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August 31, 2007

Like Sands Through The Hour Glass, Another Person Is Claiming To Have Founded Facebook

Duncan Riley

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greenspan.jpgThe New York Times has discovered a new claimant for the title of founder of Facebook.

Aaron Greenspan, a Harvard classmate of Mark Zuckerberg claims that he created the original college social networking system, before either Facebook or ConnectU were founded.

Mr. Greenspan is said to have established a web service that he called houseSYSTEM in 2003, 6 months prior to Facebook launching. houseSYSTEM was used by several thousand Harvard students and provided similar features to what is found today in Facebook; Zuckerberg was a user of houseSYSTEM. Greenspan is also claiming credit for Facebook’s name: he showed the Times an email dated Sept. 19, 2003 describing the newest feature of houseSYSTEM as “the Face Book.” Facebook initially launched under the name and URL of “TheFacebook” in 2004.

Unlike the founders of ConnectU who are suing Zuckerberg for control of Facebook, Greenspan’s claim so far only extends to wanting recognition by others as being the founder of Facebook.

Update: In related news, Facebook has once again asked a judge to throw out ConnectU’s law suit. More here.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. ...

    August 31st, 2007 at 7:28 pm

    be that another 10 Zuckerbers, it’s about execution not an idea - ideas are always the same

  2. Paly

    August 31st, 2007 at 7:29 pm

    Zuckerberg should just preemtively pay Greenspan a modest fee for his idea (undercutting those silly twins) and get on with his business.

  3. Internet Man

    August 31st, 2007 at 7:32 pm

    I wonder if Mr. Greenspan is aware that facebooks (printed) were around long before he was even born.

  4. Andrew Pass

    August 31st, 2007 at 7:40 pm

    Duncan,

    I was wondering how long it would take you guys to get this story. The NY Times had is several hours ago. But that’s Ok, I’ve still learned more about tech from your site than the Times. I admire how fast you usually get the news up.

  5. Duncan Riley

    August 31st, 2007 at 7:41 pm

    Andrew
    Saturday morning here and I was slow out of bed…I’ll set the alarm earlier next week ;-)

  6. Don Wilson

    August 31st, 2007 at 7:43 pm

    With success comes great jealousy.

  7. ihero

    August 31st, 2007 at 7:45 pm

    Another case for Ruthless files — but I wonder what Karma will have to say about it in the end

  8. Spartacus

    August 31st, 2007 at 7:56 pm

    I am Spartac… I mean Facebook’s founder

  9. Andrew

    August 31st, 2007 at 7:59 pm

    I agree with the rest…execution is key. You can give 2 identical sites with identical features, and the same look and one person can make it a milllion dollar idea, and the other’s idea will fizzle.

  10. Tim

    August 31st, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    I think it’s fair if Greenspan’s idea was the original service that he at least deserves some props. That’s all…

  11. Miki

    August 31st, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    There are currently in my honest and must humble opinion, 5 ideas to choose from on the internet. The rest are simply different permutations and combinations of the pool.

    To claim that one stole one’s idea, is simply rhetoric based on ones own arbitrary whim.

    His intentions, if you have not already discovered, have nothing to do with facebook, or zukerberg.

    Good Day…..night.

  12. Dominic

    August 31st, 2007 at 8:14 pm

    It is not so unusual when a few people get together and throw ideas around that, all, or one, will take the collective discussion and incorporate it as his own. Happens everyday. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if some judge found that ALL of these kids are equally responsible for the creation of FaceBook. Stranger things have happened in a courst of law. Remember O.J. ? LOL

  13. Dan Buell

    August 31st, 2007 at 8:24 pm

    I wouldn’t be so fast to dismiss this, sounds like an infraction…

  14. cl8ton

    August 31st, 2007 at 9:18 pm

    Is it me or is this starting to get freakin ridiculous?
    Next we will hear that Zsa Zsa Gabors husband actually started FB :(

  15. seth brundle

    August 31st, 2007 at 9:27 pm

    You cant say you founded something because you had similar features or even similar service, or uttered a statement that would one day be similar to a product.

