Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was asked by his fellow Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winkelvoss and Divya Narendra to write some computer code in the beginning of 2003 for a social networking Web site they envisioned would find dates and discount tickets to the local club scene around the university. In this excerpt from his new book, “The Facebook Effect,” David Kirkpatrick tells the inside story of Zuckerberg’s run-ins with the Ivy League school’s faculty over privacy issues similar to the politicians who today question the wunderkind and his open- door policy on users information.
A warren of tiny rooms at Harvard pushed the group of four students toward greater intimacy than they might have shared under less constrained conditions. Mark Zuckerberg was by nature blunt, even sometimes brutally honest — a trait he may have acquired from his mother. Though he could be taciturn, he was also the leader, simply because he so often started things. A habit of straight talk became the norm in this suite. There weren’t a lot of secrets here. The four got along in part because they knew where each stood. Rather than getting on one another’s nerves, they got into one another’s projects.
The Internet was a perennial theme. Suitemate Dustin Moskovitz, who had little training in computing but a natural penchant for it, kept up a constant repartee with Zuckerberg about what did and did not make sense online, what would or would not make a good Web site, and what might or might not happen as the Internet continued its inroads into every sphere of modern life. At the beginning of the semester, resident Chris Hughes had zero interest in computing. But by midyear he, too, had become fascinated by the constant discussion of programming and the Internet, and started chiming in with his own ideas, as did Moskovitz’s roommate, Billy Olson. As Zuckerberg came up with each new programming project, the other three boys had plenty of opinions on how he should build it.
In the common room of Suite H33 in Kirkland House, Ivy League privilege and high geekdom converged. What happened there turns out not to have been common, but at the time it seemed pretty routine. Zuckerberg was hardly the only entrepreneur beavering away on a business in his dorm room. That wasn’t too noteworthy at Harvard. Down every hall were gifted and privileged children of the powerful.
It’s presumed at Harvard that these kids are the ones who will go on to rule the world. Zuckerberg, Moskovitz, and Hughes were just three eggheads who loved to talk about ideas. They didn’t think much about ruling the world. But from their funky, crowded dorm room would emerge an idea with the power to change it.
Emboldened by the unexpected success of his first project, Course Match, Zuckerberg decided to try out some other ideas. His next project, in October, he called Facemash. It gave the Harvard community its first look at his rebellious irreverent side. Its purpose: figure out who was the hottest person on campus. Using the kind of computer code otherwise used to rank chess players (perhaps it could also have been used for fencers), he invited users to compare two different faces of the same sex and say which one was hotter. As your rating got hotter, your picture would be compared to hotter and hotter people.
A journal he kept at the time, which for some reason he posted along with the software, suggests Zuckerberg got onto this jag while upset about a girl. “—— is a bitch. I need to think of something to make, to take my mind off her,” he wrote, adding “I’m a little intoxicated, not gonna lie.” Perhaps that pique is what led him to the idea, mused about in the journal, of comparing students to farm animals. Instead, according to the journal, Olson came up with the idea of comparing people to other people and only occasionally putting in a farm animal. By the time the program launched, the animals were gone com pletely. “An other Beck’s is in order,” Zuckerberg wrote as he continued his Facemash chronicles. The entire project was completed in an eight-hour stretch that ended at 4 a.m., said the journal.
The photos for the Facemash Web site came from the so-called “facebooks” maintained by each of the Harvard houses where undergraduates live. They were the pictures taken the day students arrived for orientation — the kind of clumsy, awkwardly posed shots almost everyone would prefer to disavow. Zuckerberg cleverly found ways to obtain digital versions from nine of Harvard’s 12 houses. Student newspaper the Harvard Crimson later called it “guerrilla computing.” In most cases he was able to simply hack in over the Web. At Lowell House a friend gave Zuckerberg temporary use of his log-in. (The friend later regretted it.) At another house, Zuckerberg snuck in, plugged an Ethernet cable into the wall, and downloaded names and photos from the house computer network.
The fact that he was doing some thing slightly illicit gave Zucker berg little pause. He could be a touch headstrong and liked to stir things up. He didn’t ask permission before proceeding. It’s not that he sets out to break the rules; he just doesn’t pay much attention to them.
He started running the Facemash Web site on his Internet-connected laptop in mid-afternoon of Sunday, November 2. “Were we let in [to Harvard] for our looks?” the site asked on its home page. “No. Will we be judged by them? Yes.” Zuckerberg emailed links to a few friends, later claiming he had only intended them to test it out and make suggestions. But once people started using it, they apparently couldn’t stop. His “testers” alerted their own friends, and Facemash became an instant underground hit.
The Crimson somewhat eloquently opined on the appeal of the software afterward, even as its editorial scolded Zuckerberg for “catering to the worst side of Harvard students.” “A peculiarly-squinting senior and that hottie from your Medieval manuscripts section — click! Your blockmate and the kid who always glared at you in Annenberg — click! Your two best friends’ respective significant others — pause . . . click, click, click! . . . We Harvard students could indulge our fondness for judging those around us on superficial criteria without ever having to face any of the judged in person.” Yes, it was fun.
One gay resident of a suite near Zuckerberg’s was elated when, in the first hour, his photo was rated most attractive among men. He of course alerted all his own friends, who then started using the site. When Zuckerberg returned to his room at 10 p.m. from a meeting, his laptop was so bogged down with Facemash users that it was freezing up. But neighbors were not the only ones suddenly paying attention to Facemash. Complaints of sexism and racism quickly started circulating among members of two women’s groups — Fuerza Latina and the Association of Harvard Black Women. Quickly the computer services department got involved and turned off Zuckerberg’s Web access. By the time that happened, around 10:30 p.m., the site had been visited by 450 students, who had voted on 22,000 pairs of photos.
Zuckerberg was later called before Harvard’s disciplinary Administrative Board, along with the student who’d given him the password at Lowell House, his suite mate Olson (who, as the online journal noted, had contributed ideas), and Joe Green, a junior who lived in the next suite through the fire door, who had helped out as well. Zuckerberg was accused of violations of the college’s code of conduct in the way the site handled security, copyright, and privacy. The board put him on probation and required him to see a counselor, but decided not to punish the others. If Zuckerberg hadn’t omitted the farm animal photos, he probably wouldn’t have gotten off so lightly. He apologized to the women’s groups, claiming he had mainly thought of the project as a computer science experiment and had no idea it might spread so quickly.
Green’s father, a college professor, happened to be visiting his son the night Zuckerberg was celebrating his comparatively light sentence for Facemash. The sophomore had gone out and bought a bottle of Dom Perignon, which he was exultantly sharing with his Kirkland neighbors. Says Green: “My dad was trying to drill it into Mark’s head that this was a really big deal, that he’d almost gotten suspended. But Mark didn’t want to hear it. My dad came away with the notion that I shouldn’t do any more Zuckerberg projects.” It would later prove to be a very expensive prohibition.
After the Facemash episode Zuckerberg mended fences with the Association of Harvard Black Women by helping them set up their own Web site. And he worked for a while with three seniors who aimed to build a dating and socializing site they called Harvard Connection. They had an idea for a service that would tell you about parties and provide discounted admission to nightclubs, among other intended features. But they weren’t programmers. The three, athletic six-foot-five-inch identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, both champion rowers on the crew team, and their friend Divya Narendra, sought out Zuckerberg in November after reading about Facemash in the Crimson. They offered to pay him to do the programming for their service.
Facebook was just on the horizon.
Copyright 2010 Simon and Schuster
