Facebook me?

The Social Network. I was finally able to catch the movie this evening after hearing a lot about it. Luckily, it lived up to every word said about the movie. A superb movie in all departments - short, gripping, intense and neatly done. But above all, it is an extremely inspiring movie. The first idea that comes across one's head as the title credits roll is - so, how am I going to make my ₨45.23 ($1) billion?

The movie is based on the true story of the origins of the popular networking site, facebook.com. From a website started on the computer of a 19 year old Harvard undergraduate student, it now garners more hits in a day than even Google. With over 500 million users and nearly a billion dollars in revenue, it is easily one of the biggest success stories of the new millenium. And at just 24, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder, became the youngest billionaire ever.

Overwhelming facts, the above tend to be. But it also shows you that you don't necessarily need to have a crazily innovative, novel idea to start a company. All you need is for your product to sell, and sell well. When Facebook shot to fame, there was already Orkut, MySpace and Friendster doing reasonably well. Facebook wasn't exactly a novel idea but what they did, they did well. They were clean, relatively ad-free and catered to the adolescent population.

Coming back to the movie, the screenplay was absolutely outstanding. Aaron Sorkins has done an outstanding job when it comes to writing the screenplay for the movie. It keeps you gripped throughout and there is not a point in the movie when your attention isn't captured in its entirety. The dialogues are simply outstanding. One that still remains in memory, not only for its delivery, but for its sheer simplicity - "The internet isn't written in pencil, Mark. It's written in ink."

All in all, a very neatly done movie. An evening well spent, definitely. And even while walking out the theatre, the characters were deeply etched in my mind. And the one question that still remains in my mind - how am I going to make my ₨2,939.93 ($65) million. Now, I am going to get to work to answer that question!