How do we know this? A sealed agreement that came unsealed, thanks to the techno-stupidity of the legal experts involved and the magic of copy and paste.
But first, some background.
Back in 2004, ConnectU founders Divya Narendra and twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss accused Facebook boy wonder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for a social network (then called Harvard Connection) after they hired the geeky sophomore to do a little coding for them. Naturally, they sued.
Last April, they , which we now know to have been $20 million in cash, plus $11 million to $45 million in stock, depending on whether Facebook was worth about $9 a share (its own estimate) or $36 (Microsoft's valuation).
You'd think $20 million in US greenbacks would be enough for anybody, not even counting the stock, but you'd be wrong. After , Winklevoss et al tried to overturn the agreement, thinking they could wring a lot more money out of Plucky Zucky.
Last June a judge said . You signed it, you own it. Now beat it.
Then ConnectU's original attorneys -- Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges -- published a brochure boasting how [PDF], thus breaking the seal on the agreement. California law journal earlier this week.
Associated Press tech reporter Michael Liedtke found the transcript of the legal discussion surrounding that decision. The court had redacted the bits in the PDF file relating to the amount of the settlement. But then , including the discussion about what Facebook thinks its own stock is worth.
(You can do it too -- it's fun for the whole family. Just open and look for sections marked "REDACTED.")
So now we know the whole story. And with characters like Divya, Plucky, and the Winky twins, it's like a fairy tale -- only in this case all the fairies seem to be attorneys, and there are no heroes, just villains.
Is Facebook even worth $4 billion? More important, if all these people really are that stupid, how did they get to be so rich? E-mail me direct: cringe@infoworld.com.