I finally managed to watch The Social Network, the movie on Mark Zuckerberg. If this is what bad PR looks like, I would certainly love to buy some of it for myself. Yes, there are bad bits in the movie, but it portrays the man in question as an awkward hero going all out to realize his revolutionary vision. Everything else is collateral damage in that journey, if it did not work out well. I don't think a movie by Facebook itself could not have done a better job of creating the legend.
Apparently, CBS ran a 60-minutes segment on him last night and it was more of the puff piece specials that have been flowing from the media on Facebook (and other valley tech majors) for a while now. I do not know Zuck, I have no idea what is really the truth. But what is seen and available in public is so manufactured and manipulated. They are really taking a book from the Steve Jobs edition of 'Making of Legends' and putting a social layer on it.
Coming back to the movie, the image transformation of the protagonist could not have been more poignant. The first time you see him on the computer, he is using the terminal to download pictures of women for Facesmash, in the end he is using the terminal to work with Apache on some Debian-based distribution of Linux. Always alone, only with his magnificent vision (and bash) for company, but always forging ahead.
