craigslist as a tv show when funny ads make for even funnier video. creator drew brown, my guest this week. and legal correspondent howard mintz on the long, strange case of who invented facebook. our reporters from dow jones venture wire debra gauge and the bbc's maggie shield this week on "press: here." good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. yes, a blind dinner party where no one knows anyone else or an out-of-work ninja sounds something like a sitcom, well, they sort of are.

but they started life as ads ont li craigslist. >> hello, craigslist! i am the black ninja! >> help from a ninja. >> where is the ninja? >> ninja's gone. >> yes, there really is a guy looking for work as a ninja. >> saw it on craigslist and then for hire offering to work for free. i did not think he was for real. >> balancing is what ninjas do best. >> and yes, he really did post an ad on kras craigslist. >> subway plus starbucks equals sex machine. >> so, too, did these young ladies who posted an ad to craigslist misconnection section, looking for a hot guy they saw at a subway sandwich shop. >> how to describe him? >> a shock of robust dark hair. >> tight pants. ? and lips like ang lelina jolie' brother. >> wowza.

>> it is one of most painful reality videos you'll ever watch. >> how should i greet him? a bear hug? over the arms, under the arms. kiss on the cheek? two kisses on cheek? no kisses on the cheek. >> nice to meet you. i'm so sorry, but it's so strange, right. yeah. >> craigslist, the classified ad site that let's face it is pretty plain looking has a better-looking alter e e ego craigslist tv. >> hey, craigslist. >> a web tv series of very funny, sometimes rather sad but always very true ads come to life. >> where else will you see someone offering to give away an accordion but requiring people to audition for it? >> that's amazing.

>> drew brown is the creator, director and producer of craigslist tv through brownstone productions, maggie shields, debra gauge of dow jones venture wire, and if the viewers are noticing something different, we are on a temporary set as we build a state-of-the-art set just actually behind that wall. but nonetheless, the content is the same. let me start with the very first question. that is how real are these episod episodes? >> they're undeniably real. i mean, i wish i could write things that we see. i think the crew and myself, we're always kind of shocked to be where we are and a lot of times while we're filming a scene, we'll be, like, did you ever think you'd be in a room of eight superheroes in costumes arguing about this? >> is it because it's california? i mean, you watch these things and you say really, somebody is going to give away an accordion and do it by having a dinner party in which they audition the accordion playing. >> that's a great example.

what's fascinating to me is we're such a small crew, lots of times i personally know very little about what we're getting ready to see or do. by the time i get there all i know is a nice lady is offering an accordion in this "american idol" style competition she's having during a dinner party at her housbe a person there, like two people, her aunt or something. there's, like, 35 people there. >> oh, my god. >> and three contestants are wait a minute. like -- >> how do you choose the people that you actually end making these programs with? there must be some kind of filter because you have to have some crazies. >> we like the crazies. yeah. but i think honestly we have an interesting casting mechanism. craigslist los angeles, the site has an opt-in button. anybody that posts in l.a. every day sees this button. if they click it, that means they're telling us they think their posting is interesting enough to follow.

we get a thousand of those opt-in button clicks a day for us. so we have a casting team of four people that sort of go through all those postings. and of course we're learning to filter those out. i mean, i think statistically about 20 of those end up being things like, oh, that's kind of interesting. ten people show up for the interview. >> you know before you start kind of what you're looking for. >>, no not at all. i mean, i think it's the opposite. we get inspired by what we see. you know, i'm following a story right now where a mom who had a son who's 13 having severe truancy problems, never showing up to school, he gets on the bus, she works across town, heads to school, doesn't show up. she looked on craigslist to drive him to school. right now they found somebody and their relationship is growing and it's working. >> that's like -- i wouldn't think, like, oh, you know, i'm going to go look for a story called drive plg lazy. >> genius title.

>> yeah. >> he's just there. >> what tipped you off as to what a good story might be? >> the heading is normally very eye catching, i think, you know, like blind dinner party or something like that definitely gets your attention, or ninja for hire. i mean, but we've had couch for rent that's yielded, like, an incredible story at the same time. so i've learned not to jump to -- >> and here in los angeles, where everybody is saying i need to get in front of a tv camera for my career, that there's got to be a certain number of people that are saying let's come up with a craigslist ad that will get us on craigslist tv that are e essentially -- getting into the system. >> we certainly have gotten a little bit of that as we've grown. in los angeles, especially, we're known as crew, craigslist tv crew is coming to do x, y, and z. we're kind of aware of that and try not to deal with people who feel that's what we're here to do. the interesting thing about craigslist is a few years ago it

