 | A review of The Social Network |
Kallie and I went to see “The Social Network” yesterday, and I was surprised to see a lack of emotional tensity or even having the story being “Hollywood-ized”. The story was fairly believable and down to earth. I can’t comment on the accuracy of any of it, but from what I was already familiar with, it seemed like they got it as best as anyone could without breaking some non-disclosures.
I came home and did a little research. On the drive home, I wondered, what ever happened to Tom? Seems like he’s pretty much out of the limelight at this point. The reason I thought about him though, was that Myspace turned out to be exactly what Eduardo Saverin seemed to be envisioning with facebook. Ads. Who gives a flying crap about Myspace now? The corporation that owns it, that’s about it.
The movie puts emphasis on Mark Zuckerberg‘s stance on how things “should be” and not what will make him the most money. To this day, Mark’s been offered upwards of 1 billion dollars by Yahoo! for facebook, but he has turned down every offer. Why? Because it’s his baby, he says. He takes pride in it. He’s not your typical money hungry entrepreneur. He’s different, and that is why I respect him, despite any poor tactics. In this New Yorker article (I highly recommend/require you read it), it’s not hard to deduce Zuck knew his actions were unethical from a legal standpoint, but I don’t question his motives. To this day, he is showing that he did it because he was going to pour his heart and soul into it, making it his life’s work, and for that, there is nothing that can hold you back.
The movie also reminded me of one of my ideas back in Jan 2005. Thinking about it more today, one of the latest crazes is to “check in” at bars and cool spots you go. What if that data was tracked and indexed, especially large events like concerts, parties, sports games, etc. You would be able to find out if you and someone else were ever at the same place at the same time. Practically speaking, Kallie’s been to Pittsburgh before, I wonder if we “checked in” while we were here, how close we ever were to each other.
Anyway, this turned out to be not much of a review. If you’re interested in the story of facebook at all, I’d say go see it. Even though it’s really based of a book and the characters are stories are just augmented to fit, it’s a good depiction of what probably transpired in the creation of one of the most successful websites ever. I’d label it inspirational to see someone be passionate about something they believe in, despite having extreme costs of losing best friends, girls, and a lot of freedom.
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