Slashdot Mirror
Winklevoss Twins Finally Give Up Fighting Facebook
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's former Harvard classmates Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, who accuse him of stealing their idea for the social network, have decided not to appeal to the Supreme Court. In a filing today with the federal court in San Francisco, the duo said that after 'careful consideration,' they decided not to seek Supreme Court review of the $65 million settlement."
First! Unless Mark wants it instead... I could use $65M
and bought my own tropical island to live on.
Dude, the preferred nomenclature is "Winklevii".
I've been having a hard time sleeping at night, with all this uncertainty as to which set of narcissistic pricks would end up minting a giant pile of pretend internet money during the fools-from-their-money-parted IPO... I feel so much better now that the matter is settled.
In ten or so years when Facebook goes the way of AOL (Because, lets be honest, facebook will somehow die. Eventually.) the Winkelvoss twins will be the ones who came out ahead.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
1) intend to launch a social network based on academia but do hardly anything
2) ???
3) profit!
It was just announced that they are going after the Doublemint Twins. Hoping for double the pleasure and double the fun.
they'd already won 65mil$, they had plenty of spare money to piss away trying to get a lot more. Even if their lawyers said hey you have about a 2% chance of winning, it'd still be worth the try.
I wonder if zuck will go after legal fees? again that's just a drop in both of their buckets at this point though. As usual, "the only winners are the lawyers".
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
... that they'd be willing to kick down some money for open source, distributed social networking projects (like, Appleseed :)
They may not get any return on their investment, unless you count sweet, sweet revenge.
$65 million
Suppose I had a nemesis and I won the lottery, I would immediately send my nemesis a check for $1000 just to piss him off. He would anguish over it for weeks and would never cash it in the end.
Seeing as how Zuckerberg's personal wealth is around $13.5 billion, this $65 million probably served a similar purpose.
They should take the $65 million (or whatever they have left after paying their lawyers) and invest in BitCoins. Then they'll end up richer than Zuckerberg.
Where do you buy the tinfoil for your hats? I think I know which company to invest my money in.
Yes, there was something strange about the source of money that went into creating Facebook, but somehow I doubt that the CIA thought that social networking websites were going to help track down targets. More likely, they wanted to see what sort of technology social networking websites would produce, which might be useful for their own intelligence gathering operations.
Palm trees and 8
Sometimes its hard to back off the excess greed. Kudos to them. That's a lot of money to be able to retire on, easily $15M each after taxes. About $750K in income every year if maintaining their basis at-par (inflation adjusted) with a conservative portfolio.
-Matt
I'd have done it, just for kicks. What other excitement exists in the life of a multi-millionaire, besides suing each other and being sued?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It was Stock and cash, valued at $65 million...not just cash.
...$65 million is still more than most will ever see in their entire lives
Ha. Several lives.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
...and every investment adviser in the world would tell him to diversify his assets.
He takes 5% of his current net worth and sticks it in a global property portfolio, another 5% in an index fund, and maybe 2% in cash and other liquid assets, and even if Facebook dies tomorrow he's still an extraordinarily rich man.
For that matter, the Winklevoss twins are also extraordinarily rich, and will remain so.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Day after the Wal-Mart decision at SCOTUS -- think it got through to the Winkies that SCOTUS is a deep friend of wealthy established multi-billion $ corporate entities? Young Winki, you chose wisely.
Why wisely? Sure, they might spend another half-mil trying to push the case up to SCOTUS, and then they might lose. And what then? They'd basically be right where they are now, minus the half-mil. If you've already won the lottery to the tune of $65 million, why wouldn't you buy one more ticket, just to see?
Breakfast served all day!
Obviously ignoring all the Geocities and Angelfire clones out there.
Excuse me while I add you to my web ring.
Tosser.
--
BMO
It was just announced that they are going after the Doublemint Twins. Hoping for double the pleasure and double the fun.
Because going after the sugar mountain wasn't enough?
If I read correctly, there were indeed two.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
It's too late for the advice "say thank you" or "and then shut up" to do any good. But cash the checks, put some of it in diversified investments where you'll have a safe income stream for life, blow some of it drinking rum on tropical islands, and then either shut up or go invent something else new and cool.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They are in business school and they tried to recruit mark for his skills. They had no contract and what they actually wanted to create was more like a dating site rather than anything like what Facebook turned into.
I get offers all the time to create web sites for people but I'm like you have to have it all thought out and then come to me. Storyboard everything. If you can't do that we are wasting each others time. The idea person actually has to have an idea rather than me doing all the work creating the product. If I have to create the product and I'm doing it all myself anyway then I'm going to do it for myself. It takes more than a half cocked idea to actually make something like Facebook. The whole thing was sold on growth and being the next it thing and that's more than creating a few web pages.
Quite a few people had the same idea at the same time. The Winklevoss twins decided that even though they had access to considerable amounts of cash, not to take the risk, and hire a developer to work for free. They offer no contract, no NDA and no reason not to work for a competitor. Not only that but the guy was quite clearly something of a sociopath.
"Ideas" aren't copyrightable (there are dozens of facebook clones, as well as clones of every other type of successful site). Whether he "stole" their idea or not is beside the point. It had zero value. Zuckerberg invested something in facebook that did have real value - his time! While the twins were dithering about hoping for this guy to build their site, Zuckerberg was working for a rival company actually producing something. They made a bad business decision and want a share of something they've put no effort into.
It is not as good an experience as you think it may be.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Winklevi
Has anyone else noticed the trend of LARGE corporations, like McDonald's, Coca-Cola, etc, not only having their own WEBsites, but ALSO "Like us on Facebook" in their own ads? Did we see this kind of trend with MySewer? No. It is almost as though Facebook is becoming a "second Internet" of sorts.
Advertisers are flocking to Facebook because it has a very effective advertising model. (I know, I have used it!) It combines the best of all features. Everything from extremely focused, targeted adverts with broad-scale, wide-distribution, to small-area/local ads. Mom and Pop businesses can EASILY afford to advertise (very effectively, BTW!) on Facebook, and limit the distribution of their ads to within just a few miles of their location. That's why I seriously doubt that Facebook is going away any time soon.
Unless, of course, they do something that utterly and completely ticks-off a majority of their userbase, so they leave en masse... but that would also depend upon whether a truly viable alternative existed.
Willie...
$65 million is a lot different from $1000
$1000 is piss on you money
$65 million is Youre still a bastard but um yeah its $65 million bucks.
but they wanted to prove to dad that they could make it on their own...a by golly they did.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
What do you get with more than $65 million that you don't get with $65 million that would be worth continuing to sue for? Seems like a case of absurdly diminishing returns after the first $10-$30 million.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
You'd need more money to keep it going.
Facebook is on it's way out.