The Social Network

David Fincher’s Facebook film, The Social Network, arrived with the strapline “You don’t get to 500,000 friends without making a few enemies”. Some tech industry voices suggest the movie could make Facebook a few more.

Described as a tale of “greed, obsession, unpredictability and sex”, it begins with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg responding to a break-up by creating a website to rate the attractiveness of female Harvard undergraduates. Although Facebook booked a special employee screening, Zuckerberg was said to be staying well away.

The Social Network premiered in the US on 1 October, the opening weekend corresponding to the major peak of social media coverage shown on the chart.

Drilling down into that peak, the reviews appearing on Facebook itself seem extremely positive: “funny”, “interesting” and great are commonly used.

Since becoming mainstream, Facebook has had its share of controversy. But issues of privacy and data-mining have seldom interested anyone outside the tech community, and Facebook’s growth has been unstoppable.

Any criticism of the company or its founder contained in The Social Network seems set to go the same way. The eccentricities of Zuckerberg and Facebook are talking points for media and IT specialists only. Users, on the other hand, continue to love the site.