I've watched The Social Network a zillion times. The movie is pretty good, but what fascinates me is the story behind the creation of the biggest technological advancement of my lifetime (I don't count PC's or mobile phones because they were in the works, to a certain extent, before I was born or before I knew what they were).
Just the word along means a zillion things:
- People connecting with friends, colleagues, business associates, acquaintences and often times strangers
- Entrepreneurialism in its purest sense
- Ego-ism on the part of Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker who knew that Facebook was going to be big
- Writing sparks many things and in this case, Zuck's blogging frenzy spawned the birth of a community that's 800 million people deep
- Society is big, but Facebook has made it small; we now communicate with people all around the world, in real time without any second thought of doing so
- We've turned our normally private worlds into open books despite all the chatter about taking back our privacy
- Consumers have always had a voice, now we just have a slew of megaphones and the best part, brands sort of have to listen
- Friends have been devalued; I don't really have over 1,000 close friends
The list goes on and on, but that's what I think about when I watch The Social Network and think about the business I'm in, which was created the minute two Harvard kids drew some geeky code on a dorm room window.
Guess I should say thanks.
P.S. think about this…do you think they'll ever do a movie about Google+, Twitter or LinkedIn? Probably not...