Author(s): Ben Mezrich

Business & Economics

At Harvard, social acceptance and success with the opposite sex had to be applied for. In the absence of family money or innate charisma, misfit and maths prodigy Eduardo Saverin dreamed of joining one of Harvard's elite Final clubs. His best friend, painfully shy computer genius Mark Zuckerberg, turned instead to his natural talents, hacking into the university's computer system to create a rateable database of every female student on campus. Narrowly escaping expulsion after 80% of Harvarda's population voted in just two hours, crashing the entire computer system, Mark and Eduardo together refocused the site into something less controversial - The Facebook - which spread like a wildfire across campuses around the country. Within months hundreds of thousands of college kids had signed up. Suddenly Eduardo and Mark were getting nods not just from the female population, but from venture capitalists too. It was then, amidst the dizzying levels of cash and the promise of unbelievable power, that the first cracks in their friendship started to appear, and what began as a simple argument spiralled into an out-and-out war. The great irony is that Facebook succeeded by bringing people together - but its very success tore two best friends apart.