The Social Network & Marc Zuckerburg

I saw “The Social Network” today. I can’t say how much I loved it. It was the second best movie for me this year post “Inception”. The movie was a justice done to Zuckerburg’s character and “facebook” being the buzz word these days across many Asian lips, gave the required marketing and promotion. I always love movies which are based on the generation greats and the hackers and the coders and the ones who changed the way the world would have been and is. I didn’t know that Zuckerburg ditched his best friend and that the idea behind facebook wasn’t solely his own. But I also didn’t know that he coded up the impossible and hacked into the Harvard systems and got 22000 hits for “facemash”. I can’t help but salute his prowess and the coding genius in him.

There are people who say that facebook isn’t going right with privacy and that many a features as suggested over a course of time are yet to be implemented and new features get added without any notification system caring about the users. They all are right. Post the movie, many who are now aware of the way facebook was formulated, do blame Zuckerberg’s actions. They are right too. But what all of them forget while holding Zuckerberg accountable is that he might have done something which was someone else’s idea but he did it in a way which no one ever could have done. Isn’t that what we all consider as the act of the master? Google’s “GMAIL” wasn’t the first mail provider over the World Wide Web. They became the market when they came up with a new world for mails and that’s what made Yahoo and Rediff pay. Skype wasn’t the first voice calling service available but that’s what we all are turning towards with Yahoo messenger and Rediff bol and Gtalk still hanging around. Often, the master is the one who walks the same path but with difference. Zuckerburg might have travelled the faulty ways to reach where he is today, but that’s not all about what he is. There is more to it. While you choose to consider the other half, make sure you do give him the half that’s his own. Be fair.

And when he flips his card which reads “I am the CEO, bitch”, I can’t agree less.

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