The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal or commonly shortened to just The Accidental Billionaires, is Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book and second in his list of written work that has went on to be made into a major motion picture, this one was the inspiration behind The Social Network, directed by David Fincher.
This book involved the author contacting a few sources in order to be able to get legitimate information about what actually occurred, otherwise it’d made up of entirely fictional events. One of those sources, who provided most of the information was Eduardo Saverin himself, the co-founder of Facebook, and court documents that were made available to him, Mark Zuckerberg declined to speak to the author whilst this book was in progress.
It starts off terrifically well, at this moment Eduardo is the protagonist of the story, until he meets the shy and socially awkward Mark Zuckerberg. Eduardo learns that despite his unorthodox and geeky appearance, Mark is somewhat of a computer big shot, having heard he has turned down a 7 figure sum from Microsoft to work for them, immediately boosting his social enigma.
The pair both embark on their journey of gaining social acceptance. Eduardo finally joins the Phoenix club, which is known for it’s accessibility to the “hottest girls on campus”, whilst Mark jeopardises himself by creating a website using a certain algorithm that allows users to rank girls according to their looks. This all seems like fun and games until the site crashes the Harvard network servers resulting in Mark getting a slap on the wrist from Harvard’s’ ad board.
Thinking his public image has been destroyed, Mark is met by Harvard seniors and twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their friend Divya Narenda, who enquire him as to whether he will work on their project titled: “The Harvard Connection” – a chance for Mark to rehabilitate his image among fellow students. After a number of weeks and meetings with the three seniors, Mark decides that their site doesn’t have the potential to do well, and isn’t the correct approach, and begins to create a site of his own with some friends, thefacebook.com.
From this point on we enter a fast past journey through the rapid progress the website goes through, slowly reaching more and more members they begin to branch out and allow other schools to gain access to the website (as originally it was for Harvard students only) due to the popularity of it at Harvard. The book finishes when Eduardo is graduating from Harvard, having dropped out of Harvard with his friend Dustin, to put full time into his dorm room project, which is now a billion dollar company.
Despite the bulk of the book being very good and I use the cliché “simply unputdownable”, towards the end the narrator often repeats himself and the story itself fizzles out, it loses its roller coaster type storyline that offers that thrill that was maintained throughout.
The book was made into a major motion picture in 2010 and David Fincher was the man responsible. Now, normally with book to film adaptations I am in complete favour of the book, however in this case, I genuinely believe that the film offers everything that the book does and even more. It provides in excess to what the book was capable of and adds a whole new genre to the mix. It received widespread acclaim and went on to claim a number of accolades, these including Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Screenplay and Best Original Score. It was also nominated for several Academy Awards.
Jesse Eisenberg is cast as Zuckerberg, and from my own opinion I can’t think of a better actor to portay the internet billionaire, he actually won the Best Actor award for his performance. His shy, perhaps socially awkward role that has seen him land the lead role in “Zombieland” was perfect for this film.
Thanks to the help of Napster founder Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake – an odd choice but nevertheless a fantastic one) Facebook is met with the billionaire investors over in Silicon Valley, and expands globally. Whilst rowing over in London, the Winklevoss twins discover that Facebook has expanded over to Oxford and Cambridge, resulting in them suing the company for theft of intellectual property.
The film implements scenes of the two legal battles Facebook and Zuckerberg throughout, one filed by the Winklevoss twins, the other by Saverin. It provides an interesting take from different viewpoints and reflects on how the social network tore apart two friends which ironically is caused by a project that brings people together. This is something that the book didn’t provide and it’s this that makes the film more intense as it’s more realistic.
An epilogue reveals the following information: The Winklevoss’ received a settlement of $65 million as a result of their legal battle and went on to place sixth in the Beijing Olympics; Eduardo received a settlement of an unknown amount and his name was restored to the Facebook masthead as a Co-founder of Facebook; the website has over 500 million members in 207 countries and is valued at 25 billion dollars; and Mark Zuckerberg is the world’s youngest billionaire. With a higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes than The Shawshank Redemption, it must have done alright!
Watch the trailer for The Social Network here…
Double Take 
Think this will be a good read, loved the film.