The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook
A Tale of Sex, Money Genius & Betrayal
2009-09-28
By Ben Mezrich (Doubleday)

At the annual Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Weekend, political guru and people-connector Donna Brazile hosted a wide-ranging panel, Black Power 2.0, on the rise and impact of Social Media and Digital Content. The intent was to emphasize the importance of social networking and the entrepreneurial opportunities in this new world order.

The first part of that session featured movie icons Billy Dee Williams, Richard Roundtree, Leon, and the actor/director Robert Townsend, who were promoting a series of public interest webisodes. The panel had a packed house. When their moment was up, the celebrities left quickly. Unfortunately, so did three-fourths of the audience along with them.

Apparently, the people who attend the CBC thought the idea of social networking on the web was redundant since all the people they wanted to network with were in close proximity.  But the crowd flight also spoke to a situation that is fairly common. As the media, tech and political elite debate and fret over the dominance and importance of Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and the like, everyone else is content to use them, enjoy them and toss them over for the next Big Thing.

That’s partly what makes writer Ben Mezrich’s recently released “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook” both fascinating and disappointing. Fascinating for its exploration into the beginnings of a cultural phenomenon and the power of ideas. Disappointing because like the phenomenon it glorifies, it already feels ever so slightly dated.

Though its subtitle promises a “tale of sex, money, genius and betrayal” the book only glances at the first two, to about the first three and mostly about the fourth.

By now most people have heard the basic story. Mark Zuckerberg, 19 year old student builds a better version of “hot or not” to impress his Harvard classmates and stumbles onto a hit that spreads from campus to campus and eventually explodes when it lets everyone in. We got hooked, the kid got rich.

It does succeed in exposing a part of the story that fewer people know outside of tech blogs, and paints a picture of Zuckerberg not as a modern-day Thomas Edison, but more as a really smart thief – one among many who advanced by improving someone else’s ideas as opposed to being an innovator/originator. But even that picture is fuzzy.

In the Cliffs Notes version, Zuckerberg hacks a Harvard database, gains notoriety and gets recruited by three business-minded students who want to launch a social network that rethinks Friendster. Zuckerberg ditches his erstwhile partners and with money from his roommate, comes up with Facebook and immediately claims it as his own. What happens next is a judgment call based on your personal ethics. Is Zuckerberg a thief? A shark? An enlightened mogul? Did he cut out his friends when the money and models entered the picture?

Well, yes, yes, yes and yes and ending lawsuits will make it clearer. But at the end of the day, what of it? Aside from making the obvious but profound observation that Facebook overtook MySpace and other lesser sites because the friend in your networks are, in fact, actually “friends”, Accidental Billionaire on trades in the drama of Silicon Valley inside baseball.

Ultimately what makes Facebook (and by extension all social media) intriguing as a story is the people who use it, not the people who created it.  What is it that makes us so hungry to be heard – not just once but for some people all day every day? 

Is it fame? Is it the power of giving a voice? Is it a pent-up rage? A collective primal scream? Loneliness? The fear of death and the need to make our words immortal? We have seen it used to organize and galvanize, but absent a charismatic leader – a Barack Obama, a Howard Dean – or a well-funded campaign pushing it,  what will the people organize for themselves?

What will we do with the ability to upload video and be our own Spike Lee or Michael Moore? Will we expose blight, influence policing, follow gentrification, show the downfall of the public school system? Or will we film Cousin JoJo doing the Stanky Leg Version 25? The real power and the real phenomenon lies in those questions, the ones only we can answer.

Already a movie version of the Accidental Billionaires is in the works, reportedly starring Justin Timberlake in the role of Mark Zuckerberg. Superb casting, but my guess is the same thing will happen at theaters that happened with audience at the Black Caucus. Social media has moved beyond fascination, it’s become a fact of life, like turning a doorknob or music in the elevator.

And you’d probably skip a movie about those too.