    You founded it if you founded it.

    If you want to claim a prior-art patent on it, or a trademark on a name, then do it in court and prove it, but just blabbering it is blahblahblah.

    The hard work of *any* successful website is marketing it to bring it to critical mass - that was the key element of work that wasnt achieved with houseSYSTEM.

  16. Jason Dreitser

    August 31st, 2007 at 9:28 pm

    To Aaron Greenspan: WHO CARES? Nobody CARES who founded Facebook. I don’t even care who is Facebook’s CEO. Repeat: I do not care if even Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, is Facebook’s CEO, or if he is the guy who restarts their servers when they go down.

    It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that I can use Facebook to keep in touch with my friends, to waste time, to be entertained, to hit on chicks. That matters.

    Whoever the dude is that made it/builds it — that is completely unimportant. So please, let’s stop wasting time on this topic. Nobody except you cares.

  17. bisi

    August 31st, 2007 at 9:30 pm

    Ideas are a dime a dozen
    If the idea had flopped would anybody share in the failure or would anyone claim that it was their idea .

    I need some press from major news organizations . I think I will claim that google was my idea … I don’t want a lot of money just give me $50 milion and I will not sue for the whole company .

  18. concert scout

    August 31st, 2007 at 9:31 pm

    Spartacus — admit it. You got the idea from me.

  19. Humphrey Bogus

    August 31st, 2007 at 9:34 pm

    I went to Harvard undegrad and I was a freshman in 1994, many years before facebook was launched (or even conceived). Back then, everybody called the little bound volume with pictures of every freshman that they distributed on the first day of school “the face book.” I had always assumed, since Facebook started at Harvard, that that is where the name came from.

  20. Greg Andrew

    August 31st, 2007 at 9:37 pm

    I had forgotten about housesystem, but the Times article reminded me that
    I had signed up for a housesystem account and when I first noticed facebook, I was confused because the two web sites were so conceptually similar.

    That being said, as others have said, the similarities don’t mean very much. Just because facebook succeeded doesn’t mean that a similar site would have succeeded if facebook hadn’t been invented. There’s a lot of luck involved in almost any Internet success.

    If you want to take a look at housesystem, it’s archived at http://web.archive.org/web/200.....rdsec.org/

  21. booboy

    August 31st, 2007 at 9:43 pm

    i am so fed up of people claiming ideas after the fact…if you didn’t launch, you did not launch. Get over it!

    Success = 1% idea + 99% execution

    All of us have ideas. Imagine if someone has sued Tim Berners-Lee for the idea of the Internet…”hey, I had the idea of connecting up computers!”

  22. Steve Ballmer

    August 31st, 2007 at 9:47 pm

    Everyone knows that I founded Facebook.
    Sheesh!

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  23. Andrew

    August 31st, 2007 at 10:19 pm

    Anyone else want to claim FB? I have never used facebook and I do not plan too.

  24. Jared

    August 31st, 2007 at 10:36 pm

    Sure, success is all in the execution, which Zuck & co. did wonderfully… But for anyone (especially mainstream media) calling him a “genius”, well he’s not. He’s just a rich kid who had the money, time, and connections to make it happen.

  25. jim

    August 31st, 2007 at 10:41 pm

    It seems that Harvard should own Facebook. Maybe they will be next in line to sue.

  26. MikeW

    September 1st, 2007 at 12:05 am

    People are still using facebook?

  27. BrianC

    September 1st, 2007 at 1:17 am

    Seriously, how many of these commenters work for facebook? Unbias comments please…

  28. tertioy

    September 1st, 2007 at 1:18 am

    i think someone(bill gates ?) plagiarized my idea of creating Microsoft. i will sue

  29. Sam

    September 1st, 2007 at 2:31 am

    Lets be honest, its all well and good having an idea, but you’ve got to realize that idea and get something out there. Zuckerberg did it. Aaron is now seething with jealousy he didn’t.

