The Accidental Billionaires | The Social Network
Book, 2009 by Ben Mezrich
Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends-outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and longtime legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with the opposite sex. The two figured their ticket to social acceptance-and sexual success-was getting invited to join one of Harvard's elite final clubs. But on their road to getting punched into the famous Phoenix Club, they found an even more valuable ticket to social stardom-one lonely night Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus, subsequently crashing the university's servers, and nearly getting himself kicked out of school. In that moment, in his spartan Harvard dorm room, the barebones framework for Facebook was born.
What followed-a real-life adventure filled with unimaginable wealth, sex, exotic locales, six-foot-five identical-twin Olympic rowers, and betrayal-makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. The great irony is that Facebook succeeded by bringing people together-while at the same time, it tore two best friends apart.
Movie, 2010 directed by David Fincher
Features: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake
Tagline: You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.
The film debuted at #1 this past weekend.
Have you read the book? Are you going to see the movie? Do you use Facebook?