sort of broke this threshold where there are so many people looking at it that you know you can say anything you want and people are going to see it. almost like a wishing well or something like that. you can say anything you want and you know if you have -- you know, you want drunken sailors, old cows, you'll find that. >> you'll find drunken sailors. >> and i should point out to the viewers that the ceo of craigslist has been a guest on this show before, and craigslist has many controversial aspects to it. and we have pounded him on all of those. so this is going to not be that show. we're going to enjoy the fun part of craigslist. that what's the point, though? i mean, it's great, don't get me wrong, but you're not making a ton of money off advertising and everybody knows craigslist anyway. >> right. >> why make craigslist tv? >> craigslist's m.o. is never about profit, i find. i've gotten to know them over five years. this relationship didn't happen quickly. i met craig newmark years ago,

and it took exactly five years to get this off the ground so it was a long process. i think along the way they were like, let the guy do it so he stops bothering me. >> you came to him and said i want to illustrate ads. >> yeah. since i was a kid, before craigslist existed, when there were just back pages of weeklies, i was, like, what's happening back here? >> the connections, always fascinating in the magazines. >> exactly. i think, you know, we actually followed a misconnection story. a funny story is we got a misconnection story, probably or second or third story we ever filmed. out of the whole season, i thought we'll never get such a story. the chances are too slim. we got one. turns out the girl featured in the story, she gets a little too tipsy -- >> that's being generous. >> yeah. at home run mer misconnection. >> i show this to craigslist and they're like, it didn't have a good outcome. >> no happy ending.

>> that story was uncomfortable to watch. >> mm-hmm. >> i mean, it was, i thought, embarrassing to the participants. >> yeah. >> but that's okay? >> i don't think, you know, she embarked on it thinking that was going to happen. i think the nature of the project is we're so much following them that we never expect these things to end up where they end up. i never expected those superheroes that were bickering over tips to end up in front of city hall. you know, i never thought i'd actually witness a blind dinner party. i just thought it was a funny idea, you know. so they lead to incredible places. i think that, you know, a lot of our shows are about the human spirit and i think that's sort of part of what we tried to do. >> what happens to these people afterwards in debra saying the misconnection was embarrassing to watch and it didn't have a good outcome. and the girl was tipsy on the film. i'm sure she'll come to regret that further down the line. do you just leave them when you're done feeling with them? is it ta-ta? >> we talk to them around the time people are seeing their

video. i think she's totally accepting that was her -- that was her life. you know, we just observed her life. we didn't ask her to go meet this misconnection. i think we got on board when she was in the process. >> there may be a generational thing here, too. >> yeah. >> if you're still being very generous and tipsy. one of us showing up on the internet tipsy would just devastate us. >> yes. >> there may be a generational thing. or facebook. a quick commercial. we'll be back in just a moment with more.

welcome back to "press: here." i want to point out that there is a temporary set here, acknowledging that things look a bit different than they normally do. we're on a temporary set. we're building a state-of-the-art set just through that wall back there, but the format is the same. drew brown is with craigslist

tv. we were just talking about the strange video. debra gauge with dow jones venture wire, take it from here. >> have you ever intervened in a video that you think is taking a strange turn? >> no, not sort of like something that was going awry. i think i do use caution when dealing with somebody like the 13-year-old who was, you know, looking for assistance getting to school. i'd be, like, we have -- no matter what we think about the documentary process, i think we are sort of having responsibility over that person a little bit. so we always want to make sure that we're aware of who he's meeting and where he's going and things like that and parental permission and oversight is important to us in that situation. >> so the person watching, this one you're still working on. they're googling madly saying i haven't seen that. >> it's coming out. part of season 3's material. >> the thing that interests me is you put all this on the internet. traditional television, cable television, why the internet and why not cable?

>> well, you know, to be frank, we did market this project to every cable network, and it turned out it found a suitor, a place, and then it fell out of development and it was that relationship that had been nurtured for so long was the reason why jim buckmaster agreed to fund the project directly. they really -- i think -- you ask why it matters to them, why, i think they just know they have a wealth of human stories that are happening there of all types and they really wanted to see those shots. >> so funded by craigslist with really no business whatever what sofer. >> adware. >> now we have a recent distribution deal with blip tv. >> okay. >> and we've had offers to do syndication deals and things like that. however, right now we're operating just on the internet model and i think we're really happy with that. i don't think craigslist -- they don't come to me and ask me, like, how are we going to make money off this at all. >> what about iphones? that's the other thing.

