Movie Review: Social Network

I think one of the major reasons this movie was so successful was because the majority of the people who watched it were part of the social media phenomenon.  People in their mid 20's to mid 30's were part of the era that boomed the internet - and i'm sure they all wish they were the ones that became billionaires.

I wonder exactly how much of the movie was fiction and real.. i mean.. they used the guy's real name.  The movie also portrays him as a douche bag.. how much of it is true?  Who knows.  I've been putting off watching this movie for a long time because even though it received great reviews, i just could not get it around my head that a movie about Social Networking would be interesting.

I was quite surprised though, because the story is well told.  It skips between past, present, and future - to show each characters progression in building Facebook.

Honestly I can't help but think of the potential Bjunkyard once had.  Sure it wasn't exactly the right idea to grow into a global spectrum.. but it did have more than 20,000 members and a million page views at it's peak.  There were even offers to buy the domain name.

When Napster was first going around letting users download music, i was already posting links to direct downloads for Kpop albums on my site.

When Friendster and MySpace were getting big, we already had a huge diverse group of members that linked with eachother.

Before Youtube was invented, bjunkyard was posting links to video streaming.

Yet.. the light bulb just never sparked on top of my head.  I remember having a conversation with Jet a long time ago when we were using free storage websites to host our video content - and how we should maybe invest on larger servers that would allow us to host our own files.  We even thought about allowing our users to just watch, and not download.  This was before Youtube.

Talking about it doesn't change anything though.. it is what it is.  There are still plenty of ideas that have not been thought of.. like auto mechanics that make house calls nationwide.

What really inspires me about Facebook is the fact that it was a late bloomer.. Friendster and MySpace was already way ahead of the game.. yet they fought on and became a powerhouse like no other.  Interestingly enough, Google was the same way.. Yahoo, Lycos, and Excite were the first search engines, yet Google now holds that market with one finger.

Who knows, maybe in a year or two, something bigger than what these companies think they have will come along.