Idea is what it matters the most!

Time and time again the media reports Suggest that, Mark Zukerburg has stolen the idea of Facebook from twin brother Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. The Winklevosses also said that, “Mr Zuckerberg, who attended Harvard with them, took the code for their social networking website and launched Facebook with it in 2004.

Facebook/ConnectU (Photo credit: kire)

ConnectU creators Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss claimed that they hired Mr Zuckerberg to finish software codes for their social-networking website while they were all students at Harvard in 2003.Mr Zuckerberg, a second year student at the time, took their code and their idea and launched Facebook in February of 2004 instead of holding up his end of the deal, according to ConnectU’s lawsuit.

Facebook agreed to a 2008 settlement to end “rancorous litigation” but did not admit Mr Zuckerberg had taken the twin’s idea.

In return, The Winklevosses received $20m in cash and $45m worth of stock valued at $36 per share in the deal.But later, in January 2011 the Winklevoss brothers had asked re-open a $65m (£42m) legal settlement signed in 2008.But the court ruled out their appeal saying, “At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.”

Then a movie “The social network”, based on this whole issue came out.The movie then got nominated for Oscars and brought few more controversies with it. But I wonder if all these controversy somehow affected this young man named, Mark Zuckerberg’s achievements to some extent. But as Aaron Sorkin, the writer of movie social network very rightly once said to media, “The line ‘if you guys were the inventors of Facebook, then you would have invented Facebook’- it’s what I always wanted to say to those people. So I’ve lots of sympathy for Mark Zukerberg”.

I too believe the same, after all Facebook is the world’s biggest social network with more than 900 million users, and Zuckerberg is one of the world’s youngest billionaires. So, no one can take away his achievements from him.

But at the same time, if this whole controversy has a truth in it; then I’ve sympathy for those two people whose idea gave birth to such a revolution in social networking world. It’s the idea which sells, not the technology, nor the presentation. Implementation of that idea is important, but idea always leads the path to an invention. But the sad thing is that, people always consider the result and appreciate few people associated with it. So to protect ideas is the biggest challenge for every person, irrespective of the field he is involve with. The importance of ideas is not limited to a specific field or industry. Does not matter how beautifully a person writes, people will stop reading his/her creation if he has nothing new to offers and that is where ideas matters.

As writers, photographers or even humans, we all have a fear in us if someone is going to steal our ideas from us. He may come up with something which is better and more salable than us and which will look like his own creation. So even as a blogger somehow that fear to make something unique and different public, through our respective blogs without being sure if someone is going to use it for his own creativity;  is the biggest drawback of blogging. Is not it?

We can copyright our words or pictures; but we can never copyright our ideas. There keywords like honesty, ethics and responsibility plays an important role.   So here comes the biggest question, are we honest with not only ourselves but also with others as creative people and do we have the strength and courage in us, to take the responsibility of create something new, which only belongs to us?

Tagged: Aaron Sorkin, Articles, Blog, Blogging, ConnectU, facebook, Harvard University, Random Thoughts, Social network, Thoughts, Winklevoss brother, Writing, Zuckerberg

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