Facebook.com began existance as HarvardConnection, written by
Divya Narendra,
Cameron Winklevoss, and
Tyler Winklevoss. They later changed the name to
ConnectU, and sought the assistance of their
Top Gun-loving classmate,
Mark Zuckerberg to complete the code for a
social networking site that would initially be launched at
Harvard University, before being expanded to the remaining
Ivy League universities and subsequently additional schools.
Facebook.com paid the original authors of HarvardConnection an undisclosed sum in February 2008 since, apparently, Zuckerberg was supposed to actually provide them with his changes instead of launching a competing site with their code. Court papers to this effect were filed as early as four years prior to the settlement.