The Story of Facebook: Fact and Fiction

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To view The Social Network Trailer: watch?v=lB95KLmpLR4

As we are watching the Social Network in class next week, I thought I would write a post evaluating how accurate a portrayal the movie creates of Facebook’s real beginnings. WARNING: This post will discuss plot details. Readers who have not seen the film before and wish the plot to remain unknown before seeing it on Tuesday, should refrain from reading this post before Tuesday’s class.

          Upon doing some research, it became clear to me that most experts agree that film creators Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher took some liberties with the truth in “The Social Network.” As Aaron Sorkin himself put it in a New York Magazine profile, “I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling.”

Much of the accuracy controversy relates to Zuckerberg and his dealings with his former business partner Eduardo Saverin. For people are interested in further exploring this debate, there are two books that give two very different views of the situation. The book Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich is a source of much of the information that was used to create the movie. It was written with the heavy cooperation of Zuckerberg’s former friend (and ousted business partner) Eduardo Saverin. It portrays a generally negative view of Zuckerberg, elements of which can be seen in “The Social Network.” The polar alternative tale is told by David Kirkpatrick in his book, The Facebook Effect, which was written with the cooperation of Zuckerberg and Facebook.

Many participants in the accuracy debate assert that whether or not the film is an accurate portrayal of real events is inconsequential. They believe the movie to be a work of art, and an entertaining one at that. But it does matter for our purposes in this class – an accurate understanding of Facebook’s beginnings and the subsequent impacts on its culture and business model are integral to our overall impression of Facebook.

To that end, here is a “The Social Network” accuracy crib sheet:

 

–       Eduardo Saverin was a complete victim to Zuckerberg’s villain: False.

  • The film fails to mention that Facebook was starved for cash when Saverin was in New York, it got so bad that Zuckerberg’s family had to take out loans for servers.
  • Despite the reversed portrayal in the movie, Saverin partied frequently while in New York. In one uncovered IM, Zuckerberg writes to Saverin about he and his coworkers in Palo Alto, “In general we don’t do fun things. But that’s OK because the business is fun.”
  • Saverin also put up free ads for his own start up on Facebook without clearing it with Facebook’s other founders.
  • While Saverin did invest $1000 of his own money in Facebook initially, Zuckerberg also invested significant amounts of his personal funds in the young company.
  • After suing and settling with Zuckerberg, Saverin received sufficient stock to own about 5% of Facebook – equal to about 1.4 billion dollars.
  • He was not Zuckerberg’s best friend or original collaborator on Facebook – that was actually Adam D’Angelo, Facebook’s first CTO.

–       Sean Parker was arrested for cocaine possession: True.

  • But, contrary to the movie’s depiction, not in California and not during the fall of 2004.

–       Zuckerberg is an angry, insecure, egoist whose creation of Facebook was initially motivated by a desire to get the attention of a previous girlfriend: Probably False.

  • By many account, Zuckerberg is an even-tempered fellow who is overall self-confident, if prone to bouts of silence and awkwardness.
  • Although Zuckerberg is shown pining over an ex-girlfriend and hooking up with Facebook groupies, he actually began dating his current wife, Priscilla Chan, before founding Facebook and has been committed to her during most of Facebook’s existence.-       The movie accurately depicts all characters who were important to Facebook’s beginning: False.
    • The movie includes the character of “Dustin Moskovitz,” but declines to portray his crucial part in founding and expanding Facebook.
    • According to Zuckerberg, Facebook probably would not have taken off without the efforts of Moskovitz yet in the film he receives much less attention than the realistically less important character of Eduardo Saverin.

    –       The Winklevoss twins hired Zuckerberg to create software for a social network they wanted to invent called Harvard Connection: True.

    • It seems that Zuckerberg probably did misled the Winklevosses and their friend Divya Narenda about his intentions and failed to tell them that he was not creating their software until the launch of his own website was imminent.
    • The twins did compete in the Olympics in men’s rowing and they did enlist their father’s corporate lawyer to help them complain to Harvard about Zuckerberg stealing their idea.

    Enjoy the show!

    Sources:

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/09/30/the-facebook-and-zuckerberg-in-the-social-network-arent-real.html

    http://www.businessinsider.com/is-the-social-network-true-2010-10?op=1

    http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/10/truth-and-the-art-of-the-social-network/64701/

     

     

     

     

 

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