Columbia Pictures original film The Social Network was released October 1st, 2010.
#TheSocialNetwork cleared $224.9M at the international box office.
rottentomatoes: 96%
metacritic: 95
imdb: 7.8
oscars: 3 wins
golden globes: 4 wins
SAG awards: 2 nominations
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg founds Facebook out of his dorm room at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
1 nomination: 2011
Best Actor – Motion Picture – Drama
1 nomination: 2011
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
1 nomination: 2011
“Did you know there are more people with genius IQs living in China than there are people of any kind living in the United States? It is. Well, first, an awful lot of people live in China, but here’s my question. How do you distinguish yourself in a population of people who all got 1600 on their SATs? They don’t. I wasn’t talking about China anymore, I was talking about me. Yes. I could sign in an a cappella group, but I can’t sing. I could row crew or invent a $25 PC. Or I get into a final club. This is serious. Well, I can’t do that. And, yes, I got nothing wrong on the test. I’m trying right now. To get into a final club. To row crew? No. Are you, like, whatever, delusional? But you’ve seen guys who row crew, right? Okay, well, they’re bigger than me. They’re world-class athletes. And a second ago, you said you like guys who row crew so I assumed you had met one. Okay.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“Would you like to talk about something else? The Phoenix is the most diverse. The Fly Club… Roosevelt punched the Porc. The Porcellian, the Porc. It’s the best of the best. Theodore. So you can see why it’s so important to get in. Why would you ask me that? None of them. That’s the point. My friend Eduardo made $300,000 betting oil futures one summer and Eduardo won’t come close to getting in. The ability to make money doesn’t impress anybody around here. He likes meteorology. You can read the weather, you can predict the price of heating oil. I think you asked me that because you think the final club that’s easiest to get into is the one where I’ll have the best chance. You asked me which one was the easiest to get into because you think that that’s the one where I’ll have the best chance. You didn’t ask me which one was the best one, you asked me which one was the easiest one. Erica. Final clubs. Not ‘finals clubs.’ And there’s a difference between being obsessed and being motivated. Well, you do. That was cryptic, so you do speak in code. I’m just saying I need to do something substantial in order to get the attention of the clubs. Because they’re exclusive. And fun, and they lead to a better life. He was a member of the Porcellian, and yes, he did. Did you really just say that? I wanna try to be straightforward with you and tell you I think you might want to be a little more supportive.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“If I get in, I will be taking you to the events and the gatherings, and you’ll be meeting a lot of people you wouldn’t normally get to meet. We’re dating. What do you mean? Is this a joke? You’re breaking up with me? Wait, settle down. Erica, the reason we’re able to sit here and drink right now is ’cause you used to sleep with the door guy. Wait. Wait, wait. Is this real? Then wait, I apologize, okay? Erica? I’m sorry, I mean it. Come on, you don’t have to study. Let’s just talk. Why? All I mean is that you’re not likely to… currently… I wasn’t making a comment on your appearance. I was saying that you go to BU. I was stating a fact, that’s all, and if it seemed rude, then I apologize. You don’t have to go study. ‘Cause you go to BU. Do you want to get some food? And I’m sorry I don’t have a rowboat, so we’re even. I don’t want friends. I’m under some pressure right now from my OS class and if we could just order some food, I think we should…” — Mark Zuckerberg
“Erica Albright’s a bitch. Do you think that’s because her family changed their name from Albrecht, or do you think it’s because all BU girls are bitches? For the record, she may look like a 34C, but she’s getting all kinds of help from our friends at Victoria’s Secret. She’s a 34B, as in barely anything there. False advertising. The truth is, she has a nice face. I need to do something to take my mind off her. Easy enough, except I need an idea. I’m a little intoxicated, I’m not gonna lie. So what if it’s not even 10:00 p.m. and it’s a Tuesday night? Billy. The Kirkland facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. Billy Olson’s sitting here and had the idea of putting some of the pictures next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on who’s hotter. Good call, Mr. Olson.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“Yeah, it’s on. I’m not gonna do the farm animals, but I like the idea of comparing two people together. It gives the whole thing a very ‘Turing’ feel since people’s ratings of the pictures will be more implicit than, say, choosing a number to represent each person’s hotness, like they do on hotornot.com. The first thing we’re going to need is a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, Harvard doesn’t keep a public centralized facebook, so I’m going to have to get all the images from the individual houses that people are in. Let the hacking begin.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“First up is Kirkland. They keep everything open and allow indexes in their Apache configuration. So a little Wget magic is all that’s necessary to download the entire Kirkland facebook. Kids’ stuff. Next is Eliot. They’re also open, but with no indexes on Apache. I can run an empty search and it returns all the images in the database in a single page. And I can save the page and Mozilla will save all the images for me. Excellent. Moving right along.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“Lowell has some security. They require a user name/password combo and I’m gonna go ahead and say they don’t have access to the main FAS user database, so they have no way of detecting intrusion. Adams has no security, but limits the number of results to 20 a page. All I need to do is break out the same script I used on Lowell and we’re set. Quincy has no online facebook. What a sham. Nothing I can do about that. Dunster is intense. Not only is there no public directory, but there’s no directory at all. You have to do searches, and if your search returns more than 20 matches, nothing gets returned. And once you do get results, they don’t link directly to the images. They link to a PHP that redirects or something. Weird. This may be difficult. I’ll come back later. Leverett is a little better. They still make you search but you can do an empty search and get links to pages with every student’s picture. It’s slightly obnoxious that they only let you view one picture at aa time, and there’s no way I’m going to go to 500 pages to download pics one at a time. So it’s definitely necessary to break out Emacs and modify that Perl script. Done.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“Perfect timing. Eduardo’s here and he’s going to have the key ingredient. Wardo. How did you know that? Yeah. I need you. No, I need the algorithm you use to rank chess players. We’re ranking girls. Yeah. I need the algorithm. I need the algorithm. When any two girls are matched up, there’s an expectation of which will win based on their current rating, right? Let’s write it. Just a couple of people. The question is, who are they gonna send it to?” — Mark Zuckerberg
