The Social Network.

The Social Network is a film about the founding of the social networking site Facebook and the resulting lawsuits. I thought by doing a project based upon social networking sites that it would be a crime not to watch the film. Alot of the film is based upon the friendship of the creators and this was in fact no use to me however it did explain how and why Facebook was created.

It began with a site called Coursematch, this was a website that helped you find what courses your friends were taking via the Kirkland (dorm) Facebook. One night Mark Zuckerberg decided to hack into this site and create Facemash a site that let you compare the girls who attended this college and rate whether they were hot or not. He then created an mp3 app that recognised your taste in music. He was then invited to listen to a concept called the Harvard connection, where you could create your own page, interests, bio, friends, pics, people can go online and request to be your friend, different from myspace because of Harvard.edu, the difference is exclusivity.

Zuckerberg then created  The Facebook. Where people could check out their friends, to browse around. Taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online. It would be exclusive, you would have to know the people on the site to get past your own page. ‘People provide their own picture, 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.’
-Its clean its simple.
- ‘Relationship status…this is what drives life at college, ‘Are you having sex or aren’t you? Its why people take certain classes and sit where they sit and do what they do. And at its centre, 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 gonna’ ‘-gonna get laid’ -’…meet a girl. Yes’

The film was interesting as it highlighted the core reasons we find facebook so interesting. It also highlight just how much we want to know about other peoples lives and how invested we are in this information. It also highlighted how we use facebook to portray ourselves.

I'm not sure just how much I can take away from this film as I don't want to end up creating work solely based upon facebook but never the less its always helpful to expand the field of research away from artists.

'The internets not written in pencil Mark its written in ink.'

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