ConnectU+Facebook=ScrewU

Oral agreements and ConnectU’s Outsourcing Woes

I’m sure everyone who is reading this is aware of and has made more than a few oral agreements in their life with no problems at all. Not the case when 3 Harvard students, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, needed to outsource some coding to fellow Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg to help them build a social-networking site. As it turns out not having a written contract with a no compete clause ended up being a $15,000,000,000 mistake.

At the time, Zuckerberg was a 20-year-old double major and well known on campus for launching a website called Facemash. Faecmash prompted users to rate who the “hotter” student was. That site eventually wound up landing Zuckerberg on probation for using Harvard student photos with out permission.

The 3 students alleged they had an “oral contract” with Zuckerberg who was going to help them build their social networking site named ConnectU but, Zuckerberg dragged out the work for several months. Eventually Zuckerberg began ignoring their attempts at communication and a month later, in February 2004, he launched Facebook.

The ConnectU founders engaged in a battle that started at Harvard’s disciplinary board. Contending that their idea had been stolen. Eventually reaching federal court. A judge finalized a settlement that will require Facebook to give Narendra and the Winklevoss twins an undisclosed amount of money and stock.

Facebook, in a press release Thursday, stated it was happy the settlement had been finalized and were gratified that the Califonia court rejected ConnectU’s allegations about Facebook lying about its value during settlement talks. The statement said ConnectU’s founders were suffering from buyer’s remorse and trying to back out of the in February settlement.

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Tags: Cameron Winklevoss, ConnectU

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