“I do. It’s not a coincidence. That’s not what happened. No, back. Back at the bar with Erica Albright. She said all that? That I said that stuff to her? Yeah, why would you even need to depose her? You think if I know she can make me look like a jerk, I’ll be more likely to settle. I’m not embarrassed, she just made a lot of that up. Then I guess that would be the first time somebody’s lied under oath. Thousand. Twenty-two thousand.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“I… you know, I’ve already apologized in The Crimson to the ABHW, to Fuerza Latina, and to any women at Harvard who may have been insulted, as I take it that they were. As for any charges stemming from the breach of security, I believe I deserve some recognition from this board. Yes. Which part? I believe I’ve pointed out some pretty gaping holes in your system. Four hours? That would be impressive, except if you had known what you were looking for, you would have seen it written on my dorm room window.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“Six months academic probation. They had my blog. I shouldn’t have written that thing about the farm animals. That was stupid. But I was kidding, for God’s sakes. Doesn’t anybody have a sense of humor? I know. I know. Wardo, I said I know.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“One valid bit, one modified bit, one reference bit and five permission bits. Yeah. Hi. Are you guys related? So what can I do for you? Did I insult your girlfriends? You guys look like you spend some time at the gym. Why? Yeah, I’ve got a minute.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“No. I’ve heard. Okay. Yeah. Hi. Yeah. It was kind of a no-brainer. An app for an MP3 player that recognizes your taste in music. Microsoft. Didn’t sell it. Uploaded it for free. Yeah. Yeah, how is that different from MySpace or Friendster? Is exclusivity. Right? Wow. You would do that for me? I’m in. I’m in.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“It was three or four years ago. I don’t know what I said. I don’t understand that question. The affirmative? It was called The Facebook then. I’m currently in the middle of two different lawsuits. I said I’d help. I wouldn’t say I approached him. At a party at Alpha Epsilon Pi. The Jewish fraternity. It was Caribbean Night.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“I think I’ve come up with something. What? Are you kidding? So… you got punched by the Phoenix. Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ve come up with something. Come outside and let’s talk. I can’t stare at that loop of Niagara Falls, which has absolutely nothing to do with the Caribbean.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“People came to Facemash in a stampede, right? But it wasn’t because they saw pictures of hot girls. You can go anywhere on the internet and see pictures of hot girls. It was because they saw pictures of girls that they knew. People want to go on the internet and check out their friends, so why not build a website that offers that? Friends, pictures, profiles, whatever you can visit. Browse around. Maybe it’s someone you just met at a party. But I’m not talking about a dating site. I’m talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online. I know. I’m totally psyched about this, too. But, Wardo? You would have to know the people on the site to get past your own page. Like getting punched. Wardo, it’s a final club, except we’re the president.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“We’re gonna need a little start-up cash to rent the servers and get it online. We’ll split it, 70/30. 70 for me, 30 for you for putting up the $1,000 and for handling everything on the business end. You’re CFO. It was probably a diversity thing. But so what? That I was jealous of Eduardo for getting punched by the Phoenix and began a plan to screw him out of a company I hadn’t even invented yet. Jealous of Eduardo? Ma’am, I know you’ve done your homework, and so you know that money isn’t a big part of my life. But at the moment, I could buy Mount Auburn Street, take the Phoenix Club and turn it into my ping-pong room.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“I need a dedicated Linux box running Apache with a MySQL back end. It’s gonna cost a little more money. About 200 more. Gotta handle the traffic. I already did. That’s good. You should be proud of that right there. Don’t worry if you don’t make it any further.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“Do you see any of your code on Facebook? Did I use any of your code? What? Match.com for Harvard guys? You know, you really don’t need a forensics team to get to the bottom of this. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook. No shit.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“Dustin. People don’t walk around with a sign on them that says… I have to add something. It’s clean and simple. No Disneyland, no ‘live nude girls.’ But watch. ‘Relationship Status.’ ‘Interested In.’ This is what drives life at college. ‘Are you having sex or aren’t you?’ It’s why people take certain classes and sit where they sit and do what they do. And at its center, you know, that’s what The Facebook is gonna be about. People are gonna log on because after all the cake and watermelon, there’s a chance they’re actually… …meet a girl. Yes. And that was it. It’s ready. Yeah. That was it. And here’s the masthead. Yeah. Yeah. Sure I do. Right now. Get your laptop out. Because you’ve got e-mails for everybody at the Phoenix. This is not spam. If we send it to our friends, it’s just gonna bounce around Dworkin. These guys know people. And I need their e-mails. Good. Give me the mailing list. These guys. Yeah, they’re literary geniuses because the world’s most obvious Lewis Carroll reference is in… I’m just saying. The site’s live.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“‘A family of means?’ I’m not sure why you’re asking me that. It’s not important to you. I had no idea whether they came from money or not. If you say so. Mmm-hmm. They pointed that out. To the bike room. Yes.