Mark Zuckerberg, Inventor

theodp writes "Move over, Thomas Edison. Here comes Mark Zuckerberg, inventor extraordinaire. Zuck's still waiting for that elusive first patent to be issued, but take a gander at the Facebook founder's patent application for Dynamically Generating a Privacy Summary to get an idea of what's in the works. After you check boxes on a form to indicate that 'Everyone from San Francisco, CA, Social Network Provider, and Harvard' can see your profile, Zuckerberg's 'invention' will miraculously display: 'People from San Francisco, CA, Social Network Provider, and Harvard can see your profile.' How dare Rolling Stone question his inventiveness!"

Comments

Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[darkmeridian]

I read the Rolling Stone article and it was a hoot. All the challengers to Mark Zuckerberg come off as self-important and jealous douchebags.

For example, Aaron Greenspan claims to have invented the concept of an online facebook and is trying to cancel Facebook's trademark. Greenspan dismissed Zuckberg by writing, "Gates was shrewd, calculating and insanely competitive, bordering on autistic. Mark was inarticulate and naive."
Yeah, Mark was so naive he stole your idea and made himself into a billionaire.

There were lots of social networking sites before Facebook. The idea wasn't new. Mark Zuckberg pushes a product that is faster, more reliable, and for a while was less annoying to use than its competitors. His competitors just come off as incredible losers here.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[darkmeridian]

I agree with you: ruthless capitalism doesn't determine if you're right or not. Mark Zuckerberg may not be a smart dude and his rise to power may not be fair.

However, the critics cited in the Rolling Stone article are saying that Mark Zuckerberg was not a ruthless capitalist, which is plainly ridiculous. I mean, Greenspan said the following about Zuckerberg: "The way he talked, the way he dressed, everything about him screamed immature. He seemed unprofessional. I had run a company since I was 15. It just didn't seem like he got it. That whole persona just didn't impress me." This guy, who ran a company since he was 15, did not approve of Mark Zuckerberg. Yet Zuckerberg is the 24-year old BILLIONAIRE and Greenspan isn't. For Greenspan and the others to trash Zuckerberg's business acumen is the height of stupidity.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[spun]

For Greenspan and the others to trash Zuckerberg's business acumen is the height of stupidity. Really? No one ever succeeded through dumb luck? Success is a guarantee of competence? I suppose the fact that you aren't a billionaire proves you are incompetent? Zuckerberg is a schmuck who lucked out, nothing more.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[ThinkComp]

Hi there,

I don't know who you are, but I'm Aaron. So I thought I'd clarify something.

The Rolling Stone article got a lot wrong unfortunately. In my book, which sadly the reporter did not read too closely, I referred to Mark as naive in reference to a specific event: his not knowing A) what Viacom was, B) that MTV was part of it (despite having ambitions to create the next MTV), and C) that Viacom purchased other companies. To me, that seemed to illustrate a certain level of naivete at the time. I'm sure Mark is more familiar with Viacom now, since they offered to buy Facebook long ago.

Also, for the record, Mark is a paper billionaire, not a billionaire yet. I have to give him some credit for that, but when the methods of achieving that kind of success amount to theft and deception on a such a grand scale, it's hard to give too much credit.

You're free to think whatever you want about me, of course, but I did want to make sure that people have their facts straight.

Aaron

Edison is a pretty good comparison

[MosesJones]

While I know its heresy to say it... Edison did just plain steal a lot of ideas and then pass them off as his own inventions. In fact the lack of global patent protection was a major reason for Edison becoming the person he did, in reality he lived off the inventions of others.

Edison was a patent troll ;)

It isn't about the technology

[Animats]

Facebook is a really good business idea. Technically it's uninteresting, but socially it's brilliant.

It also has more revenue per employee than almost anything else. Facebook, the company, is tiny. For their growth period to a billion-dollar company, they were in a little 3-story building on Litton in Palo Alto, between a yoga studio and a beauty salon. (There something about those few downtown blocks of Palo Alto. PayPal, Facebook, Alta Vista, and a host of other well-known names all started within a three block area. PayPal started above the bike shop. )

Facebook seems to hire based on Facebook. The women coming out of the building are good looking and the guys are hunks.

PATENT TROLL!

[Jane Q. Public]

I looked at the application and this is about as "obvious" as it gets. It does not even come close to meeting the standards for a patent.

What do you want to bet that the clueless idiots at the PTO actually give this serious consideration?

Prior Art

[Jason Levine]

This was filed on July 25, 2006. So we need an example of a similar thing from July 25, 2005 or earlier to qualify for prior art. And this is so ridiculously simple that there's got to be some prior art somewhere. I don't think this would qualify since it is on an intranet, but my company's intranet has an internal policy editor that lets users set which affiliates get to see the policy. So if you want Policy X to be seen by A, B, and C, but not D, you check off those checkboxes and click OK. The database stores the permissions and the users searching for policies get the appropriate policies on their screens. I don't remember when we launched that, but I'm sure that it was before 2005. This should be a ridiculously easy patent to find prior art for.

Re:Don't hate the player, hate the game.

[Plutonite]

I disagree. First of all:

There's no real reason not to try to patent any little thought that passes through your mind, no matter how stupid or banal. One such reason is to *not* appear stupid or banal, particularly when you're in a field where your endeavors are almost common knowledge to people even without professional training. People who comprise part of your user base, and who will not take stupidity and banality very well. I (and many reasonable citizens of the internet/world) make it a habit to avoid companies whose business models rest on the stupid and the banal.*

There are probably other reasons to hate this guy. Being even somewhat responsible for Facebook is probably enough. ???
Facebook was a beautiful thing, and possibly still is, despite the silly applications. I have met "friends" from middle school, high school.. you name it. And now that we are in random places around the globe it truly is an amazing phenomenon, to wake up in the morning and watch people's lives progress in different environments (and sometimes completely different cultures) without the 14-year-old-girl-atmosphere of other connecting tools. I think he has done a wonderful thing with this, even if by accident.

*disclaimer: I use MS software :)