Is there anything better than Freakonomics and Facebook?
July 19, 2010
There are two movies coming out this fall that I am beyond excited for. I don’t consider myself much of a movie guy, and can often go three or four months without seeing one (although I did recently watch Hoop Dreams and it was UNREAL).
The first film fits in nicely with other posts on this blog. Freakonomics is set to debut this fall, although I question how widely released it will be. This is one of my favourite novels (Superfreakonomics wasn’t quite as good) because it does such a great job of illustrating how the study of incentives can be used to explain topics normally not associated with economics. In particular, I found the chapters that discussed how real estate agents utilize the power of information to exploit their clients and the effect of legalized abortion on the crime rate to be very interesting.
The other film is “The Social Network,” which recaps the story behind Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Watch the trailer…the cover of Creep by Radiohead is worth a listen alone.
I find Facebook fascinating. It has completely revolutionized how people communicate with each other and altered how we present ourselves publicly. To me, a person’s Facebook profile can be looked upon as their brand. Tagged pictures, profile information and status updates all reflect the image an individual wants to portray.
The history of Facebook is also remarkable. The true value of this empire is unknown since it’s privately held, but since its inception in 2004 it has grown exponentially. In 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million for 1.6% of the company, thus suggesting it was worth $15 billion. I can’t even imagine what it is worth now, as the user base has grown significantly and it is now the world’s second most popular site.
I just started reading The Accidental Billionaires, the Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal and I can’t put it down. I’m excited to see how this movie portrays the initial version of the site – a forum to rank the hotness of girls at Harvard. Then there are the multiple accusations about Zuckerberg stealing the concept from classmates and being a conniving, ruthless, shallow guy…
I can’t wait.
Feel free to pass that book along when you’re done. I’ll settle for Freakonimics in the meantime.
The Essex County library system has 2 copies. The other one is still available, give them a call. The author, Ben Mezrich, is also bro-approved ( He went to Harvard and used to write for Stuff Magazine).