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“I went to my friend for the money because that’s who I wanted to be partners with. Eduardo was the president of the Harvard Inventors Association, and he was also my best friend. I didn’t know that. Tell me more.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“They wanna have drinks later. Yeah? Sure. Thanks. How you doing? I doubt it. It was Bill Gates.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“What were their names? When? What does that mean? No, I know what the word means. I’m asking how you wanna do it. No. ‘Cause The Facebook is cool, and if we start installing pop-ups for Mountain Dew, it’s not gonna be cool. We don’t even know what it is yet. We don’t know what it is. We don’t know what it can be. We don’t know what it will be. We know that it is cool. That is a priceless asset I’m not giving up. It won’t be finished. That’s the point. The way fashion’s never finished. Fashion. Fashion is never finished. I’m talking about the idea of it and I’m saying that it’s never finished. What? It’s called a cease-and-desist letter. What were their names? The girls. About 10 days ago. Right after we launched the site. Hey, the girls. What were their names? I find that to be a little more than mildly annoying. Look… it was addressed to me. I know what it says. Did we what? No, it says I could face legal action. The lawyer is their father’s house counsel. The grounds are our thing is cool and popular, and Harvard Connection is lame. Wardo, I didn’t use any of their code, I promise. I didn’t use anything. Look, a guy who builds a nice chair doesn’t owe money to everyone who ever has built a chair, okay? They came to me with an idea, I had a better one. I didn’t think it was a big deal. No. I went to a 3L at Student Legal Services and he told me to write them back. I’d raised concerns before. Yeah. Is that a question? No. It’s raining. It just started raining. No. What? I had to swear an oath before we began this deposition and I don’t wanna perjure myself, so I have a legal obligation to say no. I think if your clients wanna sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have a right to give it a try, but there’s no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention. You have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing. Did I adequately answer your condescending question?” — Mark Zuckerberg
“So what were their names? I’ll be right back. Erica? I saw you from over there. I didn’t know you came to this club a lot. Mine, too. Could I talk to you alone for a second? I just… I’d love to talk to you alone if we could just go someplace. I don’t know if you heard about this new website I launched. The Facebook? That’s why I wanted to talk to you. That’s why I came over. I didn’t end up doing that. If we could just go somewhere for a minute… okay.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“We have to expand. Okay, we are expanding to Yale and Columbia. Dustin, I want you to share the coding work with me. Chris, you’re gonna be in charge of publicity and outreach, and you could start by getting a story in the BU student newspaper. Somebody at the newspaper will be a computer science major. Tell them that Mark Zuckerberg will do 10 hours of free programming. Because I do. Now here’s the arrangement. Eduardo is CFO and owns 30% of the company. Dustin is vice president and head of programming, and his 5% of the company will come from my end. Chris is director of publicity, and his compensation will depend on how much work he ends up doing. Any questions? No, that’s it. Yale and Columbia, let’s go. What?” — Mark Zuckerberg
“No. No, thank you. Who are you? I mean, what do you do? Checking in to see how it’s going in Bosnia. I don’t hate anybody. The Winkelvi aren’t suing me for intellectual property theft. They are suing me because for the first time in their lives, things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to for them.” — Mark Zuckerberg
Eduardo Saverin
Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture
1 nomination: 2011
“Hey, what’s going on? Hey, Mark. You and Erica split up. It’s on your blog. Are you all right? I’m here for you. Are you okay? You mean other students. You think this is such a good idea? Mark… give each girl a base rating of 1400. At any given time Girl A has a rating R-a and girl B has a rating R-b. Yeah. And those expectations are expressed this way. Yeah, still the right. It works. Dwyer. Who are you gonna send it to?”
“Man, that’s an awful lot of traffic. You think maybe we shouldn’t shut it down before we get into trouble?
“You don’t think… go see if it’s everybody’s. Unless it’s a coincidence, I think this is us. Holy shit.”
“So? Wow. Well, they had to make an example out of you. I tried to stop you. How do you do this thing where you manage to get all girls to hate us? And why do I let you? You can’t do that.”
“It’s not that guys like me are generally attracted to Asian girls. It’s that Asian girls are generally attracted to guys like me. I don’t think it’s that complicated. They’re hot, they’re smart, they’re not Jewish, and they can’t dance. Mark! Be right back.”
“Hang on. I gotta tell you something that you’re not gonna believe. I got punched by the Phoenix. No. I mean, it’s just the first of a four-step process, but they slid the invitation under my door tonight. I go to my first punch party tomorrow. Yeah, but, you know, it was probably just a diversity thing. It was just a diversity thing. Just ride that horse until… what did you wanna talk to me about? Mark? You said you’d come up with something. It’s 20 degrees outside.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I can’t feel my legs. Yeah? ‘It would be exclusive.’ Now, that’s good. I told him I thought it sounded great. It was a great idea. There was nothing to hack. People were gonna provide their own pictures, their own information. And people had the ability to invite, or not invite, their friends to join. See, in a world where social structure was everything, that was the thing. It was a big project, and he was going to have to write tens of thousands of lines of code, so I wondered why he was coming to me and not his roommates, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. They were programmers.”
“So that was why. Yes. I said, ‘let’s do it.’ Yes. I’ll let you know how the party is.”
“Yes, sir. Yes. He said they’d asked him to work on their site, but that he looked at what they had and decided it wasn’t worth his time. He said even his most pathetic friends knew more about getting people interested in a website than these guys. Yes. He resented… Mark resented that your clients thought that he needed to rehabilitate his image after Facemash. But Mark didn’t want to rehabilitate anything. With Facemash, he’d hacked into the Harvard computers, he’d thumbed his nose at the Ad Board, he’d gotten a lot of notoriety. Facemash did exactly what he wanted it to do.”