you know, and the people in television are obsessed with this, how many people, what's the demographic, especially when it's on, you know, cable television. but the internet. >> we still care about numbers. i think the series has seen something like 4.2 million times. so i feel like those are decent numbers. i think especially since we're trying a little bit of a longer form storytelling, a little longer than your average piece out there. >> eight, ten minutes. >> yeah. we feel like that's -- the story's any shorter and you don't understand their point about them or what really happened. so we know we're taking some risks with the longer format, but that's how we feel. >> have you got a favorite? >> i mean, i feel like ninja for hire always sticks in my head. >> it's fabulous. >> the reason why i love it is it's the very first story we ever shot and it illustrates exactly what craigslist tv is all about. it was a funny title, ninja for hire. i met nick in an interview, and he was so great. anybody would love to hang out

with nick. and then we went to a home visit with him, which is our first stage of production. he gave us an address, turned out he didn't live in the house at the address. he lived in a car. >> that came out. >> so he was sort of homeless and he was afraid to tell his friends. none of his friends knew this. so you're sort of like -- we always have that sense of humor but that turned to a deeper human condition which we want to be known for more. i think that's in all of our videos. >> and what happens to these people afterwards? they've had their kind of moment in the sun, you know, their 15 minutes of fame. have any of them managed to extrapolate it into something else? >> we certainly have -- like people from michael mullen from the first series using craigslist to reach sandra bullock to dress her for the oscars, sort of unsuccessfully, as it turns out. but he's somebody craigslist would love if he had a show all to himself, and we're trying to make that happen. we definitely look at -- we don't look at it a way to -- we don't need to take every story to that level, but there are

certain special people we would love to help get to another place. >> as a television producer, this is a rich vein, though. you could not write ninja for hire, or nobody would believe you. >> right. >> some of these things, it's like this hurricane of great stuff that you are probably -- surely you're creating -- you know, do that. >> one of the stories we e ear watching right now is a foam fight club. it's a fight club, and underground fight club, and they use foam -- >> are you supposed to talk about that? >> rule number one. >> go ahead. >> don't talk about fight club. not on tv. but we love them. i mean, they're looking for new warriors through craigslist. that's how we met them. but i think now we have this relationship and i would love to see them have a show. i mean, i don't think there's any reason why they shouldn't. but not every story. we certainly don't embark on stories for that reason. it just -- like you said, it turns out that we fall in love with our own characters and we

just want to see them -- >> gives you a lot of freedom, doesn't it, because you have that outlet you can put them all out there. >> the interesting point is i don't think any network right now, any cable networks, they're not that adventurous with their format for the most part. i don't think we'd find a home. every comment on our channel is how come this isn't a tv show? i just think people aren't that adventurous. right now it's best live on the internet. >> drew brown producer of craigslist tv. thanks for being with us this morning. up next, it's been debated in the court and the movies, the never-ending case of who invented facebook. when "press: here" continues.

you're here because neither of you can act. >> read the letter. >> well, we came up with an idea

for a web site called harvard connection. we connect to you. and mark zuckerberg stole that idea. >> i understand. i was asking what you want me to do about it. >> the wtwins portrayed in "the social network" which came out on dvd tuesday. they were on the very same day asking for more money from facebook. howard mintz was there, too. he is covering the federal court for the san sho"san jose mercur" and debra gauge and maggie shields with bbc. so, i thought these guys had this worked out with facebook where they got some money, not a small amount, and they could go away. what happened? >> they don't want to go away. they did set this will case years ago for what at the time was valued $65 million, $20

million in cash and $45 million in stock. that stock obviously today is worth more and may be worth more down the line. so, i mean, their own lawyer has estimated this at over $100 million now. they want to undo the deal. they feel they were led in negotiations about the stock valuation and it's a comp collated -- you know, it's not hollywood stuff. they did some interviews where they talked about it's still principle and they have stuff through their stories that it was a stolen idea. i think they really want to keep the heat on zuckerberg. you know, but they've got a lot of money. >> you know, it's funny. when somebody says it's not about the money, it's about the money. but when you have $140 million, maybe it isn't about the money. >> you know, most of us would be okay with $140 million. i would. >> me, too. >> you know, you have to sort of take it at face value that there

is an element of principle here for them. it's also giving them more than their 15 minutes of fame. let's face it. >> sure. >> i mean, nobody would hear of the wiggle box twins if this wasn't staying -- >> they've kept it there. >> absolutely. absolutely and so, whatever they're looking forward in this, i mean, they want to keep the attention on themselves. it's unmistakable. >> yeah. when did they decide to try to undo the deal? >> this was over a year ago, because as -- what happened tuesday, to back up, they were in appeals court, they were in the lower court. they sued to basically void this settlement deal. that went through a stage of litigation where a federal judge here in san jose said no, a deal is a deal, the settlement is legal, you can't back out of it. and it is very difficult to undo a settlement. i mean, the whole point of a settlement -- >> that it's finished. >> yeah. you're giving up certain claims and possible ideas down the line

