Social Network - You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemy

...500 millions users

...26 years old...

$6.9 billions in valuation...

And yes, I'm talking about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and current CEO of Facebook. I won't blog about him in a biographical type, actually I won't blog about him at all. What I will really blog about is the movie Social Network, which I just watched less than an hour ago. The movie Social Network, which is based on the founding of the biggest web-based social networking in the world- Facebook, is 2 hours long, spent $50 mio in budget, earn $130 mio in revenue, distributed by Columbia pictures and directed by David Fincher.

Like usual, first is the director-thing. So, David Fincher, who is this guy? Actually, I don't know! I never heard about him, I never read about him. Then I do what I usually do when I don't know about a thing - I Wikied or Googled it (which always list Wikipedia in the first rank of my search result). And according to Wikipedia, Mr. Fincher is quite good director. He's directed Seven, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac and the most recent before Social Network is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And you see the pattern here, he's kinda 'Tim Burton' if Brat Pitt is 'Johnny Depp'. He has 6 movies including Social Network with revenue that doubled the budget or more, and he will direct the american version of The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. My opinion, he's too narrative. Like what he has done with his previous movies, Social Network has many long monologs from a character, and in this movie case, with too fast speeches and less worthy dialogs added.

The movie start with a confusing conversation of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his then girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara - who'll portray Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo) in a cafe, I think they were talking about Mark want to be invited to final clubs and Erica talks about a man in a rowing team, and other not so clear topics. They end up in a fight and break up, and Mark blog about his ex being a b*tch when he get back to his dorm. I don't really get why this girlfriend-fight is so important then, not until the movie flows to the second third. Almost everything about the later development of the movie is based on the anger he felt toward his girlfriend, if I borrow a term from Criminal Minds series, this is the stressor.

This is not a movie about the founding of Facebook, it's a movie about an angry nerd Harvard student with exceptional programming talent who build a web-based social network as a way to get revenge to everybody around him - his ex, his best friend, and a trio that accidentally happen to be around. Mark was angry toward his ex who called him an a**hole, then blog about it all night while drunk and build a girl 'hotness' comparison site called Facemash that accidentally crashes half of Harvard network. Later, when twin student and their business partner approaches him with their idea of a social network website exclusively for Harvard student, he turns his anger toward them with build his own site based on their idea without acknowledge them, just because they are member of rowing team (you see-rowing team!) and also member of a final club at Harvard which he really want to be part of. And last, when his best and only friend who also his partner in founding Facebook, got invited to a final club and just going a little bit further on trying to get his attention on the operation of Facebook, he ambush him too. The story framed in court processes of double lawsuit toward Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook which I don't really think happen in the actual same timeframe. There's nothing about revelation of Facebook's vision and mission, and less portion about building a business. The revenge and accidental unfortunate or fortunate moments dominate the story, fit with the tagline in the poster anyway. It is maybe like what Mark said in the movie about why the twin and their partner sue him, "...because for the first time things doesn't happen the way they want it to be", in Mark case, things never happen the way he hope it would be and then he realizes that this is the time for a fightback, a sweet revenge.

The story is based on a book titled The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, and consultation with the actual Eduardo Saverin who portrayed more as a victim than a bad guy in the movie. But in my opinion, when you want to be listed as co-founder, you should more involve in the development of the company too Mr. Saverin, not just throw the money and claims the title CFO without doing nothing. In this story, you appear more as a too-greedy business man that just thinking about profit and statistic but not the quality of the product, you don't even know how to change your relationship status on Facebook.

It turns out, the movie is a fiction and without cross-reference the plot with the actual center character Mark Zuckerberg. That quite spare my feeling and my mind, to think of it as pure fiction. But you know, personally I don't want to think that one of the breakthrough internet innovation of my generation is founded for revenge, it's just not appropriate and wrong. Google is about providing fast and reliable information for people; Wikipedia, Blog, and Youtube is about massive knowledge & media sharing and collaboration; and Facebook and twitter is about virtual connection, personal representation and social sharing. All of it gives huge impact to the modern society. The positive influences of all those sites within the global invasion of internet industry to the current culture and social behavior are similar to what light bulb and telephone did a century ago. They helps society evolve to a new level of intellectual, and marked as new global civilizations milestone.

I walk to the theater hoping for some biographical movie, turn out it's a fiction with dramatic tone. Not so my type, but the cynical lines and jokes bites me. I laughed almost in all part when Mark gives a talk to defend himself, at the court and also at the hearing with the Harvard administration after he accidently caused a server crash with Facemash. And one of my favourite scence is the programmer audition, when Zuckerberg hold a hacking contest to select new programmer for Facebook. I found these all intelligently hilarious. Honestly I think all engineer anywhere is the same by heart, an egocentric person with cynical high profile joke and messy appearance - I've met a lot of engineer like that.

After all, this is an entertaining movie. But if you're not interesting in social media industry, or doesn't enjoy cynical humor with too many technical speech, skip this movie.