that?

SriniK• 16 years ago

Right on. Seriously, i had some respect for the guy until I read the article. 'invented The Facebook'?

jforman• 16 years ago

"His talk, like most of his talks, was read from concealed tele-prompters and delivered in that somewhat annoying, tinny manner of his that both advertised Microsoft more than necessary and slightly exaggerated his own accomplishments."

...what an oddly negative read on the man's tone of voice. Strikes me as rather paranoid.

bertil2• 16 years ago

Sounds more like a proxy jab against Zuckerberg: the other usual suspects are rather confident in public.

paul• 16 years ago

Is this guy going to define his entire life around this imaginary theft? How sad for him.

CognitiveLens• 16 years ago

If you peel back the bitterness from the article, there is still an important point that has been discussed elsewhere, but not all that widely, that Mark Zuckerberg is really an unknown variable with past behavior that suggests his values are not really in line with the public good. It's a simple message, and perhaps widely recognized in tech circles, but many more people need to understand why at least some caution is warranted when putting their lives online, particularly through facebook.

shoover2• 16 years ago

Anyone considering going into business with Facebook would also do well to sift the important from the bitter here.

ethikal• 16 years ago

A little wave was upset at being so tiny and turned to a bigger wave to complain about his plight. "It just isn't fair that other waves are so much bigger than me, I want to be a tsunami!"

The bigger wave, feeling sorry for his smaller companion replied: "Why does your size matter? Don't you realize that we are all a part of the same ocean?"

forensic3• 16 years ago

Society rewards people who contribute to society with dollars.

Society, with its money, is voting that it doesn't really care about Zuck's slight immorality. It actually prefers that he sacrifices his friendships and breaks a few laws in order to provide them with what they want.

The price of perfect rigid morality is several billion dollars.

bertil2• 16 years ago

You do realise that's exactly his point?

forensic3• 16 years ago

Yes - but I'm phrasing it differently. Aaron Greenspan sees Mark's immorality as a negative. Society sees it as positive.

crystalis• 16 years ago

How does this theory sit with Bill Clinton's impeachment?

forensic3• 16 years ago

Money that comes from the public is a vote of confidence.

But Clinton was impeached by a political process where money was not the main issue.

The public as a whole seems to have been on Clinton's side, but the will of the public was not represented by the legal system.

Point being, Clinton makes more money giving speeches than he ever did sitting in the White House collecting a salary :p

I think the beauty of money being exchanged in a free market is that it really shows you what society cares about. But the Presidency is not decided by money, so it's a totally different system and the money theory is not applicable.

cullenking• 16 years ago

"With the exception of social networking features that I intentionally left out to avoid a second privacy firestorm..."

I think that about sums it up. It's very common to see many implementations of the same idea, with some being more successful than others. We all understand that MZ may have borrowed too liberally for his "adaptation" of the idea, however, his adaptation was actually popular. For all I know the dude really is a sociopath ready to destroy the online reputations of every facebook user, but that's beside the point, at least in regards to Greenspan's core argument.

JanezStupar• 16 years ago

One took risks - the other didn't. One located his competition and used him to his own ends - the other took moral high ground. One wasn't afraid of taking advantage of clients personal information for advancing his business goals. One is filthy (even if only paper) rich - the other is still struggling with his little business and playing with rubber duckies, while dreaming of yachts and camels.

Seems like MZ was the one with more business sense. And Greenspan is a sorry looser of type that accuses his adversary of using "unfair" tactics. Its a lot like when playing computer games and some people downright deny themselves the most efficient tactics on pretense of "playing fair" - only to accuse their adversaries who had sense to use every tool at their disposal.

And I dislike Facebook and its founder (hell I don't even own a FB account - since its intentions are too transparent to me). But I do admire its founders boldness and competitiveness.

endlessvoid94• 16 years ago

Even now, Greenspan, if you GOT credit: it would be worthless. Nobody would care. It would be completely anticlimactic, or worse -- people would look down on you for simply mooching your credit off something you did long ago that is pretty inconsequential now.

You had the idea, he had the execution. You lost. Tough luck.

bl4k• 16 years ago

Aaron Greenspan, the author of the article, from his HuffPo bio: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan

"Aaron invented The Facebook while attending Harvard College in September 2003 and graduated with an A.B. in Economics in 2004."

Wait, what? I have heard of this guy and knew that he made some claim about Facebook - but 'invented', no way! From 'The Facebook Effect':

"Zuckerberg also had a little involvement with houseSYSTEM creator Greenspan. The two met for dinner in early January in the Kirkland dining room. At the meeting, Zuckerberg invited Greenspan to partner with him to create his new project, which he didn’t describe in detail. But the older student demurred. In a 333-page self-published, self-justifying autobiography he writes, “I didn’t like the idea of working for someone who had just been disciplined for ignoring privacy rights on a massive scale.”

The count of the number of people claiming to be a Facebook inventor, founder or co-founder must be around 10. Success certainly has many fathers.

gojomo2• 16 years ago

Greenspan's very first post to HN over three years ago was a shorter version of this same lament:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24742

It makes no more sense today.

mahmud• 16 years ago

From that same thread, someone was downvotted to oblivion for saying Facebook would overtake Yahoo in 5 years. I think that prediction came true within 2 :-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24616

gojomo2• 16 years ago

Here's my own contribution to the downvoted-but-prescient competition:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=488341

(It hasn't come to pass quite yet, but both Google and Facebook are destined to face antitrust scrutiny.)

mmaro• 16 years ago

Things I have learned from this and past articles (only slightly exaggerated):

1. Greenspan is unlucky and unhappy. If you have even a remote chance of success, make sure you never even have a conversation with him. If you do, you might suffer his wrath (including possible lawsuits, and your conversations being made public).

2. Losing the opportunity to be part of Facebook is the greatest loss anyone can have. Everything else is trivial in comparison.

3. If he did get the opportunity to co-found Facebook, he would have provided no value anyway: "maintaining even a weak friendship with me would have cost Mark a few billion dollars in future paper earnings"

jimborey• 16 years ago

I will take a contrarian position here in thanking Aaron for his write up. Maybe he should not have posted it here to a community that might be very familiar with the details that Aaron describes. The piece in the HuffPost is targeted to an audience that probably is less familiar with Aaron's story and timed to coincide with the release of the film abt FB's early days. What society may value is less important than what society should value. Aaron thanks for exposing your story and helping us to keep a focus on behaviors that we should value. Maybe you should try to propogate a case study for use in ethics training in business schools.

sigzero• 16 years ago

John Henry is a legend. Bigfoot is a legend. Mark Zuckerberg...not so much.

shoover2• 16 years ago

This article made me realize that by Facebook making news countering certain negative portrayals in the movie, they distract everyone from considering worse allegations that aren't in the movie. Is there a PR term for that?

The Legend of Mark Zuckerberg

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