Genius and Betrayal - The Accidental Billionaires

This is a good read. I was always rather curious about how Facebook started as most articles give a very superficial background of Mark Zuckerberg and how Facebook started in a dorm room. I think that the book tries to focus quite a lot of attention on how Mark Zuckerberg is a bit awkward, singularly focused, and has a tough time reading social signals from people in real life. At least, that's what the book tells us. The interesting thing is that perhaps we should take a lesson from this and think that perhaps these features actually offer a huge advantage for someone who wants to work on a monumental task. If one is always focused on what other people are doing, or reading social signals from others, or being preoccupied with partying, it probably would be rather difficult to achieve incredibly significant projects like this one. The truth is, the reason Facebook exists is because there is a human desire to connect with friends. The social networks that existed at the time of Facebook's birth--Friendster and Myspace, were not necessarily based upon good connections with existing friends. That was a weakness that existed at the time. However, as time has gone on, Facebook was able to innovate and focus on those factors. Now, whether Facebook continues to be the dominant social media player is something to be seen. It is not clear yet as the future is unwritten.

I've love reading Ben Mezrich books. I call them "millionaire porn"; they're usually about New Englanders who become impossibly rich at unusual ventures. The books are more summer beach reading (Michael Lewis, Mezrich is not), but with a stricter morality; there's usually a dizzying high, a terrifying fall, and a bittersweet peace at the end.

This story is no surprise, you've seen "The Social Network". Aaron Sorkin's laughably inaccurate portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg made for a great movie, but Mezrich's version of Zuckerberg is actually much less Lex Luthor-y. Mezrich does embarrass himself trying to imagine a scene where Zuckerberg literally breaks into a rival Harvard dormitory (while wearing a hoodie!), but mostly Zuckerberg is seen at a far distance.

Mezrich tells the story through the eyes of three other sets of characters. Eduardo Saverin is held up as the hero, although you can now read Zuckerberg's own hacked e-mails and IMs about Saverin from that time period to see a very different Saverin than the one Mezrich describes. Saverin became a multi-billionaire somewhere in the middle of Mezrich's writing, after getting a settlement, and quit cooperating with the book. The Winklevoss twins also tell their story; they're painfully upright and honest here. They've made their countless millions in real life too -- hope that Bitcoin venture works out for them. Sean Parker is the last of Mezrich's POV characters; again, he's not the same person that Sorkin and Justin Timberlake invented for the movie (and thus slightly less interesting), but he's a billionaire now too (albeit not in Saverin's league).

The book positively flies by. There are heroes to cheer for, villains to hiss at, plenty of parties and women and billionaires. Probably about 20% of the book is true, and you don't have to feel bad for any of the "victims" in the book because they're all far, far richer now individually than the aggregate net worth of everybody else who's reviewed this book for the store.

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal is a story about Harvard students who wanted to increase their chances into meeting attractive female students and unexpectedly end up becoming billionaires by starting up Facebook.In the narrative,it features its founders Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg as the nerdy and geeky students but are awkward socially when it comes into the opposite sex. It started at a time when Zuckerberg created FaceMash, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus.This led subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school.After that incident, the concept Facebook was born.Then several incidents follow like experiences with slick venture capitalists like Sean Parker,meeting attractive women,dealing with the Winklevoss twins and dealing with the lawsuits the company faced during its early days.

The book was interesting from the beginning to end.No question that the story of Facebook and their creators is definitely worth reading and far from disappointing as we faced how naive college students who only wanted to meet pretty students end up changing how the world lived and becoming the springboard for the start of the Social Media era. Evidently,the book was readable as simple words were used and even non-technical people would surely appreciate it.The only thing about it though is that the narrative is written is a tabloid form and it has some details where the accuracy could be somewhat questionable considering that the author is most likely to infer with what really happened rather than factually stating the real events of the story.But this will only bother someone if one isn't isn't really that familiar with the real story behind Facebook which I doubt would be a lot of people.

Reviews that bombard this book for criticism of its poor historical authenticity are led astray by two key (false) assumption: 1. that Mezrich is looking to publish authentic biographical journalism and 2. that the general American audience approaches this work looking for authentic biographical journalism.

