The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

When I read a book that has a great deal of biographical detail and where the subject refuses to co-operate and where there are too many phrases like, 'he must have thought', 'he could have surmised', 'maybe he felt', I think that even if the author is as well-respected as Mezrich, this is probably a load of balls.

Modern society, the media, cannot stand those who refuse to have a publicist, give interviews, employ a stylist and have a dozen employees referred to as 'my people'. It can't stand people who have done something that puts them in the public eye but they don't want the public attention. The media, journalists, papparazzi, editors all feel that they are entitled to make bucks off these people and need to have good sources of show more information and they hate those that just want to live a private life. So Zuckerberg always comes off worst.

It has become fashionable in the UK for randy footballers, thieving bankers and sundry assorted others we do not know of or cannot name, to seek superinjunctions at a cost of £150,000 to stop their misdeeds being published which might harm their families, show the public they are immoral criminals, or more likely in the case of all the footballer and actors, the bad publicity will harm the lucrative business of product endorsements. To me, they are fair game for the press. They can't get enough good publicity, every column inch is worth pounds and pence, so when the shit they do catches up with them, they should have to suck it up, like those who don't have a spare £150,000 for the lawyers.

But Zuckerberg is a private man, and his privacy should be respected and the envelope not pushed with what he might have thought or surmised, or whether he started Facebook because he was anti-social and bitter having been rejected by some girl or other. Authors like Mezrich rely on the fact that Zuckerberg probably wouldn't sue, so can continue to write this crap because he couldn't get an interview.

Other than that, the book was quite good for a business book, but without Zuckerberg's input and with the all-too-willing input of his enemies, it wasn't ever going to be the definitive book of Facebook. show less

I would like to begin by saying this book makes me dislike Mark Zuckerberg. In general, people with poor social skills make me want to slap them and say, "Try Harder!" But this book makes it seem like Zuckerberg just doesn't care about other people...friends or not. He cares more about writing code.

Don't get me wrong, I like Facebook...but I do question Zuckerberg's ethical integrity. (Stealing ideas and dropping your supposed best friend from the company...really? That's not cool. And there are court proceedings to back up both of those stories...) Granted, it isn't fair to judge based on a book that was written without ever speaking to Zuckerburg, but his refusal to be interviewed says a lot.

I do wonder how this book can be show more categorized as non-fiction when the author even says he makes things up...didn't James Frey get boiled alive for that? show less

No surprise this was the inspiration of the movie, which doesn't mean it's all true. It zips along,but Mezrich does that annoying Bob Woodward thing of seeing inside characters' minds, but perhaps revealing even less about sources. A very safe guess: there are three main sources, possibly the only sources: Eduardo S, Sean Parker and Cameron Winklevoss. All right, perhaps the other Winklevii twin too but they do seem interchangeable.

Just looked at some other reviews which point out the note in the beginning re making up dialogue and imagining conversations. Well, OK, tho I had already guessed that. Doesn't change my opinion that there are only 3 main sources. "I address sources more fully in the acknowledgement." Huh? The show more acknowledgements page in my edition doesn't name any sources. Maybe a page is missing?

Eduardo stopped talking about 2/3 of the way through--when Mezrich switches to first person plural: "We don't know what was in Eduardo's mind ..." Which I guess explains why in this 2010 edition, he had no idea that Saverin has already moved to Singapore.

Very much a book of the moment that will wear out quickly since it doesn't get much into tech at all and it's so focused on a short stretch of time. I do believe that Eduardo was well and truly screwed by his friend, tho I never got a grasp on what the Winklevosses contributed (could Mezrich not get the Chinese guy who did the original coding to talk?).
No, I don't believe that "Asian" Harvard women are flashing or "pointing" at MZ in a seminar. There are more subtle ways of nudging your neighbor. I don't know if Zuckerberg and Mezrich have an Asian woman fetish but Severin does. Don't buy the screwing in the toilet stalls either. Or that there were no female math or computer students at Harvard.

Notice that very near the end there's a quick thought attributed to Parker to the effect: He didn't really know MZ well, but MZ was still going out with his college girlfriend. *His college girlfriend*?? But the premise of the book, and even more so of the movie, is that these nerds were driven by their lack of women/pursuit of women. MZ didn't have a girlfriend in the book, not even the fake BU one set up in the movie. IRL, MZ has pointed out that he was going out with the woman now his wife "before Facebook". And since Facebook happened in less than one semester ... there goes much of the thrust of this book. In the movie, the guy seems to have Asperger's; I'm dubious. Social disabilities? Sure.

