Facebook has recently been on a wild roller-coaster ride of ups and downs.
Last Thursday, Facebook went down and users were unable to access the social networking site for up to 2 1/2 hours. The problem was eventually traced back to a change Facebook made to one of its systems, which resulted in a “DNS error” message and no access to the site by millions of users. According to an online post from Facebook, this was by far the worst outage the site has had in more than 4 years.
Then on Friday, the David Fincher film “The Social Network,” about the messy and contentious founding of Facebook and its founder, made its debut at the New York Film Festival. The movie, with the provocative tag line “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies,” presents an unflattering portrayal of Zuckerberg, while presenting his Harvard classmates as the real creators of the social networking phenomenon instead of him.
Worried that the film might damage Zuckerberg’s image, Facebook execs pressed filmmakers for changes to the script, but to no avail. But with the movie slated for a nationwide opening tomorrow, the company is bracing itself for a film that casts its chief executive as a scheming backstabber accused of stealing the idea for Facebook. “If this movie becomes big, a lot of people will be exposed to a side of Mark Zuckerberg that won’t reflect positively on privacy issues on Facebook,” said Augie Ray, a senior analyst at Forrester Research who follows social networking companies.
But in a move some say was made to soften the negative image of Zuckerberg in the film, the Facebook CEO pulled off an incredible feat of generosity. Mark Zuckerberg appeared on “The Oprah Show” to announce a personal donation of $100. million dollars to the Newark Public School System. WOW! Not many 26-year-olds are capable of such a move, or would even be interested in making such a donation, however large or small. But even as some say it’s a publicity stunt in advance of the horrible perception many will have of Zuckerberg once the movie debuts, NJ Gov. Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker don’t care why the donation was made. They’re just glad that it WAS made, as they skip gleefully all the way to the bank.
