Zuckerbook and the Millionaires

Last January the Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded The Social Network four Golden Globes for Best Picture, best original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, best direction from the wonderfully talented David Fincher and best screenplay by one of the most gifted writers today, Aaron Sorkin.

This week, the founders and venture capitalists surrounding Facebook began to cash in their chips. After hundreds of millions of years of networking socially, there are more billionaires and millionaires this week due to an initial public offering that speculators are saying will value Facebook at $107 Billion or just over $100 per user.

Like all companies, the purpose of Facebook is to make money despite the well crafted Mark Zuckerberg hoodies and golly gee it's all about the sharing exterior. So when it comes time for investments to be returned, it will be on the backs of each one of us - the 900 million. Whether we stick around when our pages are littered with advertising is a whole other story. It's doubtful the new millionaires are too concerned about all that.

Some interesting posts published this week

· Tech Crunch - Twitter Sentiment Mirrored Facebook Stock Price
· All Facebook - All That For 23 Cents?
· inc - Facebook IPO Could Spawn 1,000 Start-Ups
· Mitch Joel - Leaving Facebook
· Gigaom - Facebook Gets a Reality Check
· Wired - Facebook IPO is Not The Engame

Kneale Mann

venturebeat

The Social Network Comes of Age

Zuck's story wins big.

Last night, the much criticized Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded The Social Network four Golden Globes for Best Picture, best original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, best direction from the wonderfully talented David Fincher and best screenplay by one of the most gifted writers today, Aaron Sorkin.

From cave walls to profile walls. 

Social media have been around for a couple of hundred million years old. However in the last 10-15 years, we have discovered electronic ways to accelerate conversations, build relationships and conduct business. Last night, the latest incarnation of this activity won some awards. And today we get back to creating bonds with each other through the myriad means available.

A sequel is not forthcoming.

One could argue that The Social Network is a film that has very little to do with social media and everything to do with scandal and personalities. If Mark Elliot Zuckerberg had created Facebook on his own void of any of the allegations and real activities, perhaps Sorkin would not have been so keen to write about it.

Then again, harnessing a way to get over a third of the world's online community to join a website is quite miraculous. And we are fascinated by a 26 year old dropout from Harvard who has fast tracked to the billionaire set and the scandals that follow him.

We haven’t seen a film about Digg or FourSquare. The studios aren’t deluged with treatments on the rise and popularity of Wikipedia or LinkedIn. And there haven’t been any rumblings of an upcoming made-for-TV mini-series on the formation of Twitter or YouTube. This is not to take away from the popularity of those channels but we like stories and we are fascinated by people.

Is that not the essence of social networking?

knealemann | email

image credit: googleimages