More Than One Mark Zuckerburg?

First appeared on Mashable

Facebook has threatened to sue Mark Zuckerberg, an Israeli entrepreneur who recently took the social network founder’s name. The new Zuckerberg, born Rotem Guez, legally changed his name Dec. 7.

Zuckerberg II’s website, MarkZuckerbergOfficial.com, states that he first filed a lawsuit against Facebook in January, after the social network refused to give him access to his profile, which it had shut down.

Zuckerberg (all further mentions refer to the Israeli entrepreneur) co-founded Like Store, a social marketing company, which sells companies Likes for their brand pages. The site states (translated), “Are you sad no one’s visiting your Facebook Page? We have a solution! Need 1,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you. Need 5,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you. Need 10,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you.”

In September, Facebook’s law firm Perkins Coie threatened to sue against Zuckerberg, claiming the Like Store violated the social network’s Terms of Service, by selling brands fans. The threat instructed Zuckerberg to shut his company and never return to the social network for any reason.

Zuckerberg officially changed his name Dec. 7. In the below video of his trip to the Interior Ministry to make the switch official, he says he plans to change his family’s names as well. One week later, Facebook again threatened a lawsuit against Zuckerberg’s still existing Like Store. Little did they know, they were threatening someone with the name of their own founder.

Though legally Facebook can, of course, sue someone named Mark Zuckerberg, it makes for quite the funny tale.

Perhaps anticipating the media attention he would receive, Zuckerberg has set up an Internet campaign for his new persona, including a Facebook Page and Twitter account, @iMarkZuckerberg, suggesting that he’s ready to make a splash with his new identity. His Facebook Page includes photos of his new identification card and passport.

For Facebook, Movie Damage Control

The Wall Street Journal

Executives Sought to Influence 'The Social Network,' Which Harshly Portrays CEO Zuckerberg, Offered Another Version

Facebook Inc. executives have sought to discredit a new film's unflattering portrayal of Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, even as they worked behind the scenes to influence the movie.

Those efforts range from attempting to massage the script, according to one of the film's producers, to promoting an alternative corporate history.

The movie, "The Social Network," depicts Mr. Zuckerberg as a socially awkward egomaniac who may have stolen the idea for his company from fellow students while he was an undergraduate at Harvard University.

The film—which premieres Friday night and will be widely released Oct. 1 by Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures—takes as its narrative framework two lawsuits over the company's origins. Facebook later settled the cases.

On Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg will announce on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" that he is donating $100 million to the public schools in Newark, N.J.— his first major act of philanthropy.

According to a person familiar with the matter, Facebook didn't time Mr. Zuckerberg's gift for the film's premiere.

Mr. Zuckerberg, through a company spokesman, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Facebook's efforts to combat the film stretch back to the 2009 publication of Ben Mezrich's book, "The Accidental Billionaires," upon which the film is based. "Ben Mezrich clearly aspires to be the Jackie Collins or Danielle Steele of Silicon Valley," Facebook's top communication and strategy executive, Elliot Schrage, told several news outlets in a statement last summer.

Mr. Mezrich defended his book Thursday, saying, "They haven't pointed out anything that isn't true."

The movie's producers made the film without attempting to secure rights to Mr. Zuckerberg's life story, because they felt they had enough research to back up the film without his cooperation.

The company didn't formally cooperate, either, but at least one executive engaged in detailed negotiations with the filmmakers over the script, an attempt to mitigate the damage the film could do.

Scott Rudin, one of the film's producers, said Facebook's Mr. Schrage read the film's script and gave guidance, some of which was incorporated into the final product. The company provided biographical background on Mr. Zuckerberg, helped the filmmakers portray the computer-programming and hacking processes and referred the filmmakers to speeches Mr. Zuckerberg gave that were online.

A Facebook spokeswoman said Thursday, "We found working with Scott Rudin and his colleagues to be a terrific learning experience. They do a wonderful job of telling a good story."

Mr. Rudin said a Facebook executive expressed worry the movie could hurt an initial public offering the company is considering. Even though any stock offering is likely at least a year away, the executive worried that skepticism over the company's origins could lower its valuation, currently north of $20 billion.

"They were trying to figure out a way not to tie Mark's personal identity to the identity of the company," Mr. Rudin recalled. "Because they were and are talking about an inevitable IPO and clearly want the company to be bigger than Mark Zuckerberg."

Over the summer, Mr. Schrage and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg saw the movie and told Mr. Rudin they weren't happy about the way it portrayed their boss. Ms. Sandberg thought the depiction of Mr. Zuckerberg was not "sympathetic," said Mr. Rudin.

Other companies, including General Motors Corp. and McDonald's Corp., have had to address bad publicity generated by films such as "Roger & Me" and "Super Size Me." But popular movies don't always have impact on the operations of the companies they portray.

In recent months, Facebook has been supporting a book that offers a more flattering view of the company's origins. The company gave veteran technology journalist David Kirkpatrick extensive access to Mr. Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives for "The Facebook Effect." The author gave a talk about the book on Facebook's campus on June 24. The company has referred journalists to Mr. Kirkpatrick as an expert on Facebook's founding.

"Don't treat the movie as the history of Facebook," said Mr. Kirkpatrick, who has read the film's script but has yet to watch the film.

Mr. Zuckerberg himself has recently given interviews in which he said little about the film, but highlighted Facebook's social impact as it reached 500 million users world-wide. In a July interview with ABC News, Mr. Zuckerberg described the movie about his company as "fiction," adding: "the real story is actually probably pretty boring."

Mr. Zuckerberg has said in interviews that he had no plan to see the film.

The film ends with a disclaimer that says some events were created. The filmmakers say that's a boilerplate message, and aren't ceding any ground.

