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Disaster of Diasporic Proportion

The Social Network script image

Four NYU/Courant students are busy correcting a disturbance in The Force.

Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer, and Ilya Zhitomirskiy stopped talking about the privacy shenanigans of dominant social networks and started building a better decentralized solution: Diaspora.

Their timing couldn’t be more prescient — The Social Network, a Scott Rudin/Kevin Spacey produced movie (IMDb) releasing in October based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, sheds light on the real genesis of Facebook — and it ain’t pretty:

Campus follies aren’t what will damage Facebook. It’s the much more serious accusations about Zuckerberg’s character—namely, that he stole the idea for the site from three Harvard students (twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra) and later betrayed Saverin out of his ownership stake. Sorkin’s draft screenplay leaves no doubt as to who’s in the wrong. Much of the movie takes place in a deposition room, with Zuckerberg’s undergraduate machinations played out in flashback, and some of the film’s final frames inform audiences that the Winklevosses received a $65 million settlement. Napster cofounder and early Facebook president Sean Parker also comes off poorly, as a high-flying but functionally homeless cocaine fiend who plies Zuckerberg with girls and venture capitalists.

There’s your deadline, Diaspora.

Charlie O’Donnell from First Round Capital offers an intriguing path forward.  Ping me if you need bitchin IP strategy/defense — I’ve yet to lose an IP battle and for your cause I’ll do it for free.

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Posted in disruptive, startups, technology, vc.

1 comment

By Damion Hankejh – May 15, 2010

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