I read this splendid article about how the concept behind facebook was actually conceptualized by a team of 3 who wanted Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of facebook) to finish the last bit of coding for their venture only to be screwed and back stabbed in a very bad way. The trio who named their project Harvard Connections wanted the idea to be something that connects all the Harvard students so that they can hang out online and get to each other better. As the article says, in web based tech ventures, the success is all about execution and not about the idea itself. The idea although was nothing splendid or different from the existing ones, the differentiation was in the design (simplicity) and usability (intuitiveness). The founders wanted a “geek” to finish the final leg of the project so that their idea was good to go. The geek happened to be Zuckerberg who managed to “steal” the idea totally and launched “thefacebook”.

The article goes in depth sequencing out the events with their time line. At the end of the article, I felt a bit raged that I am using facebook and millions of others like me are on it as well. I know it sounds a bit weird, but I am a staunch believer that people behind the original idea should take due credit and not some filthy moron who just lifted the idea. Then again, I will have to clarify that I am not referring to those business models that are freakingly similar to something that is already existing but slightly modified to suit their target customers needs. For instance, Zoho, Google Docs & the latest venture of Hotmail co-founder Live Documents all do the same job but claim to have some additional features that make them different. This is not bad but instead a sign of positive consumerism which means we have greater options to choose from thereby making it more convenient for us.

However, Zuckerberg’s case is phenomenally different as he apparently not just lifted the semantics of the idea but also the basic code framework. This again brings the question of ethics & morality in today’s world of social entrepreneurship – are these folks ever thinking about all this or is it just those dollars & pounds that come into their eyes when they look at every chance to grab someone’s idea and claim as if its theirs. And the folks who claim they think about ethics & morality, do they actually think about it when they make it big & claim to have done good to the society or are there still those poor souls who think entrepreneurship is all about being passionate, original & if possible making it big (money, fame etc?). So in short, will you be good and work hard till the sun shines glory on you or will you take every god damn path (including lifting ideas) to make it big and claim you follow your passions? It can forever be debated whether this actually is the case with facebook, but then I somehow suddenly feel that being on facebook is not worth it at all, just like being on a PC makes me feel idiotic for more than their similarities of being evil & lifting other’s ideas.

Screw it. No one will stop using facebook nor will they stop using PC’s.