and i just wrote about andrew garfield in the previous entry. one of the most anticipated movies of the year involves 1) our future spider-man, 2) the golden standard of male pop artists and 3) the guy who gained our affections fighting zombies.

the social network, based on ben mezrich’s book the accidental billionaires: the founding of facebook, a tale of sex, money, genius and betrayal, premiers october 1 this year. that’s right, facebook. your favorite cyber hangout has a founding story rich enough for a red carpet premier in tinseltown. a history from six long(?) years ago.

it features jesse eisenberg, andrew garfield, justin timberlake, brenda song and rashida jones. and the score will be written by none other than trent reznor of nine inch nails. it is directed by david fincher (se7en, fight club, alien 3, panic room, zodiac, the curious case of benjamin button). with all these names behind it, it has this tremendous pressure to be cool.

image from manny the movie guy.

the book on which the movie was based was published mid-09 and has been reported as an unreliable resource for straight, hard facts. mezrich, after all, is given to exaggeration (e.g., burning down the house, which served as basis for the gambling movie 21; story here) and many incidents you read in the book never occurred at all. or so write certain sources. say, the part where one of the founders pick up a victoria’s secret model at a party, which is widely known as an embellishment (check this too: says here that the book proposal had saverin making out with the hottie, but the published work had zuckerberg doing that instead. way to make facts hold water).

it is said that mark zuckerberg, facebook ceo, is not a fan of the book nor the movie and has even expressed his dislike publicly.

as for the movie rearing its head in facebook ads, that seems to be very unlikely too, given the parameters of posting ads there (story here).

in any case, i would most likely watch it because i am not so jaded as to believe everything in a film that says “based on a true story”. i did watch 21 and enjoyed it. there’s nothing the matter with simply thinking it was entirely a piece of fiction, even though burning down the house was a long-standing bestseller in the nonfiction genre.

but it’s a different case with the social network. unlike 21 where most moviegoers would likely feel detached from the card sharks since not many of us know how to play blackjack and even less actually gamble in casinos, mezrich’s next book-to-movie work may leave a deeper imprint as, although very little of us understand their coding jargon, we are so insanely familiar with facebook that it’s easy to feel for the founders as depicted in the movie. it’s really up to you whether to believe it or not.

for the reason of david fincher alone, i recommend we watch it. before se7en was released, people were already wary of it being just another silly horror flick, but look at how it turned out. before fight club was released, people were saying it was just going to be a movie with losers beating each other up, but look at how it turned out. for the social network, i would like to put my faith in the david fincher.

trailer here:

anyhow, here are a few facts about social networking sites (sns) i gathered (i swear, i didn’t fabricate anything. i write what i read from reliable sources. or at least i think they are reliable):

• based on the definition of sns, the very first of its kind was sixdegrees.com created in 1994 but defunct by 2001.
• the first sns to utilize features to find and manage friends as we know them now is friendster in 2002. when it went live the first quarter of ’03, it spread so fast and so thoroughly that such publications as time (even citing it as one of the 50 coolest sites), esquire and vanity fair wrote about it and its innovations. its creators themselves appeared in several talk shows.
• friendster was followed by myspace, linkedin and bebo a year later. facebook emerged in 2004 and has since grown to become the largest.
• by 2008(?) it is said that there are over 250 active sns. though this source, written in 2006, claim there are around 650. it is hard to determine how many there really are as scores of them spring up and get put down through certain periods.
• facebook clearly dominates the race for members with over 400 million as of this period. it looks poised to break the 500 million mark soon.
• how about the other popular sites? myspace: 130 million, twitter: 75 million, bebo: 40 million, hi5: 80 million, friendster: 90 million, orkut: 100 million, windows live spaces: 120 million, qzone (china): 200 million. as you can see, no one comes close to facebook.
• facebook was initially meant as an exclusive harvard only networking site.

how about you, which sns are you a member of?