Facebook: The Winklevoss’ throw in the towel

The Winklevoss’ have decided to give up. They are happy enough to accept the 65 million dollar settlement that they previously agreed to.

The saga has now come to an end. After seven years of fighting through various courts about the creation of Facebook in 2004, the Winklevoss twins have decided to throw in the towel. With Divy Narendra, they were contesting the agreement signed in 2008 with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and co-founder of Facebook.

It can’t be said that they didn’t try everything, going as high as the Supreme Court, although without avail. This finally answers one of the questions left open in the film "The Social Network".

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss claim that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for the Facebook social network when they were students at Harvard. The matter avoided heading to the courts when a friendly agreement was reached for 20 million dollars in cash and 45 million dollars in Facebook stock (at 36 dollars per share).

The Winklevoss’ have since tried to have this agreement declared void. They believe that at the moment the agreement was struck, the value of Facebook shares was overestimated, and that they therefore should have received more shares.

Recent estimations value Facebook at more than 100 billion dollars, although Mark Zuckerberg remains quiet on whether Facebook will look towards a stock market listing in 2012.