in order for this -- to get this chunk of change. they said no, so now they're pursuing it up to the federal appeals court. and they did not get a warm welcome tuesday. i mean, it was just clear from the questioning that the judges, you know, really didn't see how their argument holds up. >> yeah. i was in court, as well, and i thought one of the interesting things was when judge clifford wallace said, look, these guys went to harvard, they're smart guys, their father went to the washington school of business, they're not an individual who's being held for ransom here. i can't have sympathy for them. and that kind of indicated -- >> it was more than sympathy for them. it was the idea that you guys got snowed in settlement talks? >> yeah. >> you know, you claim you invented the idea behind facebook, you're a harvard graduate, their father is a renowned business scholar. come on, you -- >> i think the other thing that's very strange is that the original suit is he fooled us, and therefore we deserve some

money. and then they got the money, and then they came back and said, he fooled us. >> again. >> again. >> and these are bright guys. >> the original suit actually went further. it was you stole the idea. >> stole it. right. right. we've been suckered by mark zuckerberg twice now. >> yeah. >> at some point you have to stop saying that. >> well and $100 million, it's hard to say you were suckered, right. and on facebook's side, you know, zuckerberg still has these guys hanging over his head. and the last thing i think he ever wants to do is wind up in court under oath in front of -- >> i don't think he wants that. >> i don't think so e either. i think he would write a check. >> get rid of the problem. >> whatever it takes. but, you know, that hangs over facebook and it hangs over zuckerberg, too. >> i think that what's interesting is these guys are gambling a lot because, you know, if they get the deal undone it's back to square one, and there's no guarantee they'll get as much as they're about to give away.

>> or any. >> or anything. yes. >> in fact, there's -- i forget what the number is but it's well into the millions, they're in a spat with the lawyers who represented them. and they've lost that stage. so that judgment is sitting there against them, which will be subtracted from whatever they pull out of facebook. >> let's get set up simply for the viewers. so they have a settlement, and the settlement doesn't say they invented facebook but, rather, go away, we'll give you some money. >> no impressions at all. >> i have my $100 million, putting it back on the table in the hopes of getting more. if they win their case, the $100 million essentially goes away and this thing could go to trial or there could be a new settlement. have i got that about -- >> yeah, i think so. i mean, that's the gamble, as you say, that they're taking, is that let's say it goes to trial and, you know, a jury doesn't buy that these guys are entitled to anything. they could wind up with zero. i mean, that scenario, you know,

would require zuckerberg to go to trial. and, again, i don't see that happening. >> yeah. i think the other thing is, well, you know, in the context of that time, zuckerberg wasn't the only person doing a social network and neither were these guys with harvard connections. everybody across the -- >> everybody was doing social networks. >> existed. >> yeah. the judge -- so very interesting, he was quite cuffing when he said these guys weren't interested in pinning down valuations and finding what facebook was worth at the time. they wanted a piece of world's hottest start-up. >> absolutely. he was very pointed about that. you know, they wanted a piece of the pie. and they have it. they have over a million shares of it. >> which can only -- well, not only go up but presumably, facebook will continue to get larger. ? they're complaining that they got it at $36 and change a share. i think we would take facebook at $36 a share.

but, you know, they say at the time that they got the settlement that facebook was valuing a little under $9 a share, so that's kind of the gist of their complaint, that they were entitled to more shares than they got. >> what are the implications of a case like this for facebook? does it open the door so similar cases? >> i don't think so. this is a pretty unique factual scenario. you know, in terms of implications for facebook, i think it's about making them go away. i mean, and at what point does that happen? these guys are on "60 minutes" and -- >> sure. howard, with about 30 seconds left, do you think the movie mad any effect on what happened in court? >> you know, no other than i think these judges have a -- you know, there's more recognition than there would ordinarily be in a business dispute. >> sure. >> hollywood. >> howard mintz is with the

"mercury news," their legal analyst, legal reporter.

that's our show for this week. if you didn't hear my explanation earlier, things are a bit different. we are on a temporary build until we build a new state-of-the-art studio. you'll see that in the coming weeks. thanks to drew brown and howard mintz as well and a special thanks to our newest reporter debra gauge, debra's work available at dowjones.com. i'm scott mcgrew. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.