
The Legend of Mark Zuckerberg - thinkcomp
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/the-legend-of-mark-zucker_b_732625.html
======
davidu
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._

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

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CognitiveLens
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.

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

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bl4k
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.

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

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endlessvoid94
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.

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jiganti
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_."

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forensic
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.

~~~
bertil
You do realise that's exactly his point?

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

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gojomo
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
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>

~~~
gojomo
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.)

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mmaro
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"

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cullenking
"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.

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ethikal
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?"

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jforman
"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.

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

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jimborey
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.

------
shoover
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?

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

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JanezStupar
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.

