I am talking, of course, about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and his story as told by the David Fincher movie, “The Social Network”.

Now how much of the movie is real is of course open to debate. Zuckerberg has said that the movie got a lot of stuff wrong and random details right. Right was that every shirt and fleece worn by the actor (Jesse Eisenberg) who played him was one he had actually worn.

Wrong was the theming of the movie. “They framed it as if I wanted to get girls or into some social institution,” Zuckerberg said at a “startup school” session at Stanford University. “I’ve been dating the same girl since before Facebook.”

And he said that the filmmakers “can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things”.

Well, as writers like to say, never let the facts get in the way of a good story and “The Social Network” tells a good story around the timeless themes of friendship, loyalty, betrayal and greed.

They resonate with everyone. Show me someone who doesn’t feel they’ve been betrayed by a friend and I will show you a dog who doesn’t like treats. Friends fall out over business when there is money or when there is no money.

Many things have been said about friendship, one of which is “birds of the same feather flock together”.

I recalled that after listening to a talk by Tim Brown of IDEO in Singapore last week. The man who evangelises “Change By Design” was talking about how human behaviour is influenced and it seems we are most influenced by our friends.

If we hang out with fat friends, we are liable to end up fat. If you hang out with negative people, you’re likely to end up depressed. And that influence can be felt three times removed – which means your friend’s friend’s friend has the potential to influence you.

So imagine if you have more than 2,000 friends on Facebook as someone I know have – in fact, he’s not allowed to make any more friends on Facebook because he’s reached his quota; imagine how confused you could become – you’d end up in the United States of not Tara, but Facebook. (United States of Tara: TV series about woman with multiple personalities married to loving, I-am-going-crazy-slowly guy)

So going for quality rather than quantity, Dave Morin, a former executive at Facebook, and Shawn Fanning, co-founder of Napster have created Path which they call a “personal network”.

Path lets each user designate only 50 friends and helps people capture moments and share them only with people they trust. “You usually have about five people whom you trust most, 20 whom you consider your BFFs that you hang out with all the time and about 50 or so who are your personal network,” said Morin.

The number 50 is based on a theory by evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar who believes that the number of people with whom one can maintain a close relationship is limited to 150 by the size of the neocortex, the part of the brain used for conscious thought and language.

Let’s hope that for Morin and Fanning, the path to true friendship will run smoother than it did for Zuckerberg and his friend Eduardo Saverin, who is apparently now living in Singapore. Again, as told by Aaron Sorkin in “The Social Network”. Fact or fiction, who cares. Great story. 

* For “How accurate is the movie”, click here. 

Featured image credit (Group of international multiracial friends sitting at the beach): Ockra/iStock