I have no love for the twins, however I also cant agree with your statement.
There is a difference between posting on CL with an idea. and having an idea/site and plan laid out - recruiting a developer who decides to work with you who obviously would add value to the design/plan - and then him turning around after agreeing to work with you and implementing his own version of it.
If, for example, he had read an ad on CL - which the ad alone ignited something inside him and he went and implemented it on his own - then I could agree. He was recruited and agreed to work on the project for/with them.
Then, he fucked them over in the negotiations as well.
Anyway this is looked at, Zuckerberg is a complete douchebag.
Successful? Yes. Within legal rights? Sure - but an amoral untrustworthy douchebag none-the-less.
I am not saying the twins should receive [whatever it was they were seeking] - but I am tired of people defending mark zuckerberg.
Sure, Zuckerberg acted unprofessionally, and so they do probably deserve something. But it's important to realize that they came out ahead by $65m. There's not a chance in hell that if Zuckerberg had simply delivered what they asked and then severed ties in an ethical manner that they would have created a company worth anywhere near that.
I agree with this statement, its just the altruist in me wants to beat people who act like zuck with a stick. The entrepreneur in me respects the company he has built and the paranoid conspiracy theorist in me refuses to participate in any facebook data harvesting site which commoditizes me and my personal relationships for profit.
(This is why I make a distinction for Linked-in. Linked-in serves my professional needs and I can financially/professionally benefit from it - but my personal relationships are just that - personal. If I must have a suite of digital tools to manage the personal relationships, then maybe there is something wrong.)
Though, in conclusion, I agree too that the court system should be done with the case when justice is served, not because its a tired story - or that the twins are just as douchey as mark.
I am in no position to make a judgment on what is just, however.
$100 million is rather less than 1% of Zuckerberg's wealth. Little old ladies donate higher percentages than this.
Donations, particularly ones which smell an awful lot like quid pro quo, don't count for much in my book unless they truly hurt. When Zuckerberg donates all but $100 million, I'll believe he's doing something other than buying his way out of hell. And when he donates all but $5 million, ideally anonymously, then I'll be impressed.
A man who built an empire and donated $100 million dollars vs. two douchey looking dudes who sued an empire. There is a difference (We are talking about how they got these gains)
Also, he just because he is worth a lot doesn't mean he has $10+ billion in liquid assets either.
More interestingly, in hindsight, if the twins had the choice of hiring MZ or Joe PHP, who do you think they would've chosen?
"Go ahead Mark, we'll get our pound of flesh from you whatever you do" is the vexatious vibe I'm getting. Maybe the film portrayal is adding to their greed. Self-entitled douchebags. What websites or businesses have they built since Harvard Connection? http://www.connectu.com is down, surprised?
So, I don't know mark - but lets assume the personality he was portrayed with in the first portion of the movie were fairly accurate; He was portrayed as a highly intelligent, social misfit with rather pronounced aspergers and extreme ambition to climb the social ladder.
Further he was depicted as having a certain level of jealousy for his buddies getting tapped by the social group he was interested in, in addition to already holding the fraternity the twins belonged to with reverence.
So, assuming these factors were true - there i no indication that he made any attempt to determine what sort of value the twins really could have provided to the site.
Clearly, history has shown that he was able to pull it off without them - yet at the same time you could guess that the twins would have been able to easily back the creation and provide high-level connections for the site.
So, it would seem apparent that truly this was a greed/control play on marks part.
There is no way he would have believed that any material resources the site would have needed could not have been provided for - but rather that any control of the idea and company he would have to give up was unacceptable.
This is understandable, but it further just proves out the fact that he agreed to help them upon the first meeting, had a clear spark of inspiration on what needed to be done to create it and only dragged the twins along to keep them at bay while he executed on the idea. Pretty slimy.
> Anyway this is looked at, Zuckerberg is a complete douchebag.
I agree. I'm not defending Zuckerberg's character, I'm merely pointing out that Z actually made something whereas the W brothers haven't made anything and certainly haven't created $65 million of value for others.
If I had been the judge I would have awarded the W brothers nothing but required Z to pay $65 million to charity.
There is a difference between posting on CL with an idea. and having an idea/site and plan laid out - recruiting a developer who decides to work with you who obviously would add value to the design/plan - and then him turning around after agreeing to work with you and implementing his own version of it.
If, for example, he had read an ad on CL - which the ad alone ignited something inside him and he went and implemented it on his own - then I could agree. He was recruited and agreed to work on the project for/with them.
Then, he fucked them over in the negotiations as well.
Anyway this is looked at, Zuckerberg is a complete douchebag.
Successful? Yes. Within legal rights? Sure - but an amoral untrustworthy douchebag none-the-less.
I am not saying the twins should receive [whatever it was they were seeking] - but I am tired of people defending mark zuckerberg.