As a work whose subtitle identifies it as a dramatized "Tale" one is unsurprised to find a gripping, presumptive and largely fictional rendering of the development of Facebook as situated within the mythology of coders and Silicon Valley. Of *course* a narrative centered on the internal monologues and development of its central characters will be largely 'fill in the blank' fiction.

Approach this is a dramatic possibility attached to real-world tendencies and reasonable values assessments, and you will be enthralled for a weekend of leisure reading. Approaching this work as one of historical nonfiction is unproductive and inappropriate, given the mission of its author.

To compare the work to the movie, I would note that the portrayal of MZ is less damning and less presumptive. It is clear that Mark did not participate in the development of this book, and the author has resorted to caricature.

TL;DR Read this book like and HBO series (or a Hollywood blockbuster ;) ) and you'll get the right nutrition. Don't go looking for protein in a basket of french fries.

If you saw the movie "the social network" then you already know the story. It's sure interesting. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't come out of this one looking like a saint.

As with all things there are good things about Facebook and bad things. This review is going to be posted on Facebook as soon as I hit send.
It's given a forum to everyone about anything. Sometimes that can be good and sometimes it's just awful. I've thought about not checking my news feed recently because all you see are dumb political posts that aren't well thought out. Facebook in my opinion has destroyed compromise in some fashion. People post nonsense that they agree with and their friends see it. It never changes anyone's opinion about anything.

The writing is awful as usual from Ben but that was to be expected. The story is what makes his books interesting to read.

Author Ben Mezrich wrote in the "Author's Note" to this 2009 book, "'The Accidental Billionaires' is a dramatic, narrative account based on dozens of interviews... and thousands of pages of documents, including records from several court proceedings. There are a number of different---and often contentious---opinions about some of the events that took place... I re-created the scenes in the book based on the information I uncovered, and my best judgment... In some instances, details of settings ... have been changed or imagined... I do employ the technique of re-created dialogue... Mark Zuckerberg, as is his perfect right, declined to speak with me for this book despite numerous requests." (Pg. 1-2)

Eduardo Saverin is reported as having originally mused about Mark Zuckerberg: "he'd supposedly been some sort of master hacker---so good at breaking into computer systems that he'd ended up on some random FBI list somewhere... Mark was certainly a computer genius... Rumor was, Microsoft had offered Mark between one and two million dollars to go work for them---and amazingly, Mark had turned them down." (Pg. 15)

He records Zuckerberg's early ideas: "to a kid like Mark it must have indeed seemed a great idea. The Kirkland housing facebook---all of the school's facebooks, as their databases of student photos were known---was such a stagnant thing, compiled entirely in alphabetical order by the university. The percolations that must have gripped Mark's imagination for a few days were now forming into something real---an idea for a Web site... It wasn't just a matter of writing a program, it was also creating the correct algorithm." (Pg. 44)

After his experiment with a program he wrote called Facemash (that "put up pictures of hot girls" and let viewers "vote" on them), Zuckerberg reasoned, "the fact that so many people had clicked onto the site, and voted, showed that there was real interest in checking out classmates in an informal, online setting... couldn't they build a Web site that offered exactly that? An online community of friends---of pictures, profiles, whatever... a sort of social network---but one that was exclusive, in that you had to know the people on the site to get into it." (Pg. 79)

After designing the prototype, Zuckerberg is reported as having thought, "That was the genius of it... Looking For, Relationship Status, Interested In. Those were the résumé items that were at the heart of the college experience. Those three concepts... defined college life---from the parties to the classrooms to the dorms, that was the engine that drove every kid on campus." (Pg. 94)

Sean Parker---co-founder of Napster and Plaxo---talked Zuckerberg into changing the Website's name from "theFacebook" to just "Facebook" (as users had been calling it, anyway): "because he'd been so d___ annoyed by that 'the' in the Web site's name, he'd finally gone and gotten Mark to slice it right off in the reorganization that was now an inevitability..." (Pg. 205)

Perhaps not the most "accurate" portrayal of Facebook's origins (The Facebook Effect had Zuckerberg's cooperation), this lively book is a very engaging (as well as critical, yet sympathetic) portrait of Zuckerberg and the others associated with the founding of Facebook.

This book is "f---ing awesome!" Just kidding. It's quite a good book though.

