The Heady Days of Facebook's Formation: Hacking Competitors and Smack-Talk Over IM

Business Insider posted a trio of articles today purporting to show the earliest days of Facebook, when it was still run out of Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room. Turns out, its history isn't exactly spotless--not that you can expect a 19-year-old to be ethically unimpeachable--and the info that's surfaced, including what appear to be old IMs between Zuckerberg and pals, show some early turmoil with competitors.

The first article, "How Facebook Was Founded," is actually less a story of the...