More Magazine's Facebook Issue

I love to see magazines taking on revolutionary ideas so when I came across a tweet by Nik Thakkar from KARLISMYUNKLE about more! magazine's special Facebook issue I had to check it out. Apparently more! have the largest number of Facebook fans than any UK women's magazine so in order to maximise this they came up with a genius idea of creating a special issue generated by Facebook. more! staff liaised with their fans on Facebook to get ideas for news, features and interviews. They asked them who they would like to be featured inside the magazine and on the cover and they also invited five Superfans to come into the office and help out with headlines, pictures and other elements that involved putting the publication together. So who were more! reader's top choice for the front cover? Well none other than Lily Allen who is the lady of the moment, what with getting married over the weekend and announcing her pregnancy. Good to know that more! readers like to keep things relevant. Well done to more! for coming up with such a novel idea. I swear I have not looked at the magazine for years and only became aware that it was still going a while ago. That will certainly beat Position of the Fortnight.

Have a look at the more! magazine website.

You can check out more!'s Facebook page.

more! 's Facebook issue out in the shops now.

Check out the video below which has an interview with more! editor, Channy Horton.

The Social Network

I was in two minds about whether to see The Social Network or The Facebook movie as it has been dubbed. However, good reviews and recommendations got me intrigued and I decided to pop along to an advanced screening at my local cinema. The Social Network is based on the court cases against Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg where he is sued by his former best friend and the Winkleviss twins for allegedly stealing their idea. The film starts off when Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg is at Harvard and after an argument with his girlfriend in which she dumps him, he returns to his room and slags her off on his blog which he turns into a site called FashMash which rates the attractiveness of the female students on campus. He is punished with six months academic probation but is undeterred because his site has received 22,000 hits in two hours. The overwhelming success of the site brings him to the attention of the wealthy Winkleviss twin brothers both played by Arnie Hammer and their sidekick, Divya Narendra played by Max Minghella. They have an idea about building a website called Harvard Connection and they want him to do the programming. He takes on the project but at the same time approaches his friend, Eduardo Saverin played by Andrew Garfield about creating a social networking site exclusively for Harvard students which will be called thefacebook.com.

Eduardo is in and begins to bankroll the project and also supplies his valuable connections from Phoenix S-K final club which is a powerful fraternity. When the site is launched it is a total phenomenon and when the Divya and the Winkleviss brothers find out about the site they are furious and accuse Mark of stealing their idea. Mark is undeterred and decides to expand the site to other Universities such as Columbia and Yale and he and Eduardo put together a plan for expansion. The more successful the site gets the more angrier Divya and the Winkleviss get but the site is a long way away from the global icon that it is now. It takes the presence of Napster founder, Sean Parker played by Justin Timberlake to get thefacebook to the level it is now. His first suggestion is small but vital - that Mark and Eduardo drop 'the' from the title so it is just Facebook. He also persuades Mark to move to Silicon Valley as that is where all the action is while Eduardo stays in New York in order to drum up some advertising. However cracks begin to show in Mark and Eduardo's friendship as they have differences on Sean's involvement in Facebook which ends with Eduardo freezing the business account. After Mark secures a substantial amount of funding from a business angel, Eduardo finds himself brutally cut out of the future of Facebook and threatens legal action. Meanwhile the Winkleviss brothers along with Diviya decide it is time to go down the legal route and decide to sue Facebook.

The Social Network is a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be and has quite a few great one liners. There are two parallel stories being told - how Zuckerbeg created Facebok with the money from his best friend and the law suits that followed afterwards. Both  are intriguing. Aaron Sorkin delivers a cracking script here and we all know how much he loves a court room drama remember A Few Good Men? The film really demonstrates not only the social ineptness of Mark Zuckerberg and his 'revenge of the nerd' syndrome but at the same time it also shows the world of privilege and self entitlement that a lot of Harvard students are born into. From the cliquey and almost bullishness of the fraternity clubs where new members are forced to perform demeaning tasks in order to join and in return will be rewarded with old school status to the movers and shakers in the US. Justin Timberlake adds much needed humour in his role as the enigmatic but slimy, Sean Parker - not sure if the performance really warrants an Oscar nomination though. The Social Network offers no happy or sad ending, just an ending that shows that success is hollow if you have to resort to screwing your friends over in order to get to the top. Mark Zuckerbeg comes off as a cold and angry sociopath who is simply an insecure jerk. The irony of Facebook's success is is obvious for all to see - the guy who is responsible for creating a space where millions of people can reconnect with their friends did not have any himself.

The Social Network is out on general release on Friday.

Video and images supplied by Sony Picture Releasing.

The Facebook Movie

I had heard mutterings regarding a film about Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg starring Justin Timberlake but nothing concrete was established. Then today I came across this post on fellow pop culture blog, Mediacation. It looks like the Facebook film is truly on – in fact considering that the trailer has already been made it would be safe to say that it is more than on. The film is aptly called The Social Network and is about the rags to riches story of social media’s first wunderkid. The cast ensemble consists of Jesse Eisenberg playing Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake playing Sean Parker, Napster co-founder and Facebook founding president, Andrew Garfield playing Eduardo Saverin, the founder they fell out with as well as Rashida Jones. The Social Network has serious talent attached to it; the director is Oscar winning, David Fincher who brought us The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the producers are Hollywood’s big time producer Scott Rudin who has worked on numerous hits such as Clueless, First Wives Club, The Queen and Notes on a Scandal., Michael Deluca  who worked on The Love Guru and 21 as well as Kevin Spacey who really needs no introduction. The trailer does not give too much away but it kind of has a dark and moody feel to it with a slice of intruige.

The Social Network hits the US in October.

For more information check out the website.