Ben Mezrich gives us as honest an account of the birth of Facebook as the information he had access to allowed him. Certainly, the book is fed its information by those who had bones to pick with Mark Zuckerberg, whilst Zuckerberg himself refused to be involved in any way. Nevertheless, there is a strong sense in the book that Mezrich has tried to maintain balance, to report things from Zuckerberg's point of view, and not to take sides with his sources.

It's a highly interesting and entertaining read. Mezrich has a knack for writing books on young geniuses who buck the system, and this is no exception. The story has some flaws (some plot points are predictable, for example), but as it's based on true accounts there's not much you can do there. The writing has some flaws as well, particularly where Mezrich makes a point of being clear that a scene is imagined and inserted for continuity rather than based in fact, as he had no access to the primary sources - but personally I'd rather be informed of this than left to believe that fabricated scenes are factual.

Despite these, it still provides serious insights into the drama that was the creation of Facebook, the kind of personalities involved in making this multi-billion dollar enterprise a success, and the kind that might have doomed it to failure. In a nutshell, it's a story about the characters, rather than the technicalities, and there is an honesty there, despite not all the facts being present.

A lot of the poor reviews of it seem to be picking on unfair aspects, either griping about the shallow references to women (hello, welcome to college life, this is what happens, and why boys want to get rich) or else taking shots at the necessity of Mezrich imagining some scenes when he didn't have access to facts. None of these things kill the book. It remains engrossing, insightful, dramatic and a valuable resource for understanding aspects of the rise of Facebook that wouldn't normally be available in the media.

Well, well worth reading, especially if you are interested in what it takes to create a successful start-up, and the relationship pitfalls of being successful.

Facebook, the ubiquitous social networking site, is barely 8 years old as of this writing. Too young seemingly for anything interesting to be said about it. But "Accidentally Billionaires" serves up its messy genesis. Starting in a stew of his own and other people's ideas simmering in the brain of Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has become the daily bread of overe 100 million users. "AB" gets most of its information directly from the people involved. Mostly, that means Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg's friend and the source of FB's early funding, and the Winklevoss twins, who engaged Zuckerberg to work on a social network of their own. Zuckerberg is depicted as a weird, almost autistic loner, who cravenly cribbed the concepts of others (or did he?), twirled them through his amazing brain, and had the computer coding smarts to make the product a reality.

Zuckerberg is seen through the eyes of others. And, since Zuckerberg was not a source of information, through author Ben Mezrish's reconstructions of how he might have been thinking. This is a strength and weakness of the book. But it gives us the closest glimpse (outside of a Zuckerberg memoir) of what he might have been going through his mind in winter of 1984 when Facebook was created in a burst of creative energy.

"Accidental Billionaires" is fast paced, loaded with the high energy and raw power of the college-aged crowd. It's a story of coding, sex, booze, obsessive pursuit of an objective, friendship, betrayal and the making of A LOT of money. Whatever you like Facebook or loathe it, the story never disappoints.

I loved David Fincher's 'The Social Network' the movie which is based on this book. The book is pretty good but this is one of those rare cases where the movie is as good as the book. I don't have a lot to say about this book, really. It details in chronolgical fashion the events surrounding the creation of Facebook and the subsequent lawsuits its creation spawned.

One thing that Mezrich makes clear from the beginning: Mark Zuckerberg would not cooperate in the writing of this book. The fact of Zuckerberg's non-cooperation means that Mezrich gets the story from the perspective of the other major players. Namely, Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins. Interestingly, he provides us with only the perspective of Tyler Winklevoss. I don't know if it's because the two are interchangeable or virtually a single entity, as seems to be the case with some twins.

Also, because he could not enlist Zuckerberg's cooperation, there are several passages where Mezrich engages in speculation about how events might have transpired. This isn't a knock. Mezrich makes it clear when he's doing it. It does, however, hamper the flow somewhat.

