I Gave In: Facebook: The Movie

Image via WikipediaI was strolling around in Murray Hill, and I happened to walk by the movie theater on 32nd Street and Second Avenue. I walked in, looked around, checked out the movie times. One time slot for The Social Network was sold out.

I walked out. Spent some time in the bookstore next door. I had quietly noted down a time slot that might work. It was close to 7PM.

I walked in again about 15 minutes before that. I bought a ticket. I am glad I did.

This actually is a very well made movie. It is a movie. It is a fictionalized version of what happened, but there are too many parallels.

It is good drama. Kevin Spacey is the executive producer. That adds to the weight, I believe.

Facebook has become too big a cultural phenomenon to have been able to avoid a movie like this made. Too many people who will not pick up a book on the topic want to know what happened.

The dramatizations aside, I did not feel Zuck got demonized or anything like that. The lawsuits were but harassments posssible in murky legal environments.

Mark Zuckerberg did not steal the idea from anyone, those guys should never have received any money. Those were bogus lawsuits. He got blackmailed, and the system allowed that.

The best line of the movie is when Zuck says: "You have a part of my attention."

The guy presented as cofounder was not a cofounder. Zuck wrote all that early code.

A big omission in the movie is Zuck's steady girlfriend of so many long years. She is not shown at all.

And of course the movie totally misses out on the engineering behind the phenomenon called Facebook.

But then movies perhaps are supposed to be drama, and hence the total focus on the lawsuits. Lawsuits make for friction make for drama.
Image via Wikipedia
The movie is well made, it is not accurate, was not meant to be, although most people will believe most details.

Facebook the company has no big reason to dislike the movie, really. There is much dramatization, not much demonization.

The basic movie ingredients are actually in top form. I can see this movie making a lot of money worldwide.

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The Social Network: Before Seeing The Movie

Image via WikipediaI have no plans to go see the movie. I stand in solidarity with Mark Zuckerberg on this one. That is not saying I might never see the movie. At some point I will. This is fiction. This is no documentary. This is not a book.

The Facebook story fascinates me. Just like the Google story fascinates me. Just like the Microsoft story fascinates. Larry Ellison fascinates me. If I watch the movie, I think I am going to come out hungry for books on the subject.

This movie is a dramatization. This is Hollywood trying to figure out something it has not been able to figure out. Hollywood has been at war with Silicon Valley. Hollywood has so far not figured out business models that Silicon Valley technologies ask for. But this movie is not Hollywood assaulting the valley. Hollywood is too disorganized to do such a thing. But some organizing takes place at subliminal levels, like when Tea Party white people talk code to rally against Barack Obama's blackness.

At the end of the day, this is just a movie. In the mean time, go read Sree's review.

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Sree Srinivasan: Six Things Learned Watching 'The Social Network': I am not a movie critic and, thanks to my 7-year-old twins, I don't get to see a lot of non-animated movies. .... Oscar winner Kevin Spacey is listed as a producer. ..... Parker helps speed up the estrangement between Zuckerberg and Saverin in the movie and also suggests changing the name to just "Facebook." Timberlake is a scene stealer. The pop star appears to had a lot of fun playing a guy out to make lots of money without much regard for morals and rules. .... smartphones confiscated from those attending that screening ...... a lot of people did manage to take phones into the theater, as there were various glowing screens in the darkened theater. A security guard marched up and down the aisles and shined a flashlight on the offenders until they put away their phones.

Redfiff: Aseem Chabbra: How Facebook Came To Be: a curly haired, Jewish American Harvard University undergrad, and a cocky genius Marc Zuckerberg. ..... Harvard authorities caught up with Zuckerberg accusing him of hacking and breaching the university's secure systems and he was placed on probation. ...... Following the probation, as Zuckerberg's name spreads in the hallways and the courtyards at Harvard, he is approached by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss -- twin brothers ...... and their Indian American friend Divya Narendra from Queens, New York .... Zuckerberg stalls the project by sending unsubstantial emails to the three, while developing the prototype of what he eventually called The Facebook. He later drops "The" from the name of the company on advice of his mentor -- Napster co-founder Sean Parker .... Zuckerberg is a programming genius with little business sense. .... intrigues, jealousies and deceptions.

AllThingsD: Kara Swisher: The Facebook Movie: Sorry, Mark–But Critics Like It, They Really Like It! (Plus the Taiwanesed Version!): there is bathroom sex, beatings, peepholes and–say what?–a gay love triangle.

Adoption And Missed Opportunities

Image via Wikipedia

The Chromium Blog: WebP, a new image format for the Web: a single component of web pages is consistently responsible for the majority of the latency on pages across the web: images....Images and photos make up about 65% of the bytes transmitted per web page today.

The engineering accomplishment might be the easy part. Adoption might be the hard part. There still are people whose ISP is AOL. Most people who use IE use some primitive version.

Slate: The Other Social Network:That spring, Goldberg started instant messaging with Mark Zuckerberg. In March, he met with Zuckerberg and Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder and early Facebook investor, at a Starbucks on 96th Street. According to Goldberg, Parker tried to persuade Zuckerberg to acquire CU Community. Zuckerberg didn't tip his hand, but Goldberg says they kept in touch. In June, he says, Zuckerberg invited him to Palo Alto, Calif., where the Facebook crew had moved to work on the site. Goldberg flew out and stayed with Zuckerberg and pals for two weeks. "I think we went to one Stanford party," he says. There was "no crazy partying or drinking," Goldberg says, despite what The Social Network may suggest...... One factor was that Zuckerberg's site had the financial means to expand. Goldberg says he turned down advertisers, including MTV, and didn't seek out venture capital .... He started writing a food blog

The dude should have joined the Facebook team at the earliest possible date. Capitalism.

In The News

CNet: Google offers JPEG alternative for faster Web

Google Social Web Blog: Google URL Shortener Gets a Website: http://goo.gl

The Official Google Blog: Explore the world with Street View, now on all seven continents: everyone can now see places from all seven continents

AP: IMDb turns 20 with a refreshed, video-full website:the site has 100 million monthly visitors worldwide.

Adventures in Capitalism: Did Peter Thiel Make The Single Best Investment In History?:In 2005, Peter Thiel paid $500,000 for a 10% stake in Facebook..... his stake is worth between $2-3 billion. That's a 6,000x return on his capital in 5 years.

The Next Web: Square using social media stats for credit checks and fraud prevention:the number of Yelp reviews a business has or the number of Twitter followers a business has.... Square, which wants to be “PayPal for the real world”

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