The Social Network's Social Value

"The Social Network" was such an excellent movie because it made Mark Zuckerberg's character, played by Jesse Eisenberg, so despicable. Typically, a major-studio movie would glorify Zuckerberg's entrepreneurial upheaval of the business world and social norms and celebrate him as a shrewd outsider too young and confident to play by the rules, making us all the better. But this one, directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, who deserve lots of credit, didn't leave me enamored with Zuckerberg -- in fact, it was the opposite -- nor did it inspire me to start my own business and try to emulate his success. Mainly, it left me puzzled as to how he has become successful: What's the combination of skill, luck, motivation, greed and cruelty?

Fincher and Sorkin acknowledge Zuckerberg doesn't fit the classically popular, upwardly mobile type: He's short, thin, messily dressed, mildly attractive and Jewish, instead of tall, muscular, fashionable, handsome and a WASP-- the Harvard ideal of privilege, represented by the Winklevoss brothers whom he uses as his launching pad and quickly laps on the race to success. However, only within a certain stratum of Harvard society, a small fraction of a small fraction, is Zuckerberg an outsider; he's not actually one. He grew up in Westchester County, has upper-middle-class professional parents, and went to Harvard. There are only a small number of people in the U.S. -- probably somewhere in the low five figures, including me -- who fit this profile. It's a helpful launching pad to have.

The movie's other great provocation is questioning whether Facebook's social network has any social value. Fincher shows that the Web site dismantles the exclusivity of the social clubs that proliferate at Harvard, putting the misfits in charge. Aside from this again all being somewhat relative, Fincher also wonders if this has any deeper meaning. Even Zuckerberg's character tells his friend Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield, when Saverin closes their bank account, briefly threatening the business, that it was an idiotic move because the only reason anyone is online using Facebook is because his friends are online using Facebook. There's no rationale beyond a circular inner one where everyone is merely checking up on their friends' photos, relationship statuses, and other generally frivolous recent activity. Remove one card and the rest vanish.

Facebook has been credited as one of the social media Tunisian citizens used during the past month to topple their oppressive, corrupt president -- a powerful shot at Arab autocracies -- and the site/business create important connections within social circles, business and politics that couldn't have happened five years ago. But only a minuscule amount of Facebook's use falls into this meaningful category. The rest is, again, chasing after photos, relationship statuses and other generally frivolous recent activity. Such a distinction matters when Facebook is becoming one of the U.S.'s most important and highest-profile companies, with an estimated value of $50 billion, based on Goldman Sachs' recent investment (twice the value the producers of "The Social Network" gave in the film's closing credits, only about six months ago). This value easily surpasses those of old-guard media companies, such as Time Warner, but also makes me wonder why it's worth so much when nothing tangible is being created.

Is Facebook's rise a powerful symbol of the 21st-century economy's rise or the strongest example of how this economy is too vapid to sustain itself? Since watching the movie on a plane two weeks ago, I've still signed on to Facebook, though with somewhat less frequency and a slight twinge each time I do so.