Who can know if the depiction of Zuckerberg is accurate or not since it is told by those with serious reason to dislike or even hate him? He doens't come across well, that's for sure. He comes across cold and distant. Like most visionaries, he has a single-mindedness that causes him to hurt those he cares for. I suspect this is a man that is going to feel lonely - and wonder why - for most of his life.

from Murphy's Library -- rated two and a half there

If you have read the Murphy's favorite books #3: Inkheart, Cornelia Funke, you know I gave up on reading the book after watching the movie. With The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook -- A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, the story was kinda similar--and before all the fans of this book start to yell at me, I said kinda. And, before you keep reading, I'd like to warn you that this is the longest review I've written to Murphy's Library so far. Sorry for those who like my short and objective reviews ;)

I found out about this book through the movie, just like with Inkeart. I saw the trailer before another movie and it caught my attention right away. I knew from that minute that I was going to watch The Social Network on the weekend after its release--and that's what I did. I was so curious to see the story of how the Facebook was founded--but I was also dying to see more of Harvard from the POV of a student. I've been on Hardard--the Yard, the Square, the statue of the Three Lies, the Coop--for a lot of times since I moved to Boston, 10 months ago, and I always wondered how it is to be part of that. Also, I was curious to see it because one of the guys who was part of it is Brazilian. So I watched the movie, and after that I found myself thinking why I've never had any great idea like Mark Zuckerberg had--reaction that probably all geeks/nerds/whatever have after watching this movie.

For those who haven't read the book or watched the movie yet, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook -- A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal tells the story of how Zuckerberg had the idea and started the nowadays worldwide known Facebook. It all started on a dormitory of the Kirkland house on the Harvad Campus--yes, for those who don't know, Harvard`s students are divided in houses, just like on Harry Potter, and this was the most comparison the Harvard student who was our guide on my first tour through the Campus used, he was always comparing Harvard with Hogwarts` system.

As you can imagine, Zuckerberg was a geek student who hadn't have a lot of friends, an awkard genius--aren't all of them awkard, after all?--, who became famous after creating a website called Facemash, where the visitors--essencially Harvard students--could choose the "hotter" person between the pictures of two girls (he hacked all the pictures from the Harvard houses' websites). Of course, he got in trouble because of that website, and his reputation on the Campus was really bad. Right after that, he was contacted by three students, the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, who had an idea: the HarvardConnection, a website that would allow Harvard students to have an online profiles, a social network, but they weren't programmers, so they couldn't build the website's code. And that was how Mark Zuckerberg had the idea for Facebook and asked his friend Eduardo Saverin to be his partner--Eduardo would put some money on the business and Mark would work on the code.

I've read some reviews about this book on the past few weeks, especially because the book has just been released in Brazil, so all the bloggers who don't speak English are having the opportunity to read it before the movie is released--yes, what a shame, the movie is almost out of the theaters here in the US and it hasn't even been released in Brazil! One of the things that people most talk about this book is that they can't put it down until they've finished reading. In my case, though, it wasn't really like that. It took me longer than usual to read this book--but, again, I blame myself, I've been through some of the crazier weeks I've ever had, so I haven't had too much time for reading--, the narrative was too slow for me. But, well, maybe it was because I already knew how the story ends, once I saw it on The Social Network...

By the way, speaking of the movie, I saw just slight changes from the facts on the book, and as much as I understand that movie language and book language are different, I found myself wishing the book was told as the same way the movie was--while on the book we get to know the story in chronological order, on the movie we get to know it through the testimonials of Zuckerberg, Saverin, the Winklevoss twins and Narendra on the court. Yeah, sorry if you haven't seen the trailer or the poster of this movie, but I thought it wasn't such a big spoiler, once the movie's marketing is clear: "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies."

Anyway, I'd recommend this book for those who haven't watched the movie yet--but only if you really like reading and has nothing more important to do. Unlike with Inkeart, I did finish reading this book, and somehow I enjoyed the reading, only reasons why this book is not on the next Murphy's favorite books.

A handful of characters dominate the plot of this book: Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Sean Parker. All but Parker, the originator of Naptster, were undergrads at Harvard during the formation of Facebook. Despite the academic intensity of Harvard Zuckerburg manages to devote hours and hours to the development of this "social network" as does Eduardo. The Winklevoss twins are trying to launch their own internet social networking site and for a while have recruited Zuckerberg who sends several emails detailing his purported progress. However, when he launches Facebook, the twins become enraged, feel betrayed and spend a good portion of their time trying to thwart Zuckerberg or wrest some level of compensation. This conflict is secondary only to the one that grows between Eduardo and Mark. These two start off as close friends and colaborators but grow apart as Facebook becomes Mark's number one priority in life while Eduardo divides his priorities between facebook and finishing his Harvard education. Eduardo is the CFO and a founding father but is not a computer whiz kid. Sean Parker, a veteran of Silicon Valley, helps to expand Facebook through his West Coast connections and a fast talking, wheeler dealer style. Sean and Eduardo face off with one of them rapidly and decisively becoming the loser. These struggles in combination with the speed-of-light growth of Facebook and its ultimately culture defining and changing influence nationally and internationally set the course of the book. These main dramas receive color and further interest from the social lives of these personalities as well as the culture and fraternities of both Harvard and Silicon Valley. I thought it was a great read.

