Facebook founder paid $ 65 million for settling a court claim

The head and founder of the Facebook social network, Mark Zuckerberg, paid $ 65 million for the settlement of a judicial claim by Connectu, which accused Facebook and personally Tsuckerberg, who served as the basis for a popular network service.

Most of the companies notes in their message CyberSecurity.ru , which have entered the world arena and have achieved some success, are somehow subjected to judicial persecution by shareholders, dissatisfied workers, competitors and simply envious people, but this lawsuit is somewhat different.

The fact is that it was already served again, the first time was in 2004, when the Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss brothers accused then only the created Facebook service of theft of sources and even then the brothers accused Tsuckerberg of illegal use of server source codes that formed the basis of the social network, as well as in fraud.

For the first time, the lawsuit was rejected for procedural reasons, in 2008, Connectu, created by the brothers, filed a second lawsuit. Connectu is also an operator of a social network designed for students and colleagues for work, but this network is much less popular than Facebook. In turn, Facebook assures that the first code options were developed by the founder of the company independently.

Facebook notes that the case is settled outside the court, and all the details of the agreement are stored secret.

Facebook, created in 2004 by the 19-year-old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, is currently counting the second largest social network of the world. Despite the fact that, by the number of users, the leader of social networks Myspace is more than doubled by Facebook, the company of Tsuckerberg is considered more promising than any other competitor, and tens of thousands of new users who join Facebook daily provide records for record growth rates.

At first, only students used the new network. However, the main difference between Facebook from previously existing social networks was the contact: if you can only enter other people's pages on MySpace, then Zuckerberg invited people a simple and convenient way to exchange information about each other.

The purpose of the service was not to find new friends, but a convenient maintenance of connections with the old ones. It is clear that first of all, real communities need this service? Classes and colleges. But to succeed, Facebook had to interest everyone else.

The possibility of posting a photo almost became the end of everything: the system requirements jumped sharply, the volume of information increased significantly, the servers overheated, and the team barely managed to connect new capacities. And yet they managed.

In June 2006, Facebook made another serious leap: the service was open to professional communities. And in the USA there are about 20 thousand: everyone has their own networks? From the CIA to the networks of fast food.

At the end of 2007, the Facebook estimated cost was calculated based on the Microsoft investment. The software giant bought 1.6 percent of the social network for $ 240 million, which allowed the entire company about 15 billion.

Other Facebook investors are the Samver brothers and the head of the Hutchison Whampoa telecommunications company, the richest man of Hong Kong Lee Tire. He invested $ 100 million on Facebook.

However, in 2008, the capitalization of the company has decreased by more than seven times. Currently, this project is estimated at two billion dollars.