“Not at the time, I wasn’t. But… it really didn’t have much to do with the Winklevosses’ dating site. I know, I know. Yeah, watch out.”
“Hey, Mark. How much more? Do we need it? Do it. Hey, guess what? I made the second cut. I’ll get out of here.”
“I know. One, Harvard was founded in 1636, not 1638. Two, Harvard was not founded by John Harvard. And three, that is not John Harvard. It’s a friend of the sculptor, Daniel Chester. Not to my knowledge. No.”
“We were supposed to meet at 9:00. Have you slept yet? What? Shit, that looks good. That looks really good. What’d you write? Gonna get laid. That is really good. What do you mean? It’s ready? Right now? You made a masthead. ‘Eduardo Saverin, co-founder and CFO.’ You have no idea what that’s gonna mean to my father. So when’s it going live? What? Why do we need my laptop? Oh. Yeah, I’m not sure if it’s gonna be cool with them that I spam their e-mails. No, I know it’s not spam. I haven’t gotten in yet. Sure. Jabberwock12.listserv@harvard.edu. They’re not so bad. Yeah, you’re right. You know, let’s go get a drink and celebrate. I’m buying. Mark. Mark, are you praying?”
“It exploded. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s both of ours. We’re… yeah, we…. yes. Well, very nice to meet you. Certainly. Absolutely do that. She said, ‘Facebook me and we can all go for a drink later’, which is stunningly great for two reasons. One, she said ‘facebook me,’ right? And then the other is, well, you know… yes, have you ever heard so many different good things packed into one regular-sized sentence? All right. Thanks, guys.”
“It’s time to monetize the thing. Hear what I just said? I said it’s time to monetize the site. It means it’s time for the website to start generating revenue. Advertising. Well, we got 4,000 members. Well, I wasn’t thinking Mountain Dew, but at some point, and I’m talking as the business end of the company, the site… so when will it be finished? What? You’re talking about fashion? Really, you? Okay. But they manage to make money selling pants. Mark, what is this? This. Who? When did you get this? Jesus Christ. The Winklevoss twins are saying that stole your idea. Oh, well they find it to be intellectual property theft. Why didn’t you show this to me? They’re saying that we stole The Facebook from Divya Narendra and the Winklevosses. Did we? Don’t screw around with me now. Look at me. The letter says we could face legal action. This is from a lawyer, Mark. They must feel they have some grounds. Do they have grounds? Why didn’t you show me this letter? Okay. So if there’s something wrong, if there’s ever anything wrong, you can tell me. I’m the guy that wants to help. This is our thing. Now, is there anything that you need to tell me? What are we doing about this? And what did you say?”
“‘The lack of hardware we had to deal with site use, the lack of promotion that would go on to successfully launch the website.'”
“Their names were Christy and Alice, and they wanna have drinks tonight. You’re not supposed to be in here. This is a men’s room. Wow. Oh, my God. Hey, man, sorry. A couple girls are freshening up in there. We have groupies. Mark, where you going? Mark.”
“Hey, that was great. That was the right thing to do. You apologized, right? Sure. Mark?”
“Why do you want a story in the BU newspaper? Sorry. They’re Christy and Alice. And Stanford. Stanford. It’s time for them to see this in Palo Alto.”
Sean Parker
“Okay. Is it Stanford? Amelia Ritter, but you prefer Amy. You’re from Orinda. Your father’s in commercial real estate and your mother’s 10 years sober. Trombone. I remember something about a trombone. French. Your major’s French. Mine? I don’t have one. I don’t go to school. No. William Taft Elementary, for a little while. No. Wait, you’re not like 15, are you? I’m an entrepreneur. I wouldn’t say that. That I’m an entrepreneur. Well, I founded an internet company that let folks download and share music for free. Exactly like Napster. I founded Napster. Nice to meet you. Ah-ha! You see, the shoe’s on the other… table, which has turned. You just slept on Sean Parker. Not technically. Broke. There’s not a lot of money in free music, even less when you’re being sued by everyone who’s ever been to the Grammys. I appreciate that. Biochem, even though you’re a French major whose name is Amy. I’m a hard worker. You mind if I check my e-mail? Amy! Jesus. Amy! Can you come out here? There’s a snake in here, Amy. There isn’t a snake, but I need to ask you something. How? Yeah, I went to check my e-mail and there’s a website on your computer. What’s that? Mind if I send myself an e-mail? Everything’s great. I just need to find you, Mark Zuckerberg.”
Erica Albright
“That can’t possibly be true. What would account for that? I didn’t know they take SATs in China. You got a 1600? Does that mean you actually got nothing wrong? Or you could get into a final club. You know, from a woman’s perspective, sometimes not singing in an a cappella group is a good thing. On the other hand, I do like guys who row crew. I was kidding. Have you ever tried? To row crew? Maybe it’s just sometimes you say two things at once. I’m not sure which one I’m supposed to be aiming at. No. I guess I just meant I like the idea of it. You know, the way a girl likes cowboys. Should we get something to eat?”
“No. It’s just since the beginning of the conversation about finals club, I think I may have missed a birthday. There are really more people in China with genius IQs than the entire population… which one? Which Roosevelt? Is it true that they send a bus around to pick up girls who want to party with the next Fed chairman? Okay, well, which is the easiest to get into? I was just asking. Must be nice. He made $300,000 in a summer? You said it was oil futures. I… what? The one that’s the easiest to get into would be the one where anybody has the best chance. I was honestly just asking, okay? I was just asking to ask. Mark, I’m speaking in code. You’re obsessed with finals clubs. You have finals clubs OCD and you need to see someone about it who will prescribe you some sort of medication. You don’t care if the side effects may include blindness. Yes. There is. I didn’t mean to ne cryptic. Why? Teddy Roosevelt didn’t get elected president because he was a member of the Phoenix Club. Well, why don’t you just concentrate on being the best you you can be? I was kidding. Just because something’s trite doesn’t make it less true.”