Accidental Billionaires is a well-written, highly entertaining, page turner--the patina of reality is perfectly blended with luscious fictions--ultimately configuring a lovely trompe l'oeil for the mind's eye. Adopting Oliver-Stone-esque journalism, this 'narrative account' is like a techno-geek's Remembrance of Things Past, where the good old days weren't that good, and weren't that old.

It's an old story. Geek meets computer. Geek falls in love with computer. Geek breaks up with friends in pursuit of silicon dreams. And, in this particular fairy tale, Geek becomes rich. One of the great ironies at the heart of this almost legendary Ur-story of Geek ascendancy is the contrast between the awkward, smelly, unfashionable socially awkward hero, and the hip, modern, and exclusive world (so this subculture tells itself) of the tech boom titans. In a way, this is also a very old story, reminicent of the grasping crass capitalists of 19th Century finance and industry--the days of Jim Fisk and Jay Gould. As one observer said of Fisk, the same could be said of the founder of Facebook, and a score of other fellow travellers:

"Illiterate, vulgar, unprincipled, profligate, [he is] always
making himself conspicuously ridiculous by some piece of
flagrant ostentation. . . ."

One example from the book is a tech executive who throws a party on a yacht, serving koala bear to his guests. In a similar vein, at one point the facebook founder shows up for a meeting with financing executives in his pajamas--I think the writer wants us to gasp at the audacity rather than just find the act, well, conspicuously ridiculous. Silicon Valley itself is an example of this puffery, filled with some of the most expensive suburban tract-housing in the country, and is one of the 'company towns' of the 21st Century, filled with coders working ungodly hours in pursuit of wealth and, more importantly, some status, in this self-referential subculture.

Modern and exclusive, perhaps, but so also is a mental hospital. It's a culture that values style over substance, and, is at its heart, antidemocratic. It's hard to believe that the 1960s once happened here, but as we know from reading, for example, Mark Rudd's Underground or Jenny Diski's The Sixties, progressivism and liberation eventually washed up on the shoals of libertinism and pragmatic narcissism, which is, sadly, the story of San Francisco from the 60s through the present. It's glitzy and pretty, even as it lacks heart and soul.

The main problem of this tale is the bias of the sources. The founder of facebook didn't participate in its writing, so we only have surmises based on court documents, emails, and interviews which heavily skew in favor of those who fell on the outs of facebook's foundings. So as a good history of the 'founding of facebook,' it falls far short of the mark. The author gets good points for sychophancy, however--he clearly hopes facebook's founder will have a beer with him someday, or maybe take him to one of those clubs where he, too, will have the opportunity sleep with a Victoria's Secret model. Hint: if you are a geek, you'll need about a billion dollars. Like Marx observed in 1844 in one of his critiques, if you're ugly, you can buy the most beautiful woman; if unscrupulous, money makes you honored. In this case, both observations remain true in 2009.

And, to continue the parallel with the 19th Century, as Marx remarked, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce. Accidental Billionaires is a lovely farce.

This has the potential to have been a great insight into the founding of a company that is clearly having an impact of the early part of the 21st century. In the hands of a better writer I should imagine it would have done so. Anchor Books made a mistake in not seeing that a Michael Lewis caliber author was needed.

Two things cause this book to be glaring as a could have been.

The first is no Mark Zuckerberg. It may be understandable that when writing a biography about such a subject that the main character may not be available. Now let us assign a grade because one has written such a book. Complete Fail.

Let us propose that this company has a controversial birth and is documented, but since we don't have the other side to source or quote, what is available in the public comments is very thin soup.

An effort to present the view of what did occur is made, but without knowing what was said, done, or thought by the most influential part of the founding of Facebook, we don't really know what did happen.

The second area where this book and Mezrich needs to be castigated as a writer of biography or history is injecting himself into the story. If he has a quote from one of the people he did interview he can add it. He doesn't need to write the description as if we are the person thinking what they think of a restaurant, or of the aforementioned Zuckerberg going off with a Victoria Secret model.

