Facebook's meteoric rise is being threatened by a lawsuit that could shut the entire social networking site down.
The founders of a rival site, ConnectU, have filed a federal lawsuit against Facebook, claiming its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, 23, stole their ideas while they were students at Harvard.
Facebook was only opened to public access last September, but in that time it has grown its Australian user base from 24,000 to more than 200,000.
The site has 31 million users worldwide, with membership now growing faster than its main rival, MySpace, which has 60 million users.
Facebook reportedly turned down a $US1 billion buy-out offer from Yahoo!; one of the company's directors, Peter Thiel, has said Facebook would now only listen to offers within the range of $US10 billion.
But the lawsuit, which accuses Zuckerberg of copyright infringement, fraud and stealing trade secrets, threatens Facebook's very foundations.
ConnectU's founders - Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra - claim they asked Zuckerberg for help in programming their site in 2003.
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The founders of a rival site, ConnectU, have filed a federal lawsuit against Facebook, claiming its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, 23, stole their ideas while they were students at Harvard.
Facebook was only opened to public access last September, but in that time it has grown its Australian user base from 24,000 to more than 200,000.
The site has 31 million users worldwide, with membership now growing faster than its main rival, MySpace, which has 60 million users.
Facebook reportedly turned down a $US1 billion buy-out offer from Yahoo!; one of the company's directors, Peter Thiel, has said Facebook would now only listen to offers within the range of $US10 billion.
But the lawsuit, which accuses Zuckerberg of copyright infringement, fraud and stealing trade secrets, threatens Facebook's very foundations.
ConnectU's founders - Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra - claim they asked Zuckerberg for help in programming their site in 2003.
Discuss Add this link to... Bury
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