“You would do that for me? Okay. Well, I wanna try and be straightforward with you and let you know that we’re not anymore. We’re not dating anymore. I’m sorry. No, it’s not. You’re gonna introduce me to people I wouldn’t normally have the chance to meet? What the… what is that supposed to mean? What is it supposed to mean? ‘The door guy?’ His name is Bobby. I have not slept with the door guy. The door guy is a friend of mine, and he’s a perfectly good class of people. And what part of Long Island are you from, Wimbledon? I’m going back to my dorm. Yes. I have to go study. Yes? Yes? I appreciate that, but I have to go study. I can’t. Because it is exhausting. Dating you is like dating a StairMaster. I have to go study. Why do you keep saying I don’t have to go study? I am sorry you are not sufficiently impressed with my education. I think we should just be friends. I was just being polite. I have no intentions of being friends with you. Okay, you are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you’re gonna go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know from the bottom of my heart that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.”
“Hi. First time. I think I’m good right here. Right here is fine. No. You called me a bitch on the internet, Mark. On the internet. Comparing women to farm animals. It didn’t stop you from writing it. As if every thought that tumbles through your head was so clever it would be a crime for it not be shared. The internet’s not written in pencil, Mark, it’s written in ink, and you published that Erica Albright was a bitch, right before you made some ignorant crack about my family’s name, my bra size, and then rated women based on their hotness. No, there’s no problem. You write your snide bullshit from a dark room because that’s what the angry do nowadays. I was nice to you. Don’t torture me for it. I don’t wanna be rude to my friends. Good luck with your video game.”
The Winklevoss Twins
“Is there any way to make this a fair fight? Jump out and swim. I think we’d have to jump out and drown. Well, you could row forward and I could row backward. We’re genetically identical. Science says we’d stay in one place. Just row the damn boat.”
“What? Really? How? I don’t know. A three-hour low-rate technical row before breakfast. Full course load. Studying. Another three hours in the tank and then studying. I’m not sure how we missed it. How much activity was there on this thing? Twenty-two thousand page requests. Twenty-two thousand? Cam, this guy hacked the facebook of seven houses. He set up the whole website in one night, and he did it while he was drunk. Twenty-two thousand? Well, how do you know he was drunk? Way ahead of you.”
“Cameron Winklevoss. W-I-N-K-L-E-V-O-S-S. ‘Cameron’ spelled the usual way. Tyler Winklevoss. Tyler spelled the usual way, and my last name is the same as my brother’s.”
“Mark? You Mark Zuckerberg? Cameron Winklevoss. Tyler Winklevoss. That’s good. Funny. We never heard that before. No. You didn’t. Actually, I don’t know. Yeah, we never asked. We should do that. No. We have an idea we want to talk to you about. You got a minute? We have to. We row crew. Great.”
“So, you ever been inside the Porcellian? You understand we can’t take you past the bike room, because you’re not a member. You want a sandwich or something? Mark, this is Divya Narendra, our partner. I don’t know CourseMatch. Okay, well, we have something that we’ve been working on for a while and we think it’s great. It’s called the Harvard Connection. You create your own page. Interests, bio, friends, pics. And then people can go online, see your bio, request to be your… Harvard.edu. Harvard.edu is the most prestigious email address in the country, man. I mean, the whole site’s kind of based on the idea that girls… not to put anything indelicately, but… Divya and my brother don’t have trouble putting things indelicately. The main difference between what we’re talking about and MySpace or Friendster, or any of those other social networking sites is… yeah.”
“We’d love for you to work with us, Mark. I mean, we need a gifted programmer who’s creative. And we know that you’ve been taking it in the shins. Our first programmer graduated and went to work for Google. Our second programmer just got overwhelmed with schoolwork. We would need you to build the site and write the code, and we’ll provide all the… what? Awesome.”
“How would you know? You weren’t even there. Tell him okay, but we do have to make sure that we meet up before we all go off for break.”
“What in the world is this? ‘Hey, Cameron, I’m still a little skeptical that we have enough functionality in the site to really draw the attention and gain the critical mass necessary to get a site like this to run?’ ‘We’ll speak soon?'”
