Six Degrees of Facebook

We have completed seeing just about all the Oscar nominated movies for 2010 in the various categories. After watching “Social Network”, the movie about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding Facebook, E realized that he experienced two close connections to several characters in the story.

First connection: E and his ex-wife bought their first house in Palo Alto from the parents of the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. This was in the mid-80’s when the twins were around 4-years old. Today the twins are suing Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook for stealing their social networking idea when they were all students at Harvard University.

Second connection: Sean Parker was one of the founders (along with Shawn Fanning) of Napster and Facebook's founding president. E consulted briefly with Napster and its founder. In the movie Justin Timberlake portrays Sean as a cash-hungry, hardy-partier. In several interviews Sean described the movie as "a complete work of fiction” and that he wished his life "was that cool". E found the real Sean to be very professional and personable.

We know several Facebook employees but we have not seen Mark Zuckerberg. Some of our friends have seen him walking around town.

[UPDATE] 10 days after posting this entry, we had dinner with Mark Zuckerberg...sort of. He and his girlfriend came in and sat down at the table next to us at a small, crowded, vegetarian restaurant in Palo Alto. He was wearing his trademark blue hoodie.

The movie, Social Network, was well done and very entertaining even though it plays fast and loose with the facts. But we both think “The King’s Speech” is going to win the Oscars.