Mezrich is weak as a historian and also a business biographer. The only thing that makes this worthwhile is that you may learn more about Facebook, then you would have to cull from several sources. If Facebook is not your thing to learn about, stay away form Mezrich, see the movie, and wait to Zuckerberg starts adding his voice and memories to the discussion.

This book probably should only have been a long article in some magazine. It sorely lacked the kinds of detail that would have made it authoritative and the fact that the author never got to talk to Zuckerberg rendered it almost worthless. The book seems mostly told through the eyes of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin who had a parting of the ways with Zuckerberg. It seems that this is Saverin's revenge. Of course, the reader wants to know about Zuckerberg -- not Saverin or any other the other characters who were there at the dawning of Facebook -- but you really don't get a feel for him. I think we all can assume that he was an obssessed genius possessed with a good idea, but we learn little more about him. Lesser characters, we learn a lot about. All in all, the book was too glib and short on the kind of details we the readers would want. If you're going to write a definitive book about the origins of Facebook, you need to do a much more complete job. I didn't learn much and I didn't feel it was a very good book.

This book takes the reader behind the scenes of the creation of one of the world's recent phenomenons and most incredible Internet success stories of all time. Like with his other books, Mezrich takes the liberty of taking a true story and exaggerating it between the lines. But the result is that it makes for an interesting read, although the reader gets the sense that the author has tried to jazz the story up too much. Ultimately the primary sources for this book came from the site's co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, and not from Mark Zuckerberg. Had Zuckerberg been the one to relay the history of Facebook, there may be some very different perspectives on some of the events leading to the rise of the social networking site today.

What is amazing to me though is that the company is still growing. It's at more than half a billion users and I am still receiving friend requests from people that have recently joined. If you would have told me that I would still be checking Facebook regularly (albeit on my phone) three years after joining the site in the spring of 2007, I wouldn't have believed you. Social networking sites don't last that long, I would have said. But this is the genius of the site and its constant innovation. Users have no other site good enough to turn to and so they stay, with everyone else, despite some of the privacy gaffes of recent memory. As a long-time Facebook user I was interested in this book and found it to be mediocre. Definitely not as page-turning as "Bringing Down the House".

The narrative is written in a style more closely resembling british celebrity tabloids. That being said, I am hardpressed to understand why facebook became more popular than yahoo clubs, yahoo groups, livejournal, okcupid, lycos games, geocities, etc etc. I can understand why it defeated Myspace: myspace cluttered up with a bunch of stuff that crashed browsers and kept prompting people to update their browswers, that is too much of a hassle to deal with. Anyways, America has a need to create iconic billionaires. It had to be somebody, and so it was.

The Accidental Billionaires is about the founding of Facebook and centers on the founders Mark Zuckerberg's and Eduardo Saverin's friendship as Harvard undergrads. They each shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women. Eduardo struggles for acceptance and finds himself joining one of the university's Final Clubs, elite societies that have groomed generations of powerful men. Mark is less interested in campus life and college acceptance. One night Mark hacks into the university's computers and begins to compile a database of all the female students on campus. This stunt crashed Harvard servers and nearly got Mark kicked out of school. From that project the framework for Facebook was born.

The Accidental Billionaires is an entertaining book, but you have to take the story with a grain of salt. Mezrich highly dramatized the story in the hopes to gain another movie deal. The main details of the story are accurate and true, but the majority of the book is drama and filler to jazz up a normally boring story about a website. Overall I found the book entertaining and a nice glimpse at the founding of Facebook.

The narrative is written in a style more closely resembling british celebrity tabloids. That being said, I am hardpressed to understand why facebook became more popular than yahoo clubs, yahoo groups, livejournal, okcupid, lycos games, geocities, etc etc. I can understand why it defeated Myspace: myspace cluttered up with a bunch of stuff that crashed browsers and kept prompting people to update their browswers, that is too much of a hassle to deal with. Anyways, America has a need to create iconic billionaires. It had to be somebody, and so it was.