“Not now! We need 20 minutes! Mr. Hotchkiss? Ty, lawyer’s on the phone with Dad. Yes, sir, I’m here with my brother Tyler and our business partner Divya. ‘Welcome to The Facebook. The Facebook is an online directory that connects people through different social networks. You must have a harvard.edu address to register.’ Yes, sir. He’s actually quoted a couple times. I can read it to you. ‘Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal facebook within Harvard,’ he says. ‘He’ meaning Mark. ‘I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the university a couple of years to get around to it. I can do a classier job that they can and I did it in a week.’ I know, that’s how he talks. Appreciate it. Yeah, Divya was just reading that 650 students signed up for it on the first day. God, if I was a drug dealer I couldn’t give free drugs to 650 people in one day. All right. Yes, that’s what we’ll do, Mr. Hotchkiss. We’ll put all this together and we’ll e-mail it to you. Well, you won’t be able to go on the website yourself. Because you don’t have a Harvard… you know what, it would just be easier for us to e-mail it to you. I’m sure you’re right. He’s a good guy and he’s very bright and I’m sure he didn’t mean to do… …what he did. All right, thank you very much. And, Dad… all right, love you, too. We don’t know that he’s not a good guy. No, he never lied to our faces. I’m a competitive racer, Div. I don’t think you need to school me in the importance of getting there first. Thank you. It was his in-house counsel. He’s gonna look at all this and if he thinks it’s appropriate he’ll send a cease-and-desist letter. What do you wanna hire an IP lawyer and sue him? We don’t even have to do that. That’s right. We could do that ourselves. I’m 6’5″, 220, and there’s two of me. Well, whatever. I’m saying, let’s calm down until we know what we’re talking about. It says ‘A Mark Zuckerberg production.’ On every page. Okay, look, we don’t know… Cam, they wrote, ‘Zuckerberg said he hoped the privacy options would help restore his reputation following student outrage over facemash.com.’ That’s exactly what we said to him. He’s giving us the finger in The Crimson. While we’re waiting for Dad’s lawyer we can at least get something going in the paper so people know… what? …that this is in dispute. We’re not starting a knife fight in The Crimson. And we’re not suing anybody. He’s gonna say it’s stupid. What, who, me? Because we’re gentlemen of Harvard. This is Harvard, where you don’t plant stories and you don’t sue people.”
“Excuse us for inviting you in. Bullshit. What? Really? Well, looks like that cease-and-desist letter really scared the shit out of him, huh? Yeah, I want those things, too. No, it’s because you’re not thinking how it’s gonna look. Like my brother and I are in skeleton costumes chasing the Karate Kid around a high school gym. There’s no such thing as Harvard law. Wait. Yeah, there is. Harvard Student Handbook. Every freshman is issued one of these, and somewhere in this book it says… you can’t steal from another student. This is what we needed. We’re going to Summers. My brother and I, we pay tuition at this school. We carry a 3.9 GPA at this school. We’ve won trophies for this school. And we’ll be rowing in the Olympics for this school. I want a meeting with the goddamn president of this school. Why Stanford?”
Divya Narendra
“You guys hear about this? Two nights ago, a sophomore choked the network from a laptop at Kirkland. At 4:00 a.m. He set up a website where you vote on the hotness of female undergrads. What were we doing that none of us heard about this? He was blogging simultaneously. You know what I think? This is our guy.”
“Mark, right? We were really impressed with Facemash. When we checked you out, you also built CourseMatch. You go online and see what courses your friends are taking. It’s really smart, man. Mark. We were talking about CourseMatch. But you invented something in high school, too, right? Anybody try to buy it? Wow. How much? For free? Why? Girls wanna go with guys who go to Harvard. Right.”
“Women’s groups are ready to declare a fatwa. But, you know, this could help rehabilitate your image. We’d like to work with you.”
“‘I’m also really busy tomorrow.’ Okay anybody else feel like there’s something up with this guy?”
“‘I won’t really be free to meet until next Wednesday afternoon.’ ‘…won’t be able to do Saturday, as I have to meet up with my parents.'”
“Yes, it was. That’s correct. He had 42 days to study our system and get out ahead. You stole our whole goddamn idea. I can’t wait to stand over your shoulder and watch you write us a check.”
“Honey, you should put your laptop away. KC. This isn’t mine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.”
“Hey! Hey! Okay. I just wanted to let you know that Zuckerberg stole our website. Mark Zuckerberg? He stole our website. It’s been live for more than 36 hours. Yeah, I called earlier. I’m looking for Mark Zuckerberg. Tell him Divya Narendra called. ‘As of yesterday evening, Zuckerberg said, over 650 students had registered to use thefacebook.com. He said he anticipated that 900 students would have joined the site by this morning.’ And this guy doesn’t have three friends to rub together to rub together to make a fourth. Wow. This is a good guy? We know he stole our idea. We know he lied to our faces for a month and a half. Okay, he never saw our faces. Fine, he lied to our e-mail accounts and he gave himself a 42-day head start, because he knows what apparently you don’t, which is that getting there first is everything. That was your father’s lawyer? What’s that gonna do? No, I wanna hire the Sopranos to beat the shit out of him with a hammer. I’m with this guy. How much more information are you waiting for? We met with Mark three times, we exchanged 52 e-mails, we can prove that he looked at the code. What is that on the bottom of the page? On the home page? Shit, I need a second to let the classiness waft over me. Why not? I don’t understand. I don’t understand. Why not? Say it. Why not? You thought he was gonna be the only one who thought that was stupid?”
“Everybody on campus was using it. ‘Facebook me’ was a common expression after two weeks. And Mark was the biggest thing on a campus that included 19 Nobel laureates, 15 Pulitzer Prize winners, two future Olympians, and a movie star. Does it matter?”
“Not to us. He’s expanding. He’s expanding to Yale, Columbia, and Stanford. Yep. I wanna hire a lawyer to file for injunctive relief and get the site taken down now. Every minute the site is up, Harvard Connection becomes less valuable. I want an injunction. I want damages. I want punitive relief. And I want him dead. Then why aren’t we doing anything about it? Because we’re gentlemen of Harvard? How’s it gonna look? Cam, he’s violated Massachusetts state law. When he goes to Connecticut, New York and California, he’ll have violated federal law. And, by the way, he’s in violation of Harvard law. Well, you can’t get a meeting with Larry Summers. Why do you think?”
Lawyers
“So you were called in front of the Ad Board. You weren’t called in front of the Administrative Board?”
“Mark… I was reading from the transcript of her deposition. That’s really for us to decide. Why don’t we stretch our legs for a minute? Can we do that? It’s been almost three hours. And frankly, you did spend an awful lot of time embarrassing Mr. Zuckerberg with the girl’s testimony from the bar. She was under oath.”
