The Social Network and How it Reflects Upon Us

As a whole, “The Social Network” does an amazing job telling the story of the development of Facebook. By unraveling the story from the perspective of the law suits, director David Fincher makes the audience feel as if they were a fly on the wall during this closed-door litigation process. This presents an audience with a unique view as to what really happened in the creation of Facebook and the struggles of Mark Zuckerberg and his best friend (and CFO) Eduardo Saverin to get to where they are today.

While I found the movie to be extremely well done, the one message that needs to be taken away from this movie is its reflection on cyber culture. In the creation of Facebook, Zuckerberg was able to use (or “steal”) the ideas of the Winkelvoss twins and Divya Narendra to create a new social networking outlet that is superior to existing social networking trends such as MySpace or even LiveJournal. What separated Facebook is “exclusivity” [1]. This allowed college students to share their college experience amongst their peers on the internet in addition to the basic networking capabilities it provided; creating what can be considered the largest existing internet phenomena to date.

Facebook gives its users the chance to make the internet their own by tailoring it to their actual lives. The same can be said for YouTube, which gives users access to a world of videos that are accessible in the simple click of a mouse. This even extends to free music sharing programs such as Napster and later incarnations such as LimeWire. What draws people to these popular websites and programs is the sense of freedom they provide through the internet by means such as social interaction and access to a seemingly endless archive of personal interests.

So what is next? The wild success of many websites certainly has piqued the interest of a new wave of internet entrepreneurs. What used to seem like a simple web page can now be valued at significant sums of cash. As seen in “The Social Network”, companies are taking internet advertising and investments to new heights [2]. With so much new attention being given towards the internet as a business venture, it is easy to assume that there are very few unique ideas out there that can really take off.

With this in mind, it is also important to realize that the internet has proved itself to be a rapidly evolving entity. Facebook, YouTube, and music sharing were not necessarily novel ideas at the time. It is the ability to take such basic ideas to the next level and the ability of such developments to increase the personalized involvement of the user that makes the internet an ever-expanding frontier.

[1] The Social Network. Directed by David Fincher. Columbia Pictures, 2010. Film.
[2] The Social Network. Directed by David Fincher. Columbia Pictures, 2010. Film.