Facebook's Sophomoric Legacy: Outrage

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The Winklevoss twins -- the identical rowers who sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg -- were back for more this week.

While wonderfully absurd on so many levels, it once again shines an unflattering light on Facebook's bad side and raises the possibility that the company could actually have some atoning to do.

Maybe, just maybe, all the decisions made by the Facebook founder seven years ago, when he was a college sophomore, weren't all that well-grounded, legally.

It's abundantly clear that the Zuckerberg had an enormous talent for taking a good idea and making a Web site so brilliant that it vaporized News Corp's(NWS) MySpace, hobbled Yahoo!(YHOO) and caused Google(GOOG) to restructure its organization.

But Zuckerberg also seems to have had a slight case of hubris that helped form one of the more beguiling character flaws at Facebook's core -- at least judging from some of the published emails, IMs and legal settlements that color some of Facebook's rich history.

Facebook has since grown to a vast social network used by everyone from teens and teachers to the homeless and Hollywood studios, who all crave friendly connections. It's also become a business valued at $70 billion, and as such, a big fat target for people who say they were cut out of the success story.

On Monday, lawyers for ConnectU founders Divya Narendra and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were back in court, asking for a panel of judges to review the original $65 million Facebook settlement, charging that the award was deceitfully undervalued.

Of course, there is little sympathy for the privileged Harvard men asking for more money. But the move comes just a week after lawyers for Wellsville, N.Y. resident Paul Ceglia claim that a $1,000 early investment with Zuckerberg gives Ceglia 50% ownership of Facebook.

The Woodwork

These and whatever future claims that come forward from presumably undercompensated victims of Facebook's founding, highlight the annoying legal legacy left by Zuckerberg for Facebook's lawyers to defend.

So while Facebook tries to mature into a grownup company, it seems it will always be grounded in the shaky, legal foundations built by its brilliant, immature founder.

--Written by Scott Moritz in New York.

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