"Facebook Me!"

For my Public Relations class, I had to watch The Social Network (aka the Facebook story), starring Jesse Eisenburg, Justin Timberlake, and a smoking-hot Andrew Garfield. Have I mentioned how much I love CreComm?? lol.

The movie starts with Zuckerburg getting dumped by his girlfriend for being a pompous ass. A post break-up night of drunken blogging and programming begins a series of events that ends with Zuckerburg being the founder and CEO of the largest social-networking site ever, making him the youngest billionaire ever. The movie goes though the story of how he came to be, in 2 separate lawsuits against him, being sued for a total of over 600 million dollars. The movie ends with Zuckerburg having lost his best (and only true) friend, Eduardo Saverin, and hundreds of millions of dollars (although the total isn’t specified), sitting at his computer, awaiting the Facebook friend confirmation of the girl who broke his heart in the beginning.

Jesse Eisenburg did a great job of portraying Zuckerburg as a socially awkward computer genius. Aside from his billionaire-status, I didn’t know very much about the Zuckerburg story, and if I were to draw my conclusion solely from the movie, I would say he isn’t exactly the greatest guy. In the movie, he screws over Savourin, his best friend, pushing him out of the company he helped create. There is also never any confirmation of whether or not Facebook was actually Zuckerburg’s idea, or if he stole it from the Winklevoss twins, who initially hired him to create their Harvard-exclusive social networking site months before Facebook was released. The fact that he ended up having to pay them 65 million dollars tells me that he may just have.

I understand why his girlfriend broke-up with him in the first place, I would also go out on a limb and guess that she never did accept his fb friendship request either.

The real villain of the movie is Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and one-time President of Facebook played by Justin Timberlake, who does an incredible job of making us hate him, a difficult feat. The Social Network paints Parker as a smooth-talking, conniving, full-of-himself, greedy, party-animal. The movie also makes it seem as though it was Parker that convinced Zuckerburg to sucker-punch his bff and CFO, Eduardo Savourin.

When I got home from watching the movie, I checked my Facebook (obviously), and in the ad bar there was a link to this very interesting Vanity Fair article written about the normally very private Parker, where he gets to tell his side of the story. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/10/sean-parker-201010

I think that this movie is a great one that will go on to define our generation. With a superb cast, an amazing screen-play, and a fabulous soundtrack, it will surely get recognition come awards season as well.

I believe Facebook is already one of the primary modern-day communication tools that has changed the world as we know it, and it’s popularity will only grow as a result of The Social Network.

Cooler than a million $

1 ½ oz Baileys Liqueur

½ oz Frangelico

1oz Vanilla vodka

1 shot espresso

3 coffee beans (garnish)

-mix all ingredients (except coffee beans) in a shaker filled with ice.

-strain into a chilled martini glass

-finish w/coffee beans

Enjoy with friends!!