"Facebook keeps saying the movie is fiction, but they never say what is fiction," said Mr. Rudin.

It's been a week of headaches for Facebook. On Wednesday, some people couldn't connect to the site because of a problem with a third-party network provider. Facebook fixed the problem, but on Thursday it had another temporary outage.

Director Says He Put Justin Timberlake 'Through Hell' for Role in Facebook Movie

Yahoo News

Justin Timberlake has been a professional performer for 17 years, and he's not yet 30 years old. He started at age 12 when he joined "The New Mickey Mouse Club." He was in the one of the biggest boy bands of the '90s, and became a multiplatinum solo artist in the 2000s. So it's probably been a while since someone made JT jump through hoops just to land a job.

But that's exactly what director David Fincher did before he cast Timberlake for a major role in "The Social Network." The movie is about the early days of Facebook and how the site went from a project in Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room to a global sensation. Timberlake plays Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and first president of Facebook. But despite his fame -- or maybe because of it -- Fincher made the pop star work to land the part.

In an interview with HitFix.com, Fincher (who also directed "Seven," "Fight Club" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") admitted he was initially skeptical about casting Timberlake. He said, "Justin Timberlake was one of those 'do we dare?' kind of conversations -- he could easily have upset the apple cart in any number of ways." So rather than simply handing Timberlake the role -- standard practice for a star of his magnitude -- Fincher made him work for it. The director said, "[We] put him through Hell shooting screentest after screentest to make sure we could walk the razor's edge of 'extremely famous person as spoke of an ensemble.'"

Timberlake's track record in movies has been spotty at best. His first feature, 2005's "Edison," went straight to video. But he did receive critical praise for his dramatic turns in 2006's "Alpha Dog" and "Black Snake Moan." His biggest role in a major studio film -- besides providing a voice in "Shrek the Third" -- was in the disastrous Mike Myers comedy "The Love Guru." "The Social Network" will be his highest profile dramatic role to date, with Oscar buzz starting for the film long before anyone had actually seen it.

It is also understandable that there would be some hesitation to put such a familiar face in a movie where the cast is made up of mostly unknowns. For the lead role of Mark Zuckerberg, Fincher chose Jesse Eisenberg, who had a surprise hit last year with "Zombieland." Most of the rest of the young cast have been in relatively few films before this, but some are already on their way to becoming household names. Andrew Garfield, who plays Zuckerberg's former partner Eduardo Saverin, has since been named as the new Spider-Man in the 2012 reboot of that series. And costar Rooney Mara will soon reunite with Fincher to play the title character in the English-language adaptation of the bestselling novel "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."

In the HitFix interview, Fincher also explained why Mara was the right choice for the highly sought-after role of Lisbeth Salander. He said that Mara is "smart and capable and works really hard." He also said that she has the right look to play the unconventional character. "She is ridiculously photogenic in a very interesting way -- she can be plain, or she can be exquisite in a matter of moments."

You'll get to see if Fincher's gamble with casting Timberlake paid off when "The Social Network" opens on October 1. His version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" starts filming soon and is scheduled to be released on December 21, 2011.

Facebook Claim May Be Bolstered by $3,000 Check

Bloomberg

The western New York man suing over claims he owns 84 percent of Facebook Inc. has a copy of a $3,000 cashier’s check that may support his contract claim against the company and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

The purported canceled check is made out to Zuckerberg and dated three days before Paul Ceglia claims the two men signed a contract in 2003. That agreement, Ceglia said in court papers, entitles him to control of the world’s biggest social networking website.

A copy of the check was turned over last week to Ceglia’s side by a Wellsville, New York, branch of Community Bank N.A., according to Terrence Connors, a lawyer for Ceglia. The Wellsville Daily Reporter published a copy on its website.

The check is the first independently produced evidence to be made public of Ceglia’s claimed contractual relationship with Zuckerberg. Connors said the copy of the check is among bank records his side has obtained as evidence in the case, now pending in federal court in Buffalo, New York.

Ceglia, 37, said in his June 30 lawsuit that he and Zuckerberg signed a “work for hire” contract in 2003, when the Facebook CEO was an 18-year-old Harvard University freshman. The agreement called for Zuckerberg to do computer coding work and provided for a $1,000 investment by Ceglia in a project called “The Face Book,” in exchange for a 50 percent stake, Ceglia claimed.

34 Percent

A clause in the contract gave Ceglia an additional 34 percent for delays in the launching of the site, he claimed in court papers.

Lawyers for Zuckerberg said the Facebook CEO once worked for Ceglia, though they denied he signed away any right to control his Palo Alto, California-based company.

“We have never disputed that Mark did some work for Ceglia,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said yesterday in an e-mail in response to questions about the check. “Everything else asserted by the plaintiff is false and his lawsuit is frivolous, if not outright fraudulent.”

The check, made out to “Mark Zuckerburg,” is dated April 25, 2003. Three days later, Ceglia claims, he and Zuckerberg signed the contract in a hotel in Boston. The check appears to be signed by Mark Zuckerberg for deposit into a Fleet Bank account. The time stamp appears to show it was deposited the day Ceglia said the contract was signed.

Ceglia attached to his complaint a copy of the contract he claims he and Zuckerberg signed. His lawyers said they have the original, which hasn’t been seen by Facebook or by the public. Zuckerberg hasn’t provided details of the work he did for Ceglia.

The parties are scheduled to be back in federal court in Buffalo on Oct. 13 to argue Ceglia’s motion to have the case returned to state court.

The case is Ceglia v. Zuckerberg, 10-cv-00569, U.S. District Court, Western District of New York (Buffalo).