March 8, 2010 | Digital Life

Facebook is one of the largest sites on the Internet.

But most people don’t know the story of how it was founded.

BusinessInsider.com features a long investigative article about how Facebook started up. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, was a student at Harvard and a programmer. Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra (also at Harvard), wanted a programmer to develop a website which would later be called ConnectU.

But, the article says, instead of creatign ConnectU, Zuckerberg strung that site’s owners along, and developed his own site (then called thefacebook.com) instead.

But that’s not all, BusinessInsider.com also alleges that Zuckerberg used login information from Facebook to hack into Harvard Crimson writers’ e-mail accounts. Later, he also allegedly broke into ConnectU by guessing passwords and then disabled the accounts he broke into.

Obviously, there must have been somthing to the allegations, because Facebook paid ConnectU $65 million dollars to settle their dispute.

On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg went on to become the head of a web property used by 400 million people.

My comments

Knowing Facebook’s origins does certainly give a different perspective when you hear about the latest Facebook privacy problem. It’s certainly a different origins story as compared to Google.

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17 Responses to “The Origins of Facebook, Hacked E-mails, and Privacy”

1. Anne Moss says:

   March 8, 2010 at 11:50 am

   I remember that story. Interesting how they managed to put it out of everyone’s mind – I doubt most FB users are familiar with it.
   Anne Moss´s last blog ..Is Someone Stealing Away Your Affiliate Revenue?
2. Alina says:

   March 9, 2010 at 11:53 am

   Hmm… I didn`t know that… Thanks for the usefull info
   Alina´s last blog ..Tunisia
3. Digitivity says:

   March 10, 2010 at 11:43 am

   Out of 400 million users, probably a few thousand or so know. Thanks for visiting.
4. Ovais Mirza says:

   March 30, 2010 at 12:12 am

   Yes …we should the history of facebook and other famous social sites…twitter too now a days becoming popular..and didnt know about the history of twitter..
5. Mohsin says:

   April 1, 2010 at 9:24 pm

   It seems to an interesting history that how facebook reaches from rags to riches…nice one…
   Mohsin´s last blog ..History of Delhi
6. Facebook Surpasses Google: What Does It Mean? | Digitivity says:

   April 9, 2010 at 8:38 am

   [...] on the other hand, was conceived in sin. I blogged before on Facebook’s dubious origins. It’s alleged that Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook while he was contracted by [...]
7. iPad says:

   August 2, 2010 at 1:27 am

   I dont trust Facebook at all there have been way too many hackers lately for my liking and it seems too easy for someone to get your details
8. Wall Decor says:

   August 19, 2010 at 11:27 pm

   now a days facebook is becoming unsecured cause last month i stumble with almost 300 peoples profile by profile conflicting and a couple of my friends also got hacked as well.
9. Lera Declerk says:

   June 12, 2011 at 6:44 am

   You made some respectable points there. I seemed on the internet for the difficulty and found most people will go along with together with your website.
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    December 7, 2011 at 8:17 am

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