Facebook.com has been met with a lawsuit from a rival service that could potentially pull the plug on the popular service.
According to the Associated Press, the three founding members of ConnectU.com claim they solicited the help of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to write computer code for a social networking tool for Harvard students called Harvard Connect.
The suit claims Zuckerberg intentionally delayed his part in the project and began developing his own Web site after the group graduated. Fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets are several of the allegations Zuckerberg faces in the suit.
ConnectU’s lawsuit aims to shut down Facebook and take control of all of its assets. A similar lawsuit was dismissed in 2004, but re-filed because of a technicality.
According to court papers, Zuckerberg’s defense team believes the success of Facebook was not just in the idea, but in the man himself.
“Only one of the students had an idea significant enough to build a great company. That person was Mark Zuckerberg,” the documents state.
ConnectU provides similar services to Facebook, allowing users to create profiles to connect with other people on the site. ConnectU only allows college students to join, a policy Facebook abandoned this past September when it allowed anyone online to join.
ConnectU, which was launched a few months after Facebook, currently has only 70,000 members – a small fraction of Facebook’s nearly 40 million registered users.
Facebook turned down a $1 billion purchasing offer in 2006 from Internet giant Yahoo after negotiations reached a stalemate. This week, The Times of London reported that Facebook director Peter Thiel said the company would expect nothing less than $10 billion for a buyout. Thiel also said the company, which has been suspected of preparing to go public, will not host an initial public offering for at least 18 months.
This week, Facebook tapped former YouTube CFO Gideon Yu to oversee the company’s bookkeeping – further evidence the company has no immediate plans of a buyout, the Associated Press reported.
According to Reuters, a hearing was scheduled for Wednesday in U.S. District court to hear a motion by Facebook’s attorneys to refine or dismiss the lawsuit.
Brad Adams, math graduate student, said he did not necessarily like the way Facebook has opened itself to the general public like MySpace. He said he has both a Facebook and MySpace account, but had not heard of ConnectU.
“I may check it out, but I don’t want to go through opening a third account,” Adams said.
Psychology freshman Joseph Simuchimba was skeptical about the lawsuit.
“They came to him because they knew he had something,” he said.
Simuchimba said he thought an idea is simply an idea without people to carry it out.
—Contact Mark Macmurdo at [email protected]