SPOILER ALERT: The Social Network is the story of Facebook - a website created in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 that has redefined how we connect and communicate worldwide.  But at the heart, the movie is much more than just the story of one website. It touches on topics of loneliness, betrayal, popularity, and the tricky balance of mixing friendship and business.

Regardless if the movie is completely accurate or not (it’s so NOT accurate), the movie version of “the Facebook story” will be known as the “How It Got Started” for the company, like The Pirates of Silicon Valley. But folks, just remember when you go see this movie; it’s a fictional description, not a documentary film.

The movie begins with what, to me, has to be one of its strongest scenes, a conversation in a crowded bar with two young people trying to make a connection: Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend. Zuckerberg, speaks a mile a minute, jumping from topic to topic like rapid-fire on how he wants to make a name for himself at Harvard. By the end of the exchange, his heartbroken girlfriend cries out, “Dating you is like dating a Stair Master.” and “it’s not the fact you’re a nerd that will make you have enemies, it’s because you’re an asshole”.  So, right from the outset, meet Mark Zuckerberg, a man who is clearly brilliant, but who is also deeply lacking confidence, awkward and more than a bit antisocial. (How ironic, isn’t it!?)

The opening also sets up the force behind the project that would become the pre-cursor to Facebook, Facemash. The Facemash idea, comparing the hotness of female students at Harvard, which ends up bringing down the university network, gets Mark in some trouble with faculty administration and makes him an outcast of sorts on campus. But, it also gets him noticed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss two attractive, athletic and spoon-fed twins that run in the circles that Mark has expressed interest in (who says good things can’t come from a bad politically inappropriate idea).

The Winklevosses and their friend, Divya, are looking to build a social dating site for Harvard men. They ask Mark to work on the code. He eagerly agrees.  The dating site breeds a much bigger idea for Mark - and that idea becomes Facebook. He partners with his best friend and money source Eduardo, and builds The Facebook. What follows is still the toughest for me to believe, how quickly The Facebook spread, it’s wider than expected acceptance and the fact that it grew and expanded massively in such a short period of time.

If you who joined Facebook in the early days (I believe I joined in January 2005), the events representing the take off of the site will hit home. One of the most interesting things about Facebook, a site that first built its fascination and status based on exclusivity, was just how quickly it spread. Facebook went from not existing to being everywhere, more or less overnight.

Jesse Eisenber plays Zuckerberg brilliantly.  I totally anticipate seeing his name on the shortlist for Best Actor. He in some way is able to make Zuckerberg sympathetic but not pathetic – yes, there’s a difference. The character could have easily been portrayed as a pathetic, socially hopeless nerd. Eisenberg doesn’t do that. He manages to play a three-dimensional character, even though the last five minutes of the film are the only times you ever see a grief-stricken side. The way he speaks, his eye movements, the way that he walks and moves - Don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but I can’t see how this won’t be the best performances of the year.

As things develop, the movie focus and point of view swing a bit. Many of these swings take place in a closer to present-day setting, where Zuckerberg, Eduardo and the Winklevoss twins give depositions and testimony in snippets of the various lawsuits filed over the ownership and business dealings of Facebook.

The neat thing about the court proceeding and depositions is that they build out the story nicely. From what I can recall (I will go see it again) there’s a ton of cuts from scene to scene, depositions overlapping, and testimony that lead to flashbacks told from a different viewpoint.

From this point on a large piece of the movie involves the massive rise of Facebook and the equivalent breakdown between best friends Mark and Eduardo.  Eduardo’s character was for the most part good at gaining my sympathies.  To me, the most relatable character in the film (not saying he’s the hero of the movie). On the other hand, it easy to empathize with him and what happened - being shafted out of one of the biggest companies ever founded (think about this - if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country with its number of users today) - But, by the end of the movie it’s clear to me that if Eduardo had run the business end of things for Facebook, It wouldn’t be everything it is today.

So who should the credit go to, besides Zuckerberg? Well Napster founder Sean Parker.  Who in the movie is played by Justin Timberlake.  Parker was influential in making Facebook the money maker that it is today( Still don’t get evaluation mentioned at the end of the movie that Facebook is worth 25 billion, pointed out to me by Kyle here at work, that they make nowhere near that amount today). Timberlake, a truly gifted performer, has an average at best track record as an actor. But in this role as Parker, a well connected playboy who quickly sees that Facebook is the next Napster (at least its ability to cause a buzz and spread quickly), Timberlake is charismatic, lively and to me, very believable.

Timberlake is very good in the movie, but still, his character seems like little more than a plot tool. His primary function is to act as a scheme to get Zuckerberg to go out to Palo Alto in the summer of 2004. This was the summer that Facebook really turned and went in a new direction, and was on the brink of becoming huge. After that summer, Facebook was clearly on the path to absurd success.

Sadly the movie does end suddenly.  A bit harsh, yet fitting for its theme I guess. This is the chronicle of the first year of Facebook. The power was building, but at the stage that the movie stops, the site was still college -only, it didn’t have apps and it hadn’t overthrown MySpace. In fact, this movie ends where a new one could begin.  - Must have been done for a reason. (Watch for part 2)

Watching the movie, I was often struck by two things: First, how quickly it all moved. It’s almost outrageous to think that the majority of the major events in the movie took place over the course of 12 -18 months. Second, It reminded me again of just how young everyone involved was in the in the early days of Facebook.

By Brian