UK student fined for popular flirting site – The Zuckerberg story this is not

It looks like Mark Zuckerberg would not have got Facebook going if he’d started it at a British University. The founder of a UK site integrated with Facebook and Twitter allowing students to flirt has been fined £300 for bringing his university into disrepute. FitFinder only started last month but rapidly expanded to universities across the country.

But founder Rich Martell, 21, a final-year computer sciences student at University College London, has been forced to take the site down. UCL said it had been contacted by a number of other universities unhappy about FitFinder. It’s fined Martell £300 under UCL’s “Disciplinary Code of Bringing the College into Disrepute” and told him that failure to pay the fine would put his degree at risk.

FitFinder had, of course, risque content, allowing students to “spot” attractive people in at their college and post a message about them in the hope they’d get a response. Women’s groups have criticised the site while supporters call it merely tongue-in-cheek.

Martell has bowed to the pressure and temporarily take down the site, but added a petition for its reinstatement on the holding page. He wants to continue the site.

And it’s now emerged that well known Angel investor Doug Richard is interested in the site. Maybe there’s hope for British Zuckerberg wannabes yet…