The Accidental Billionaires is about the founding of Facebook and centers on the founders Mark Zuckerberg's and Eduardo Saverin's friendship as Harvard undergrads. They each shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women. Eduardo struggles for acceptance and finds himself joining one of the university's Final Clubs, elite societies that have groomed generations of powerful men. Mark is less interested in campus life and college acceptance. One night Mark hacks into the university's computers and begins to compile a database of all the female students on campus. This stunt crashed Harvard servers and nearly got Mark kicked out of school. From that project the framework for Facebook was born.

The Accidental Billionaires is an entertaining book, but you have to take the story with a grain of salt. Mezrich highly dramatized the story in the hopes to gain another movie deal. The main details of the story are accurate and true, but the majority of the book is drama and filler to jazz up a normally boring story about a website. Overall I found the book entertaining and a nice glimpse at the founding of Facebook.

The beginning of Facebook, like the founding of just about any rapidfire billion dollar company, is bound to be an interesting business story. While that business story is indeed told in “The Accidental Billionaires”, author Ben Mezrich seems to have written the book with one eye on Hollywood. Mezrich spices up “The Accidental Billionaires” throughout with speculations about interpersonal relationships, assignations and motives. The historical record on these particular topics is likely very thin, probably little more than hearsay from one or two individuals. The result is a book that does tell the Facebook story, but not in a definitive, entirely factual way.

Before I read “The Accidental Billionaires”, I didn’t consider Facebook to be an innovative technology company. They were the winner in a classic network effect market opportunity: as the first social networking company to attract a critical mass of participants, Facebook could propel itself into the long-term winner in the marketplace. As “The Accidental Billionaires” makes clear, there were plenty of other people working on similar social networks at the time, even at Harvard alongside Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg did have some key ideas that made Facebook a success, including starting Facebook as an exclusive social network within elite universities. But after reading of Zuckerberg’s prowess as a programmer and his focus as a businessman, I do have a greater appreciation for what he did to build Facebook.

That said, I could have done without the salacious aspects of “The Accidental Billionaires”. Mezrich’s mixing of the business world with the personal world casts doubt upon his entire book. I tend to think “The Accidental Billionaires” should come with the classic Hollywood tagline: “based on a true story”. Yes Mezrich tells a good story, but just how true is it?

The prototype that would become Facebook was launched at Harvard University in February 2004, running on a server in a dorm room. Now that Facebook has over 300 million users, it seems as if this vast social networking phenomenon might have invented itself in response to nature's abhorrence of a vacuum. Friendster and MySpace, launched in 2003, had already tested the potential of the market, but in 2008 Facebook gained the top spot and shows no sign of relinquishing it.

Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg was the creative force behind Facebook. His idea was a site where college students could link up, and after "going viral" at Harvard, it was launched in other university networks. In September 2006 Facebook gave open access to the the general public.

There's a good story here, I'm sure, even though author Ben Mezrich has chosen to focus on the sensational elements. The book lists a number of sources of information, including articles from the Harvard Crimson; and the acknowledgements include "inside sources" who have "asked to remain anonymous." Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook principals did not agree to be interviewed.

Here's what we know from "The Accidental Billionaires:"

> The founders were geeks whose driving force was the urge to meet girls and get laid
> The start-up period was marked by allegations of extreme treachery and large financial settlements--exaggerated, according to Facebook
> Palo Alto is a great party town
> Entrepreneur Sean Parker was an ace at raising money
> In 2007 Microsoft bought 1.6%- that's ONE point SIX percent -- of Facebook for $240 million, but that implied $15 billion value wasn't real money

"The Accidental Billionaires" was quite readable, if repetitive--they were geniuses! we're persuaded, so move on! Mezrich, a Harvard grad, found a winning formula in his 2007 book "Bringing Down The House;" that story about MIT students beating the casinos was the basis of the movie "21." Now he's done it again, and in 2010 "Billionaires" will hit the screens.

If you want a rollicking light read, I can recommend this book because it fits the niche nicely.

Linda Bulger, 2009

I benefited from reading this book.

In addition to being informative from a historical standpoint, 'The Accidental Billionaires' provides an equally compelling human story. For me, I saw in Facebook's dramatic back-story a valuable demonstration of man's classical shortcomings of perception -- that ageless habit of confusing appearances with reality, with damage to feelings, egos, bank accounts, and reputations as a result. Assuming the facts of Facebook's origins are accurate as presented here, there is much to be read between this book's lines.

Thanks to the author, the subjects, and the publisher.

