Wednesday, October 20, 2010

A Social Experiment

I watched the movie The Social Network the other night.  It’s about the co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and how he turned his Internet Social networking site Facebook into a multibillion dollar company.  Near the beginning of the movie, Zuckerberg was portrayed in a negative light after he posted a drunken blog online about his every thought.  In it he mentioned things about his ex-girlfriend such as how she wears a size C braw when she only has B’s; he called that false advertising and I agree.  This led to a fight between the two, and Zuckerberg does come off as a bit of an asshole in that scene, and it seems to continue through the movie.  Having said that, I found that the scene in the legal office/room, where they were having the talks with the lawyers, the one lady lawyer tells him that he's not an asshole; he just tries so hard to be one.  That made me connect with the character and feel like Zuckerburg was more like a real person who has struggles like the rest of us.
I think Facebooks popularity rose from the release of this movie, it got lots of media coverage, and after two or so weeks of being in the theatres, the show I went to was near full.  This probably did much more for Zuckerberg’s popularity more than that of Facebook’s though, since you had to of been living under a rock to not of heard of Facebook before, I don't think most poeple knew who Mark Zuckerberg was: and now we do.
The day the movie came out; Zuckerberg appeared on Oprah and announced the establishment of his foundation and his first gift of $100 million to the Newark school system.  I don’t think that it was necessary, and his claim: that the timing of the donation and its correlation to the movie release was just a coincidence, I thought was laughable.  However, when you have over 500 million on the most popular social networking site on the web, it’s going to take a lot to change people’s perception on the site.  I think he just should have made his appearance on Oprah and whatever other shows he appeared on, and saved his $100 million donation until the DVD release.


Sources Used:
http://prpost.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/zuckerberg-hearst-and-hollywood-pr-lessons-learned-from-the-past/

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for agreeing with the false advertising, that made my day. And I totally agree with the fact that this is Zuckerberg's loss and not Facebook's. Facebook is going to be just fine.

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  2. Facebook is too huge for one movie. 'Nuff said. It's going to take more than one bad PR move to ruin it.

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