Scott Adams: The Social Network, "The best movie I've ever seen"

Actually, Facebook's core functionality, at least at small scale, is trivial. It's a database of people, with CRUD on top. All the really hard technical problems Facebook has solved -- and there were many, don't get me wrong -- have to do with scaling that system, and those problems were solved long after Zuck was no longer hands-on with the code every day.

That's not to say I don't think Zuck is really smart. What I think he's really smart at, though, is interface design and user experience. The film touches on this, noting that Facebook's exclusivity was key to its early popularity. However, the reason Facebook really trounced Friendster and MySpace was that it was a much, much better experience. Everything worked perfectly and each screen was carefully thought-out in terms of information density and placement.

Of course, Sorkin's narrative for the film is that Zuck is an aspie geek who built a website because he doesn't understand people, so the counter-evidence -- that Facebook's design is clearly built by somebody who understands people very well indeed -- has to be downplayed.

Facebook has only been around for 6 years. The first investment of a half million dollars was made 6 months after the site had launched. I'm not diminishing Zuckerberg's insight or hard work but anything that takes off that fast involves a lot of luck.

That being said, I think there is absolutely no reason to dismiss what Zuckerberg did or claim that it was all luck. Just don't fall into sensationalism and call him a genius.

Contemporary Art = I could've done that + Yeah, but you didn't.

To say that Zuckerberg got to where he is purely because of luck is as equally false as saying that luck has nothing to do with it. I think the real issue that people are arguing about is, colloquially, whether the success is "deserved". You have people who look at the circumstances and assert that "given the opportunity I could have done the same thing", to them - it is an instance of luck, and undeserved success.

To others, they perhaps are recognizing that more went on beneath the surface that we know about - perhaps even though technically what went on is nothing special, there may be other factors in play that only a select few would be able to surmount.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but the digestion of the circumstances will vary from person to person. There exist many people who could have made "Facebook" and been equally successful; there exist MANY more people who would not have been able to.

I think that the polarization of responses has a lot to do the framing in absolute terms. Whatever attributions that are ascribed to him, cannot be said to viewed with equal validity for all observers.

I was amazed to find out that some viewers came out of the movie believing that Zuck had been portrayed in a negative light - I was almost wondering if we had seen the same movie.

I think it's not actually so much technical vs non-technical, as it is awareness of what it takes to build a company from scratch. I've been in the valley for 14 years, and I can share _dozens_ of stories where world-class engineering teams put their sweat, blood, and tears in 80 Hour work weeks for 5 solid years and came out with absolutely nothing (monetarily) to show for their effort beyond a salary. Watching Sean and Mark pivot on _precisely_ the correct elements, while Eduardo fumbled, or otherwise disengaged, just emphasized how important constant flawless tactical AND strategic execution are.

I think that there is a lot of moral ambiguity in the movie, which is why I dug it.

The focus on his personal failures is to be expected, and it has little to do with age or technical awareness. Zuck is at the top of his field, so everyone loves a bit of schadenfreude when it presents itself.

I remember that people used to get their hate on for Marc Andreesen once upon a time.

It's certainly not 100% accurate, and I don't think it's trying to be. It glosses over some major aspects of Facebook's history (like Zuckerberg's friendship with Graham, the heavy focus on Wirehog, the importance of Dustin Moskowitz, and so on), it compresses a lot of events into a shorter timespan than they occurred in real life (Facemash, renaming from Thefacebook to Facebook, the excising of Saverin from the company, the acquisition of VC, the move to real offices), and it fabricates a bit wholesale (it plays up one of Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriends, making it seem as if she was his only one; portrays Zuckerberg as having heavy asperger syndrome; implies that all of Facebook's funds came from Saverin; pretends Facebook was started because Zuckerberg wanted into Harvard's Final Clubs, etc.). That's true.

But it's not about vilifying Facebook; the dramatic license was taken to be dramatic, not to make some point about Zuckerberg or Facebook. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a total genius; his role as CEO is respected; he is not portrayed as having ripped off the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins, and while he does ultimately screw over Saverin, the movie goes to pains to make it clear that it had to happen for the success of the company. At the risk of sounding a bit truthy, I think that the movie did a superb job capturing the feel of a startup in Facebook's situation, even if some of the facts are slightly off.

While I think this review is slightly hyperbolic, I don't think it's crazy, either. The movie was insanely well-done from start to finish, and I don't honestly think that the creative license is much worse than, say, Apollo 13. I think if you were expecting to see geeks get vilified, you'll be very pleasantly surprised.

Is that really a weakness? Strict realism in dialogue generally makes for pretty poor drama. Shakespeare's characters talk like nobody has ever talked, but his plays would not be improved by sticking in a bunch of "umm"s and "ahh"s and repetition and "y'know" and repetition and, uhh, stuff like that, y'know?

He's not a punk, me's more like someone who has been bullied, pushed around, and ignored his whole life and he's not going to take it anymore.

He might be a genius, but that's not what's special about him. It's his determination to succeed at any cost. Lots of 19 year olds are geniuses, but most know when to quit.

Sure he's a billionaire, but there was only one line in the movie where that was even relevant (An extremely juicy line, I might add). He was after power, success, and influence much more than he was about money.

I couldn't decide if the movie portrayed him as a sympathetic villain or a tragic hero. Probably more like a real life complicated person going through an amazing journey.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/citizen_kane/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/godfather/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chinatown/

(Note: I haven't seen The Social Network and I don't mean to imply that it is comparable to the iconic movies I have listed above. That said, the more reviews I see trickling in, the more it seems like it.)

Social network has superior directing and writing IMO. But they are similar in many respects.

PoSV simply tells the story in a pretty straightforward way, while TSN is structured more as a search for the true story. It's structured as a bunch of flashbacks from the depositions of Mark, Eduardo, and the Winklevoss twins. Each party tells their version of things, and as a character says at one point, 15% of typical testimony is lies, the remaining 85% is exaggerated.

The movie doesn't try to take sides, and leaves it up to the viewer to decide who was right and wrong (if anyone.)

It's quite notable that Pirates tells a broader and more interesting story than The Social Network despite The Social Network being far more fictionalized.

If you're looking for parallels to contemporary startups, The Social Network is a bit more on point--Pirates goes farther back into the founders' backgrounds and forward into the lives of Apple and Microsoft as established companies. But both are still great.

http://camworld.org/archives/001066.html