“The site got 2,200 hits within two hours? What? Wow.”
“That’s what you said? When did you come to Eduardo? Do you remember answering in the affirmative? When did you come to Eduardo with the idea for Facebook? This doesn’t need to be that difficult. Did you answer affirmatively when Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra asked you to build Harvard Connection? Did you say yes?”
“When did you approach Mr. Saverin with the idea for The Facebook? Sy. You can answer the question. What’s that?”
“Did he offer you terms? And you said? Okay. Did he add anything else? Why do you think he said that? Gretchen, excuse me for interrupting, but whose discovery is this? Sy, if you’ll let me continue with my line of questioning. What are you suggesting? Were you? Gretchen. Stop typing. We’re off the record.”
“We recognize that you’re a plaintiff in one suit involving Facebook, and a witness in another. At any time in the weeks prior to Mark’s telling you his idea, did he mention Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss, Divya Narendra or Harvard Connection? ‘These guys,’ meaning my clients. Were you aware that while Mr. Zuckerberg was building The Facebook, he was also communicating with the plaintiffs?”
“Ty. Were you aware that while Mr. Zuckerberg was building The Facebook, he was leading the plaintiffs to believe he was building Harvard Connection? You’re offering a conclusion not found in evidence. We are about to find it in evidence. From Mark Zuckerberg to Tyler Winkelvoss. November 30th, 2003. ‘I read over all the stuff you sent me re: Harvard Connection. And it seems like it shouldn’t take too long to implement. So we can talk about it after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night.’ From Mark Zuckerberg to Cameron Winklevoss. December 1st, 2003. ‘Sorry I was unreachable tonight. I just got about three of your missed calls. I was working on a problem set for my systems class.’ From Mark Zuckerberg to Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. December 10, 2003.”
“‘This week has been pretty busy thus far with classes and work, so I think it’s probably best to postpone the meeting.’ From Mark Zuckerberg to Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra. December 15th, 2003. ‘I have a CS problem set that I’m just getting started with and it should be about 15 hours of coding, so I’ll be busy tomorrow night.'”
“‘I have to cancel Wednesday afternoon. I’ve basically been in the lab this whole time, and also I…’ thirty-nine days after Mr. Zuckerberg’s initial meeting with my clients and he still hadn’t completed work on Harvard Connection. But on January 11th, 2004, Mr. Zuckerberg registered the domain name The Facebook via Network Solutions. To the best of your knowledge, had he even begun work on Harvard Connection?”
“This is the first time he mentioned any problem? You sent 36 e-mails to Mr. Zuckerberg and received 16 -emails in return, and this was the first time he indicated he was not happy. Sy, could you… fellas. Can I continue with my deposition? Let’s continue. February 4, 2004.”
“During the time when you say you had this idea, did you know Tyler and Cameron came from a family of means? Did you know their father was wealthy? It’s not important be sure why I’m asking. Sy. Did you know that they came from money? In one of your e-mails to Mr. Narendra, you referenced Howard Winklevoss’ consulting firm. Howard Winklevoss founded a firm whose assets are in the hundreds of millions. You also knew Tyler and Cameron were members of a Harvard final club called the Porcellian. Please. So it’s safe to say you were aware that my clients had money. Let me tell you why I’m asking. I’m wondering why, if you needed $1,000 for an internet venture, you didn’t ask my clients for it. They had demonstrated an interest to you in that kind of thing. Your best friend is suing you for $600 million. Eduardo, what happened after the initial launch. I’m sorry, Sr, would you mind addressing him as Mr. Saverin? Gretchen, they’re best friends. Not anymore. Well, we already went through this on the… never mind. Mr. Saverin, what happened after the initial launch?”
“And Mark? Who was the movie star? No. ‘When we met in January, I expressed my doubts about the site. Where it stood with the graphics, how much programing was left that I had not anticipated.’ This was the first time you raised any of those concerns, right? Gentlemen, I’m talking about at the meeting in January to which this letter is referring. Let me rephrase this. You sent my client 16 e-mails. In the first 15 you didn’t raise any concerns. In the 16th e-mail you raised concerns about the site’s functionality. Were you leading them on for six weeks? Then why didn’t you raise any of these concerns before? I’m sorry? Mr. Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention? Do you think I deserve it? Do you think I deserve your full attention? Okay. No. You don’t think I deserve your attention? Well, I have 12:45. Why don’t we say that’s lunch? Back at 2:30.”
“You don’t want any lunch? You’re welcome to some salad. This must be hard. I’m Marylin Delpy. I introduced myself when we first… I’m a second-year associate at the firm. My boss wanted me to sit in on the deposition phase. What are you doing? Bosnia. They don’t have roads, but they have Facebook. You must really hate the Winklevoss.”
Harvard
“Hey, Shark Week’s on.”
“What? Great white, beautiful fish. Nice.”
“One on the left. The right. Neal.”
“Someone go to the left. Dude, do left. Left is hot. Left? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s my roommate. Oh, my God. The girl on the left. This is pathetic. Right. Left. Left. Left? Left. Ooh, Latina. Left. One on the right. Left.”
“Hello? Wait, wait, wait, wait. What? At 4:00 in the morning? Well, there’s an unusual amount of traffic to the switch at Kirkland. You’re saying it’s unusual for 4:00 in the morning? You’re saying it’s unusual for 4:00 in the morning? No, this’d be unusual for halftime at the Super Bowl. All right. I gotta go in. What’s going on? Harvard’s network is about to crash.”
