Remember the Winklevoss twins from The Social Network (fondly referred to as The Winklevii)? Okay, the real-life version of those guys have finally settled their legal battle with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and they’re using some of their millions to invest in another social network. This social networking thing must really be a big deal or something… lol. Deets inside!
The Hollywood Reporter has the story:
The Winklevoss twins, who were locked into a long-running legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg over the ownership of Facebook, are their hand as investors of another social network.
They have put $1 million into SumZero, a network for professional investors, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The CEO of the company is fellow Harvard alumn Divya Narendra, an ally in their Facebook legal battle.
Like the twins, he is known to moviegoers who saw The Social Network. Armie Hammer and Josh Pence played the Winklevosses in the film, while Max Minghella played Narendra.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have at least $65 million from a settlement of the legal battle with Facebook and its CEO Zuckerberg, according to the Journal…
In 2002, the twins and Narendra discussed an idea for a social network and hired Zuckerberg to help design it. But Zuckerberg then went his own way and started Facebook, which triggered the legal battle over ownership rights.
Last year though, the brothers reached a settlement that included cash and stock in Facebook and was reportedly worth $20 million in cash and $45 million of private Facebook stock at a time when the company was valued at $15 billion. Currently, the network has a market value of around $47 billion.
With the money, the twins early this year formed Winklevoss Capital as an investment vehicle. The first investment in June was SumZero. “The band is back together,” Tyler Winklevoss told the Journal about the new venture.
I don’t know why… but I love these guys! And I use the term ‘love’ loosely, as my affection for them is based solely on what I saw in the movie, lol. They got screwed over so bad… and they were so earnest in that meeting with the dean! It was adorable. Here’s hoping SumZero and all their millions of millions of dollars pans out for them. Something tells me they’ll be fine.
But what do you guys think about another social network? Can the Winklevii (or anyone, for that matter) compete with Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg?
Someday, like MySpace, Facebook will just not be the cool thing anymore. I know it is there for me already, I find it more frustrating than anything positive these days. People are still very sensitive with it. “I’m not in your top 8?” Is just now “We need to take more pictures together when we hang out.”
I have a friend who plays in a local band. There’s one popular spot that they play frequently and he said he’s started to recognize the same people taking the same types of photos. Sheesh. How many fishy-lipped pictures at a club does one person really need?
i dont think facebook is going anywhere. its defintely not like MySpace. its not just for taking pics, its a social google. it will become a social media search engine…. you will be able to type in any product or event you want and it will tell you which friends liked it (and anyone else) and their comments about it. its going to become much bigger than its original intent on just being for social networking. the incredible thing about facebook is the free advertising for companies, not just the ads on teh side of the page, but all those fan pages and such. facebook will never die.