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Jason Arthur at Heinemann has bought a book about the two Harvard students who created Facebook, the online social networking community. Arthur bought UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada in Face Off by Ben Mezrich from Doubleday US for “a good five-figure sum”.
Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg first created Facebook via a prank that almost got them kicked out of university—a prototype site that compared the “hotness” of different female students.
Realising that despite risking expulsion they had stumbled over something that could get much bigger, they went on to develop the legitimised version of Facebook, which spread at lightning speed and became a worldwide network.
Venture capitalists bearing large cheques soon followed, and amid a story that the publisher says involves “unbelievable overnight success, daring risks, modern-day bacchanalia and sums of money that boggle the mind”, 26-year-old Saverin became a multi-billionaire.