“I can’t connect.”
“These guys are just freakin’ fast.”
“Mr. Zuckerberg, this is an Administrative Board hearing. You’re being accused of intentionally breaching security, violating copyrights, violating individual privacy by creating the website www.facemash.com. You’re also charged with being in violation of university policy, on distribution of digitized images. Before we begin with our questioning, you’re allowed to make a statement. Would you like to do so? I’m sorry? I don’t understand. You deserve recognition? Excuse me, may I? Yes. Mr. Zuckerberg, I’m in charge of security for all computers on the Harvard network, and I can assure you of its sophistication. In fact, it was that level of sophistication that led us to you in less than four hours. Yes, sir.”
“Okay, let’s look at a sample problem. Suppose we’re given a computer with a 16-bit virtual address and a page size of 256 bytes. The system uses one-level page tables that start at address hex 400. Maybe you want DMA on your 16-bit system. Who knows? The first few pages are reserved for hardware flags, etc. Assume page-table entries have eight status bits. The eight status bits would then be… anybody? Ah! And I see we have our first surrender. Don’t worry, Mr. Zuckerberg. Brighter men than you have tried and failed this class. That is correct. Does everybody see how he got there?”
“Hey, Mark’s here.”
“The three lies. First… shit!”
“Whatever happened to Cole Porter and Irving Berlin? It’s a Valentine’s Day theme. They’re playing love songs. Good point. ‘Cause Cole Porter and Irving Berlin never wrote any love songs. Seven different people spammed me the same link. What is it? I don’t know. But I’m really hoping it’s Cats That Look Like Hitler, ’cause I can never get enough of that. No, it’s not. Div! What? Okay, what is wrong?”
“Excuse me, Mark. I’m Stuart Singer. I’m in your OS lab. Awesome job with The Facebook. Awesome job. I’m Bob. You know, I could swear he was looking at you when he said the next Bill Gates could be right in this room. And I showed up late. I don’t even know who the speaker was. Shit, that makes sense. Are you a moron? Are you medically stupid? You can’t tell Bill Gates is in front of you for an hour? I wasn’t wearing my contacts. Can I get a Glock and kill you?”
“Sweet. Erica, is there a problem? Is he mad about something?”
“It’s The Bridge. They hate doing stories about Harvard. Hello. Hi.”
Bill Gates
“…at Out of Town News and picked up that copy of Popular Electronics magazine with the MITS Altair kit on the cover. It was a beautiful day and I was in my Radcliffe dorm room. He brought that magazine up and he showed it to me and he said, ‘look, it’s gonna happen without us.’ ‘We’ve gotta start now.’ And I said, ‘okay. Let’s get BASIC out there.’ Now, most of you think you know the rest of the story, but you may not. The beginnings of this industry were very humble. That kit computer on the cover of that magazine had an 8080 processor in it. Unless you paid extra for a 1K memory board, you got 256 bytes. So the challenge when I wrote BASIC wasn’t just to run at 4 k-bytes, but I also had to leave room for the users to run their programs in 4 k-bytes.”
Christy Ling
“Your friend. Is that Mark Zuckerberg? He made The Facebook? Cool. I’m Christy Ling. This is Alice. Facebook me when you get home. You know, maybe we can all go out and grab a drink.”
“I don’t care.”
“Hi. Is there anything we can do?”
Dustin Moskovitz
“Here you go.”
“Who should we send it to first?”
“The network’s down.”
“I’m developing an algorithm to define the connection between Jewish guys and Asian girls.”
“Mark. Mark. There is a girl in your art history class. Her name is Stephanie Attis. Do you happen to know if she has a boyfriend? Have you ever seen her with anyone? And, if not, do you happen to know if she’s looking to go out with anyone? Mark?”
“Who are the girls? Hi.”
Baylor
“Oh, shit. Albright. He blogged about you. You don’t wanna read it.”
“Erica. Is this yours? I stole it from a tranny.”
“Get the hell out of here!”
Stanford
“I’m sorry. I’m late for biochem. You don’t know my name, do you? I should just kick your ass. How do you go to a party and you meet someone… what’s my major? Really? And yours? You haven’t declared. You’re kidding. Well, where did you go to school? Seriously? You’re not like 15 years old or anything, are you? No. So, what do you do? You’re unemployed. What would you say? Well, then, what was your latest preneur? King of like Napster? What do you mean? Sean Parker founded Napster. You’re Sean Parker? Foot? I just slept with Sean Parker? You’re a zillionaire. What are you? This is blowing my mind. I gotta hop in the shower and get ready for class. You passed. There’s juice or anything else you can find. Help yourself. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah? Just a second. What? Where? Are you kidding me? I could’ve been killed. By running too fast and getting twisted in the curtain. What do you need to ask me? Yeah, after you passed out last night I went on The Facebook for a little bit. The Facebook? Stanford’s had it for, like, two weeks now. It’s really awesome, except it’s freakishly addictive. Seriously, I’m on the thing like five times a day. Yeah, is everything okay?”
The Phoenix
“Excuse me! Everybody! You are at one of the oldest, one of the most exclusive clubs, not just at Harvard, but in the world. And I want to welcome you all to Phoenix Club’s first party of the fall semester!”
“Hey, guys, check this out. Look at these girls. Right or left? Right or left?”
“Phoenix! Phoenix!”
“As the plaque reads, this is John Harvard, founder of Harvard University in 1638. It’s also called the Statue of Three Lies. What are the three lies? Mr. Dowd. Take your pants off. Mr. Saverin. Who is it? Keep your jacket on.”