Facebook Movie out Friday

[Dos_Box]

I thought there was very little sex, and what was hinted at was only to demonstate either what the main characters were missing, what they got through fame and what one of the main characters vices were (Shaun Parker). It's a 12 film, so if any of you think that it's al sex and drugs, it isn't. In fact, the drugs were only shown once, and that was in context as well.

A film focussing on the technical side of Facebook would have bombed, in fact they missed out quite a few of the more famous remarks made by Zuckerberg (perhaps for legal reasons) which would have driven the knife in deeper.

Edited October 18, 2010 by Dos_Box

[mattx]

Just finished watching this - my verdict.........piece of scheisse. Avoid.

[tech_guy]

It was accurate then?

[Dos_Box]

Just finished watching this - my verdict.........piece of scheisse. Avoid.

 

In what way? Acting, factuality, personal dislike of the subject matter?

[somabc]

I saw it on Saturday - it lacked technical detail. I can't belive they chose to emphasise the sex and drugs aspect instead of devoting more time to the technical workings of Facebook. That chess-player ranking algorithm looked quite interesting, for a start - the main characters could have spent a good half hour or so expanding on that instead of sleeping with pretty coeds...

 

--

David Hicks

 

I really enjoyed it as a Movie. The writing by Arraon Sorkin and the performances were all very good. I don't think they could have focused more on coding as the audience would not be interested in the in's and out's of php. If they focused more on coding it would not be a blockbuster movie, it would be a documentary with a very small audience (and no profit).

 

It's clearly fictional in the depiction of events and and the characters. The movie is aimed at Gen Y and it ticks all the right boxes.

 

• Facebook
  
• Sex
  
• Drugs
  
• Alcohol
  
• Power
  
• Money
  
• College
  
• Friendship (well mainly betrayal)
  

 

I don't think Mark Zuckerberg comes off that badly, he does come across as a genius coder who is fairly idealistic. As he says he does not create Facebook to become rich, he built it because it was cool. He also comes across as someone who was in the right place at the right time. The Winklevoss twins clearly have the idea of "a facebook" for Harvard first but they had no idea how to implement it. He can take an idea and implement it quickly.

 

Zuckerberg was in the best place to start a social network as the main problem is how do you seed the social network in the beginning. Harvard already has an elite social network, that's one of the main reasons people attend. This is shown in the movie where Zuckerberg and his friends do not care about their grades, they are smart enough that it is given you will get straight A's. Zuckerberg illustrates this when we walks out a lecture as he believes they are a waste of time. The lecturer believes it is because he does not understand the question being asked, so Zuckerberg shouts out he answer casually as he walks away. So ability is not enough to succeed at Harvard, as demonstrated by Zuckerberg's obsession with gaining entry to the Finals Club at the start of the movie.

 

When you want to expand the network, Students at other Universities will want to join because it's popular at Harvard, so he can expand to the rest of the Ivy League, then overseas (Oxford, Cambridge) then the rest of the Universities and then the public.

 

He is also in an environment where he has access to idea's and to money. When he needs $20,000 to found facebook he can ask his friend to fund all the servers and pay for him to live in California.

 

 

 

There is a good interview with Mark Zuckerberg where he talks about the movie.

Justin.tv - Startup School - Mark Zuckerberg (full interview) Facebook

Edited October 31, 2010 by somabc

[mattx]

Interesting interview - thanks for the link.

[dhicks]

I don't think they could have focused more on coding as the audience would not be interested in the in's and out's of php.

 

Maybe - hmm, that would explain why Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks wasn't a bigger mainstream hit...

 

Hey, so we've all got to get together to go and see the new Tron film when it comes out, right?

 

--

David Hicks

[mattx]

Nothing beats War Games, Fail Safe & Colossus: The Forbin Project.

 

War Games - Kriegsspiele (1983) - IMDb

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058083/

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/

 

http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/3325257/Fail-Safe/Product.html - BARGIN !!

 

http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/5192141/Colossus-The-Forbin-Project/Product.html - Bit more expensive

Edited October 31, 2010 by mattx

[somabc]

http://www.timberlake-justin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Sean-Parker.jpg

Sean Parker - Real Life

 

http://static.poponthepop.com/images/gallery/justin-timberlake-dancing-on-stage.jpg

Sean Parker - Hollywood

 

I'm just saying if they change that, they'll change anything!

[mattx]

http://www.timberlake-justin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Sean-Parker.jpg

Sean Parker - Real Life

 

http://static.poponthepop.com/images/gallery/justin-timberlake-dancing-on-stage.jpg

Sean Parker - Hollywood

 

I'm just saying if they change that, they'll change anything!

 

Just about says it all about the film really......!!

[somabc]

@dhicks Well at least you can always read about how the Facebook infrastructure works online

 

HipHop for PHP transforms PHP source code into highly optimized C++. It was developed by Facebook and was released as open source in early 2010.

 

HipHop transforms your PHP source code into highly optimized C++ and then compiles it with g++ to build binary files. You keep coding in simpler PHP, then HipHop executes your source code in a semantically equivalent manner and sacrifices some rarely used features – such as eval() – in exchange for improved performance.

 

Facebook sees about a 50% reduction in CPU usage when serving equal amounts of Web traffic when compared to Apache and PHP. Facebook’s API tier can serve twice the traffic using 30% less CPU.

 

Home - hiphop-php - GitHub

Edited October 31, 2010 by somabc

[Arthur]

FaceBook have created (and contributed to) lots of other open source software. More details here. I hope they do the same with their most recent acquisition, Drop.io.

[dhicks]

My girlfriend got me David Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect for my birthday, which paints a rather different picture of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg than the film. Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss brothers' lawsuits are portrayed as minor legal irritations, and Sean Parker as Zuckerberg's trusted confidant who had his back against the predatory hoards of lawyers, venture capitalists and various other nefarious types, ultimatly being responsible for Zuckerberg keeping control of his own company and not some paranoid nutter as portraid in the film. It's an interesting read, and while I obviously don't know which version is actually more true, David Kirkpatrick is an actual, honest-to-goodness journalist, not a Hollywood screenwriter, so I'd err towards his version of events.

 

--

David Hicks

Edited November 27, 2010 by dhicks

[mattx]

Thanks for the heads up for the book - just about to order.