Facebook started out as Facemash.
Broken hearts have been motivating factors for years. Whereas, some of the broken-hearted have become motivated to lose weight, change hairstyles or get married as fast as they can to show the dumper what he/she missed - Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of the social networking site Facebook.com, started a multi-billion dollar company as a knee jerk reaction to rejection by a girl.
Hard to imagine a world without Facebook, right? But, needless to say, if Zuckerberg did not want to seek personal vengeance against his former girlfriend, Erica Albright, Facebook as we know it, would not have existed. The world would have had a sloppy second called ConnectU, with a whole different set of founders, but alas all Harvard grads.
Well, I think these facts are right…but, I’m not too sure. Movies that are “based on a true story” often contain content that is not entirely correct. Therefore, the statements made in this review are based on the movie and not actual events in real life. The Social Network is based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, and the film’s screenwriter was Aaron Sorkin.
In keeping with Facebook comparisons, Sony’s “The Social Network“ which premiered across the country today is a movie viewers will “LIKE” for a number of reasons. The movie is well acted, directed, produced, written and edited. It’s extremely relevant and relatable and Sorkin’s script is easy to follow even if you are not a tech geek yourself. I took my technology challenged 82-year-old mom to the movie and she had no trouble following its story line.
Facebook, now used by over 500 million people worldwide, has come a long way since its early beginnings at Harvard’s Kirkland Hall. It was there that Zuckerberg, expertly played by actor Jesse Eisenberg, along with roommate Eduardo Saverin, (Andrew Garfield), put together a site in a matter of minutes that rated which girls at Harvard were hot or not. This site, called Facemash, literally crashed Harvard’s servers in a mere four hours of use.
From there, Zuckerberg became famous around Harvard and thus caught the eye of a triad of popular college-mates who asked him to develop a site for them that connected Harvard students. Zuckerberg said yes, but never developed that site. He then started to work on something called TheFacebook.com on a mere $1,000 investment by CFO Saverin.
These occurrences and transactions all lead to the impetus to making the movie – the movie which centered on a book – focused on two separate yet simultaneous lawsuits that were levied against Zuckerberg regarding Facebook’s true ownership. Saverin, Zuckerberg’s only friend, brought a suit against him for devaluing his stock options and Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra sued Zuckerberg for stealing their student connection idea.
Zuckerberg's intelligent arrogance does him more social harm than good.
Zuckerberg is one of those rare technology geniuses who are actually too smart for their own good. What I mean from that statement is that such people who are tech smart, often are not human smart at key times.
For a true review of the movie, please read one of the thousands online at sites you regularly read. For what I am going to write about here is the danger of these super-smart Zuckerberg’s in this world and the need for people like him to be mentored or groomed by an elder statesman.
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