“The Social Network” was one of the biggest movies in 2010. Directed by David Fincher, the film explores the history of Facebook. The primary focus of the movie is the people responsible for the creation of Facebook. The film is narrative of entrepreneurship, innovation, friendship, and betrayal surrounding Facebook’s creator. The film was successful because it was historically and socially relevant. In 2010, Facebook had over 400 million active users with the users adopting it as a primary form of communication between family and friends.
In “The Social Network,” the main character Mark is a student at Harvard. After being dumped by his girlfriend, Mark sets up “facemash.com,” a website whereby Harvard male students can rank girls based on their looks. “facemash.com” is successful such that the Winklevoss brothers recruit Mark to help them with their project. The Winklevoss brothers wanted to create an elite social network for dating. i Mark was not interested in creating a mediocre imitation of MySpace; hence he took the Winklevosses’ idea and modified it with his roommate, Eduardo, without using their code. Eventually, Facebook was created, and it became a massive hit. As Facebook grew, Mark and Eduardo clashed over managing the growing business. They also needed more money to continue developing Facebook.
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“The Social Network” has historical relevance. The film was inspired by the actual history of Facebook. Some aspects of the film were changed to make the movie exciting, but it was inspired by the real history of Facebook. In 2010, Facebook had grown to be the largest social media. ii The founders of Facebook launched it on February 2004, and within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up. iii In less than a month, approximately half of the Harvard students had Facebook accounts and membership was extended to other Ivy League colleges in Boston. In 2006, Facebook began seeking new members beyond the educational institutions. Facebook offered free membership and charged advertising fee. iv Within three years, Facebook’s membership had grown to 30 million users such that Yahoo and Google wanted to buy it for over $2 billion. v Unlike the previous social networks such as MySpace, Facebook’s popularity was unrelenting; more people across the globe were adopting Facebook. vi The film fits into the real events that shaped the development of Facebook. The creators of Facebook started in Harvard, they did not expect that Facebook would be extremely successful, but once it became successful, they faced many challenges of managing and funding a growing internet company. When the film was released in 2010, Facebook had over 400 million active users. vii
The film traces the history of Facebook to a Harvard doom room in 2003. In the film, Mark was heartbroken after being dumped by his girlfriend; hence he created facemash.com as a project to help him cope. According to Lessig, the real Facebook story can also be traced to the summer of 2003. viii Mark Zuckerberg spent the summer with two friends, who also studied computer science. They worked in Boston coding websites and debating about the internet. Zuckerberg’s high school friend had invented a service called Buddy Zoo as a social network experiment, but within a few months, it had hundreds of thousands of users. ix Upon returning to school, Zuckerberg came up with other services before Facebook. The film only talks about Facemash.com and Facebook, and did not talk about Coursematch, which enabled Harvard students to view people taking the same degree. x Once they launched Facebook in 2004, it was well received in the real world and by 2007; it had up to 30 million users.
The film captures two sets of events; it captures what was going on at the time of the release and the period when the movie takes place. The movie was released in 2010 when Facebook was a household name. The two events are related as the movie attempts to show the history of Facebook, and how it came to be the largest social networking site. The movie paints the history of Facebook in an interesting manner. It suggests that Zuckerberg’s motivation for creating Facebook was to get girls as seen in the ending of the film when he sends a friend request to his ex-girlfriend. The movie sensationalizes some aspects, particular Zuckerberg’s relationship with his ex and the Twinklevoss lawsuit. In reality, Zuckerberg focused on managing the growing social media since its launch in 2004. xi
“The Social Network” is also a commentary on advertising, public relations, and print media. Mark and his friends viewed the internet as the future of media. They developed online applications such as Facebook and Coursematch to address the challenges of the print media. xii Facebook was a new forum that made the sharing information in different locations possible. At the beginning of Facebook journey, banner ads were the only source of revenue as Facebook did not charge a membership fee. As Facebook grew, Mark and Eduardo had different ideas regarding public relations, and this cast a shadow on Facebook’s history.
In conclusion, “the Social Network” captured some aspects of Facebook’s history. The film became popular because Facebook was a popular phenomenon in 2010 and viewers wanted to know its history. The creators of the film combined facts and fiction to create a compelling story. The film should not be viewed as the real history of Facebook.
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