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Have you seen The Social Network?

So I’ve finally gotten around to watching “The Social Network” mostly due to curiosity as to how it depicted Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

I know half of the movie was fiction but the plot was based on the story of Zuck, his Harvard dorm mates and several other guys on campus all doing this cool “start-up thingy”.

Having had my own share of failures in conceptualizing and running all sorts of websites since way back in 2001 and dealing with partners that have varying levels of interests, skills and motivations, I can somewhat relate to the story.

There were also some interesting tidbits that I had to go and read up more on just to make sure there’s very close to the facts.

  • Before Facebook and rival ConnectU, there was MySpace and Friendster in 2004 so the idea wasn’t new. I think what they did was just improve on what’s already there.
  • Mark Zuckerberg is not the youngest billionaire. He’s only the second youngest. His Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz, is 8 days younger than Mark and owns 6% of the company which is worth $1.4 billion. But that’s just on paper for now.
  • The title of the book that inspired the movie, The Accidental Billionaires*, now makes sense — you don’t have to be the first or have the most novel idea to really succeed. Sometimes, it’s all about luck or who you know. I think the well-connected Silicon Valley guy Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and Plaxo, was instrumental in the direction and success of Facebook.

The movie has painted Mark Zuckerberg in a very bad light — very scheming guy who stole other people’s ideas and betrayed friends. The fact that he paid $65 million to founders of ConnectU to settle his case about ripping off the site and also with his friend and co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, whom he kicked out of the company is very telling.

In any case, it was a pretty interesting movie. Facebook fans should watch it.

Note: *The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

26 Responses

  1. Avatar for adhip adhip says:

    cant ignore the post

  2. Avatar for etwanger etwanger says:

    A very inspiring movie. I never expected that it was that nice after I watched it. For techie guys out there, believe me, it’s really worthy to watch for.

  3. Avatar for MurtecWHiz MurtecWHiz says:

    The movie is very inspiring.. but according to Mark, the movie is not 100% true.

  4. Avatar for Bon Bon says:

    Just a bit of movie trivia for you all. The Winklevoss twins was actually played by one single actor (Armie Hammer) via CGI. ;)

    http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/popwrap/behind_the_social_network_twin_towers_tjS8Xq2vMhwp5SYjeSoQTO

  5. Avatar for Guy Radaza Guy Radaza says:

    Btw, after watching this, “Pirates of the Silicon Valley” comes in second as my all time favorite…

  6. Avatar for neon neon says:

    What I’d learned.:

    “Every Harvard student believes that inventing a JOB is better than finding a JOB. ” ….

    Yeah men!

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