ReCrunch

[TC] Like Sands Through The Hour Glass, Another Person Is Claiming To Have Founded Facebook:

The New York Times has discovered a new claimant for the title of founder of Facebook. Aaron Greenspan, a Harvard classmate of Mark Zuckerberg claims that he created the original college social networking system, before either Facebook or ConnectU were founded. Mr. Greenspan is said to have established a web service that he called houseSYSTEM in 2003, 6 months prior to Facebook launching.

It’s not especially surprising that the mainstream media has only discovered this now, but I thought TechCrunch is supposed to be on top of all this social networking stuff. Aaron Greenspan posted an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg back in September 2006 in which he made his claims:

Remember that web site you signed up for at Harvard two days before we met in January, 2004, called houseSYSTEM - the one I made with the Universal Face Book that pre-dated your site by four months? (You left it out of your speech at Stanford, which is why I ask.)

Well, it was posted on an obscure web site, so maybe no one noticed. No, wait. The letter was discussed on Slashdot, WebProNews, and a bunch of minor blogs. Crap.