    While I was in kindergarten I made something which I called a ‘facebook’ containing drawings, albeit of a potato headed nature, of members of my group. Each page had their age, name and what they loved. Do you think I could sue?

  30. Rob Walters

    September 1st, 2007 at 4:10 am

    OK I admit it, I invented FaceBook for golfers. Heck I even invented golf. The golf ball, my idea. Golf clubs, oh yes mine. I belong to every country club as well because, well yes, I invented golf courses.

  31. Gay Gayerson

    September 1st, 2007 at 4:26 am

    I founded Facebook.

  32. Bill Gates

    September 1st, 2007 at 5:09 am

    I founded Microsoft when Zookuhberg was swimming in his daddy’s balls.

  33. dermot

    September 1st, 2007 at 5:10 am

    If you want to see Greenspan’s story of how he wrote his system, it’s all here
    http://www.aarongreenspan.com/read/index.html

  34. Steve Ballmer

    September 1st, 2007 at 6:26 am

    What do all of these lies have to do with sand and hour glasses? Are you people crazy?

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  35. Authoritas

    September 1st, 2007 at 7:02 am

    Greenspan didn’t even have social-networking features or detailed profiles on his website. Read here:

    http://www.aarongreenspan.com/.....l?page=299

    If he had a claim worth talking about, he would have filed a civil suit, but he has none. And statute of limitations have no doubt run out.

    Moreover, everything Greenspan did was in the public domain, with no confidentiality or proprietary markings. His site was developed by an entreuprenuer’s club at school, with a board of members, not as a for profit business.

  36. Vic

    September 1st, 2007 at 8:24 am

    Alan Greenspan invented Facebook… that explains everything.

  37. Matthew

    September 1st, 2007 at 10:56 am

    All this shows the popularity of Facebook.

  38. Sridhar Vembu

    September 1st, 2007 at 12:06 pm

    All of these guys have to get in the queue after me. I did it, almost accidentally to boot:

    http://blogs.zoho.com/general/.....-facebook/

  39. Zoli Erdos

    September 1st, 2007 at 2:48 pm

    Yes, but I invented the Internet. (no, it wasn’t Al Gore) ;)

  40. jim

    September 1st, 2007 at 8:20 pm

    idiots spamming this site

    fuckin losers.

  41. sb

    September 1st, 2007 at 8:26 pm

    I agree that his new site doesn’t look all that promising (being on the internet is going to waste your time to some extent no matter what). Still, maybe I’m gullible, but I think his claim of houseSystem/TheFacebook being a precursor of facebook is reasonable

  42. Dominic

    September 2nd, 2007 at 6:33 am

    It does appear Zuck violated his classmate’s trust. He milked them. I think he probably made verbal comittments, and never thought about emails etc between them might just bite him in his ass someday. By using all the collective data, and yes, CODE, he flew the coop snickering like Snidely Whiplash. By moving to the left coast, far away from his associates, he began to put ALL OF THEIR COLLECTIVE ideas together and launch. Oh sure, he launched the business, however, it was all done without ethics. In other words, he fucked his buddies for a buck. Now, how typical is that in the Valley?
    It happens everyday.He needs to remember tho, what goes around, comes around.

  43. James Trada

    September 2nd, 2007 at 8:03 am

    Come on! Facebook is Facebook, and houseSYSTEM is houseSYSTEM. The social networking concepts are not that diverse. Facebook, Myspace, etc all share the same features.It’s not like it’s Google or something.

  44. mike

    September 2nd, 2007 at 11:03 pm

    Zuckerberg comes off as a thief :(

  45. Michael Vu

    September 3rd, 2007 at 6:42 pm

    =). When will this ever stop?

    http://www.fantasysportsmatrix.com

  46. john

    September 4th, 2007 at 8:16 am

    “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that I can use Facebook to keep in touch with my friends, to waste time, to be entertained, to hit on chicks.”

    last night i hit on your momma

  47. IdolVoter

    September 24th, 2007 at 6:06 am

    I thought God created Facebook?

    let there be http://www.facebook.com

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