Facebook Movie - Perception vs Reality in Digital Media

The Facebook Movie is out this weekend, to critical acclaim. It apparently paints Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as an ambitious, single-minded, semi autistic, unscrupulous and basically thoroughly unpleasant little sh*t (ie all those traditional things a Silicon Valley CEO should be ). In fact it is apparently so OTT that some even start to root for him! (I should at this point say I have yet to see the movie and am going from the perception of the vast amount of press and friend's responses in said digital new meedja). Needless to say, his friends* are rushing to his defence - Messrs Lessig and Cohler for example:

Lessig:

But as a story about Facebook, it is deeply, deeply flawed. As I watched the film, and considered what it missed, it struck me that there was more than a hint of self-congratulatory contempt in the motives behind how this story was told. Imagine a jester from King George III’s court, charged in 1790 with writing a comedy about the new American Republic. That comedy would show the new Republic through the eyes of the old. It would dress up the story with familiar figures—an aristocracy, or a wannabe aristocracy, with grand estates, but none remotely as grand as in England. The message would be, “Fear not, there’s no reason to go. The new world is silly at best, deeply degenerate, at worst.”

Not every account of a new world suffers like this. Alexis de Tocqueville showed the old world there was more here than there. But Sorkin is no Tocqueville. Indeed, he simply hasn’t a clue to the real secret sauce in the story he is trying to tell. And the ramifications of this misunderstanding go well beyond the multiplex.

Personally I thought reaching for George III and de Tocqueville is one straw of desperation short of wrapping Mr Zuckerberg in the US Flag and Constitution! Then there is Mr Cohler quoted in Venturebeat:

Cohler came down on the fiction side, describing the movie as a “Hollywood fairy tale.”

Beyond the premise, Cohler said there are “a billion little details” that were off. For example, Zuckerberg and his cohorts in the film talk about how the site has to be cool, but Cohler said that’s getting things backwards. The team always wanted the site to be useful, not cool.

The problem they both - and Facebook - have is this thing of Perception vs Reality. I recall one of my Business School professors telling me, 20 years ago, that in marketing perception IS reality. And the one thing the new digital media does is amplify the message from any company, for good or ill. And the thing about this movie is that, whether true or not, it tells a story not that different from the de facto perception of Facebook in the market. You just have to Google "Facebook" and you see a story of fallings out, lawsuits, worries about data scraping and mining etc etc. "By their deeds shall ye know them" is a very old - and apt - aphorism, and Social Media is a very powerful way of getting those deeds out into the Body Public.

Against the broad backdrop of technology history, Facebook sounds quite a bit like Microsoft in its heyday, or Oracle, and Saint Steve is no picnic to work for either. But the problem they have, the perception among many industry watchers, is that there is more dirty laundry to come, and their creation (as one Venturebeat source puts it) is "tied up with original sin". Which is of course what will magnify the amplification effect of social media's fascination with Facebook even more.

Not, of course, that all this has any impact on Facebook's growth yet - 500 million users is pretty impressive - and to get there so shortly probably requires most of those qualities Mr Zuckerberg is accused of having. Of course, 10 years from now when he is part of The Establishment and has his own Charitable Foundation, all those qualities listed will have undergone semantic shift and he will be re-cast as an ambitious, determined, driven executive "not known for taking prisoners" and will join the pantheon of Great Visionary Executives. Perception will have changed into a new reality.

Update - many more have leapt to Facebook's defence, it has been quite interesting to see the various angles used given that, as I note above, the direct "it's not true" approach won't wash:

- The New York Times says its a Generation Thing, oldies think its a morality tale and the youth think its cool, that omelettes need a few eggs broken etc. Sounded more to me that he was talking more about a good old ethical tale, is does the End Justifies the Means vs the Orginal Sin Will Bring You Down. Which, of course, is a classic setting in any great tragedy - this is MacGeek.

- Then there is the Daily Beast arguing that its crap beause it only treats women as doting groupies, sexed-up Asians, vengeful sluts, or dumpy, feminist killjoys. I am so disappointed that they have not also taken the opportunity to excoriate the film for ignoring so many other needful minorities. Shame on The Beast

- The Huffington Post argues (via Jeff Jarvis and Antonio Vargas ) that its simple - Hollywood doesn't understand Facebook, and it's really just Olde Media being snarky about New Media owing to not understanding it.

- In a related spin, SAI tries to link it to Cyberbullying of Brave New Media

- TechCrunch argues that the film disappoined vs expectations on its openingweekend, only bringing in $23m vs a budgeted $25m despite the hype. Oh, and Batman - The Dark Knight brought in $158m on it's opening weekend so this movie is clearly a flop.

Unfortunately for les critiques, these sorts of noises are unlikely to do much more than drive people to see the movie. Isn't social media wonderful as a marketing tool

Incidentally, like many others I love the Taiwanese Video Precis up top.....

*That is, the friends who were not vigorously contributing to the movie, or suing him......