I just watched the video again and noticed another baffler. Lawyer played by Rashida Jones (who I didn't notice the first time around either) comments to MZ:- "you're not an asshole; you're just trying to be"-- which echoes an asshole charge earlier in the movie. What is she basing that on? He is an asshole that betrayed his friend or associate. Nothing in the movie or this book offers contrary evidence.

Strange omission in the movie re the bit at the race in England where Monaco's Prince Albert appears (funny that with an American mother and an Amherst education he has that accent, no?). This is true. Albert gives the award every year because his grandfather, Jack Kelly, was a famed rower. *But Albert appears here because Jack Kelly's application (or his team's) to participate in this race in the 1920s was rejected because Kelly as a young man had worked as a bricklayer!* By this point he had his own business and went on to become quite wealthy. Kelly was so angry at the rejection that he went on to train and race in the Olympics. No doubt it was edited out of the movie but an odd omission, give the movie's allusions to class barriers

The twins themselves aren't old WASP money, btw Their father was a self-made millionaire. MZ's parents are doctors or something and he went to Andover or one of those prep schools. Eduardo's parents are so rich, they moved to the US because of fears their son would be kidnapped. OK, the twins' NRI partner (I read about him in India) went to public schools in Queens (Indians are in awe) but both his parents are doctors. If you squint just a little the crude crass lines the movie draws don't make much sense. Sure, of course, there are classes and cliques in college, if not to the degree of high school--just not the ones depicted in the movie. show less

What a great whiz-bang energetic book. Two things make this one stand out: 1) Mezrich focuses on important events, describing them in the here-and-now while leaving leading-up events as reflected on memories. 2) The narrative of each character reflects the character himself. When discussing Saverin, the reading becomes thoughtful and pensive, when discussing Zuckerberg it moves along at a brisk pace, and when Sean Parker is in the picture, the book sails along with manic, frenetic energy. Quite a nuanced achievement in that regard. A fun, excellent read.

Obviously I read this because it is the basis for the upcoming David Fincher movie The Social Network. I will say up front that I knew beforehand of the lurid reputation that this book had. Also that it only had input from one of the players, so the point-of-view would be a little skewed.What I wasn't prepared for was completely bizarre and random bursts of rather flowery prosaic writing that jarred against the subject matter. I don't mean that every story covering the technology industry must be delivered in a flat, dull, monochromatic-monotone. Below is not a great example of this, there was a better bit earlier in the book talking about thoughts 'sparking like synapses across the night sky' or something equally random. However, it show more does highlight another slight problem (though thankfully one that pops up only a couple of times.)

He forced his pulse to return to a steady beat, like the steady bytes and bits of a processing computer hard drive.

*!KLUNK!*If you're going to write in the ouvre of the tech industry I don't demand that you be an expert on the subject matter, but at least get someone to help you give the impression that you know what you're talking about. "processing computer hard drive"?I would also say that it is a little cruel in the way that Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed. I appreciate that he has a reputation as being rather socially awkward and also being driven to the point of single mindedness. But he is portrayed as a massively self-centred case of Asperger's.It will be interesting to see what David Fincher has made of this. Early reports of the leaked script seem to imply that the rather mean spirited portrayl of Mark Zuckerberg has remained. show less

If you have seen the movie, The Social Network, you already know the plot. Filled with the purported conversations of college students from years ago, one must remain somewhat skeptical. However, I get really nervous when the author describes taking a flight from New York to San Francisco on a 757 “wide-body.” (It’s a narrow-body.)

Mezrich, himself, says several of the characters are composites (more red flags,) and some reviewers have complained the book was too long and boring. I listened to it as an audiobook while mowing the lawn, so my expectations in that regard aren’t terribly high, and I did enjoy - or at least found interesting - the legal stuff, i.e. really rich students suing other really rich students while sucking at show more daddy’s teat.

One does wonder what Zuckerberg might have accomplished had he been studying philosophy instead of computer science. The social outcast as future billionaire. Mostly the characters come across as very unhappy people.

Amusing, but take with a block of salt. The author himself has noted elsewhere that he was making do with limited sources, but that the point of the book was not to be history but rather a commentary on the values of current culture. I understand [b:Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions|514313|Bringing Down the House The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions|Ben Mezrich|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175443045s/514313.jpg|502278] is a better representation of what the author can do. show less

If you've ever wondered how Facebook came to be, this may be a book for you. While based on interviews with those involved other than founder Mark Zuckerburg (many of who seem to have been are are currently at some stage of litigation with him), the book still has an aura of 'insiderness' about it, although how much of that was manufactured isn't exactly clear (Mezrich notes that scenes have been 're-created,' details 'changed or imagined,' and dialogue made up. So take that for what you will. Engaging and gossipy, but a good read.