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'It was like how real people meet in real life'

September 19, 2007

One of the key purposes of ConnectU was also to bring together the children of immigrants and get them discuss the social and professional pressure they faced at home.

"In any campus we find a very interactive environment," Narendra said, "but because of their work and studies schedule, not all students can become part of this wonderful environment."

ConnectU was meant to address that problem. "We wanted to mimic the reality," he says. "We wanted to simulate the situation that was available across the campus only for some students. It was like how real people meet in real life and discuss anything from student activism to academic progress to cultural issues."

The site the Winklevoss brothers and Narendra created was initially called HarvardConnection.com

They had asked Zuckerberg to write the code for the site, their suit maintains. The men began working on the site in 2002 and completed it a few months before Zuckerberg started Facebook.com

Zuckerberg was a sophomore at Harvard; the others were seniors and graduated in the spring of 2004.

'Basically, the idea behind the Web site, the original aspect, bringing social networking to the college level at various (campuses) -- that's what he took while claiming to work for us,' Narendra alleged in a previous interview.

The brothers have said since they and Narendra were not 'serious programmers,' they sought the unpaid help of many students. One of them was Zuckerberg.

The ConnectU creators said they had an 'oral contract' with Zuckerberg to finish building their site. He was not paid, they said, but he was a full member of their team and would have reaped any future rewards, according to the interviews the three men gave a few months ago.

Zuckerberg said in a recent interview that he had no business relationship with ConnectU. He said his lawyers plan to file a countersuit for defamation. 'I was a student who agreed to help a fellow student,' he said. 'I did not agree to complete their project.'

Facebook.com took off almost immediately, attracting thousands of users at Harvard and elsewhere, earning Zuckerberg a profile in the campus newspaper.

Narendra says the case has taken quite a bit of energy off him and his friends. Since its original filing in Massachusetts the lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice due to a technicality early this year. It was refiled in the US District Court in Boston.

As Narendra awaits the verdict, he is also weighing his academic and business options.

"One of them is go back to Harvard," says Narendra, who is not married. "Maybe I will study government or go into legal studies."

"One of the areas that interest me enormously," he says with a chuckle, "is the protection of intellectual property."

Also read: Strategy guru C K Prahalad on the 'pyramid'
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