Mark Zuckerberg: The Friend Everyone Loves to Hate Part 1

I won't patronize anyone by explaining that a movie titled The Social Network came out last year. It is a small independent film that played at some local venues and generated minimal buzz. The plot features the plodding rise of a software company responsible for the creation of a website with little purpose and no realistic future prospects--think Pets.com. The main character, Mark Zuckerberg, is a nice, if somewhat uninteresting, nerd without diabolical plans or egomania--a character assessment that stirred insignificant amounts controversy and failed to set off a media firestorm.

Just let me know if I get carried away with myself.

Of course I'm actually talking about the blockbuster that became one of the most controversial films of the year, won four golden globes, and resulted in Zuckerberg's appearance alongside Jesse Eisenberg and Andy Samberg on SNL.

The Social Network portrays Zuckerberg as a lonely, bitter, egomaniac obsessed with popularity and power. Perhaps the movie's most pointed example is his ouster of his friend and cofounder Eduardo Saverin. In a dramatic scene, Saverin storms into the Facebook offices and berates Zuckerberg for betraying him, throws his computer to the ground, and threatens him. Zuckerberg's relationship with his Harvard classmates, the Winklevoss twins is perhaps the subject of even more controversy. In 2004, the twins approached Zuckerberg about helping them develop an idea that they had been working on for a year. The movie alleges that Zuckerberg stole this idea and turned it into Facebook. These portrayals combined with mania over privacy issues in the media conspire to produce a generally negative public opinion of the Facebook CEO. I'd like to dispel some of these misconceptions.

Portrayals of Zuckerberg such as The Social Network and this one on 60 Minutes are regrettably sensational and push a clear agenda. We don't have to look very far to find the incentive for sensationalizing the admittedly questionable origins of Facebook. The Social Network was created to sell tickets--not disseminate the truth. The movie makes no apology for glaring factual inaccuracies. For example, the movie implies that Zuckerberg's breakup with his girlfriend was a major motivation for his creation of the site when in reality he has been dating his current girlfriend since before he created Facebook. The fact that the creators of the blockbuster made their movie without regard for Zuckerberg's character is unfortunate.

Winklevi

The 60 Minutes special linked above is one of the purest example's of the media's baffling Zuckerberg witch hunt. Throughout the interview, Lesley Stahl, the interviewer pelts Zuckerberg with banal privacy questions and awaits his response with an annoyingly self-satisfied smirk. She rests her case on tenuous gotchas such as, "He vowed to never see the movie. On opening night, he changed his mind." Oh, Zuckerberg, you just can't muzzle your insatiable vanity, can you?

Watch the interview for yourself, but in my opinion Zuckerberg shows his sincerity by admitting mistakes and insisting that Facebook errs because of inexperience and enthusiasm rather than malice and greed. The interview reveals another reason the public doesn't trust Zuckerberg--he's awkward. He has trouble conveying his arguments in laymans terms, but since when has this crime carried the sentence of public character defamation?

Plenty of questions remain--especially concerning the murky origins of the company. I'll address these in Part 2 of my pro-Zuckerberg rant later this week.

Update: Part 2 is posted here.