This book is about the early days of Facebook created by a geeky Mark Zuckerberg and his more business-savvy friend Eduardo Severin while they were still students at Harvard. The story talks about Mark's early web-site experiments (coursematch, facemash etc.) while at Harvard, followed by his invention of a social networking site for Harvard students that then went on to become what is now Facebook. [Disclaimer: I admit that I don't get the 'social networking' thing -- and didn't actually pick up this book until I noticed how much time my daughter was spending on various sites such as Facebook.]

As with other Mezrich books -- this one is fast paced -- and is a page turner if you are into books about software entrepreneurs. It is somewhat breathless at times, and Ben clearly admires Mark's programming skills -- some of his descriptions of the latter's wizardry are a bit saccharine and seemingly envious -- although that admiration is somewhat balanced by the actual story he tries to tell. Ben's basic insinuation is that the idea for facebook might have been stolen (rendered plausible by an allegedly 60M$+ settlement that Facebook reached with ConnectU founders), and that Mark betrayed several friends and confidantes on his way to becoming one of the 'youngest self-made billionaires of all time'. But, as Ben notes, Mark was not interviewed or consulted for the book, and Eduardo's perception may have been colored by his depth of involvement with his friend during the early days and by his distance during the latter days (he was in New York, when the company moved to the West Coast before truly scaling up). The main storyline also seems completely anti-thetical to the title -- there seems to be nothing accidental about Mark Z's deliberations or moves at all.

As such the book is very light on what actually lies behind Facebook's current business model or technology platform. Scale is hard to achieve even for applications that can get by with loose concurrency requirements, and the API wizardry that have enabled Facebook's alleged success when compared with Friendster or Myspace are not explored here. The book is also not about social networking sites - or why they have become a compelling value proposition (for businesses and for consumers). If you are looking to read something similar to what John Batelle did for Search and Google do not pick up this book. If instead, you are looking for a readable human story about the few individuals that started a company that is arguably on its way to becoming THE social networking site -- and have a short couple-hour flight ahead of you, then this book could be the ticket. I hope Ben will continue the story -- picking up the threads with respect to the middle and later ages of Facebook. Perhaps with Mark Z's collaboration - since I can't but get the sense that there's a more interesting story that he perhaps missed with this attempt.

The invention of Facebook is a fascinating story but this book fails to deliver any hook. The characters come across very flat, the timeline drags, and there is no over-reaching takeaway. After I finished the book, I discovered it was written simultaneously to the development of the film. The book's rights were sold before it was written. And that probably explains it all. (I listened to a few of the chapters on the audio book format and enjoyed the narrator.)

I enjoyed this book, an interesting account of early FaceBook. Most fascinating is how unplanned its greatness was - just a nifty, small act of software development, created quickly, received with a popular hunger no one saw coming - least of all Mark Zuckerberg.

Mezrich's characters that are largely superficial, but nonetheless compelling. There's no story quite as engaging as the self-made successful entrepreneur.

I listed to this book on audio CD narrated by Mike Chamberlain. Chamberlain has a good tone, and does a commendable performance, despite a few vocal flubs like pronouncing Linux as "L -eye -nux", which to me show poor research. If you're going to narrate a book, ask someone how to pronounce words you don't know. Chamberlain is largely spot-on though, just a few flubs along the way.

This book is an entertaining read for anyone interested in the origins of Facebook. However, I believe the author may have taken some degree of creative license to both fill in gaps in the actual events, and to make the story more entertaining.

The book is fast paced and well written. However, there is a good degree of technical jargon in the conversations that are portrayed. You do not need a background in computers to understand it all, but it would probably help.

As you probably know, this is the book that the Facebook movie was based on. I highly recommend reading it to anyone that has an interest in the origins of Facebook, especially in light of the upcoming Facebook IPO.

I enjoyed reading The Accidental Billionaires, the perfect fast-paced book for an e-reader. I thought the writing was fine, I had no troubles being drawn in. Yes, portrayal of women was not flattering, but this was a story about Harvard College students, and male, social misfits for the most part on top of that. I thought it intriguing that THE social tool of the century was created by socially handicapped students. The one minus is that this was a one-sided story, Mark Zuckerberg refused to be involved in this book, perhaps because he was already involved in the other Facebook book, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World, by David Kirkpatrick. So that's what I might be reading next, to hear the other side.

Ben Mezrich is a shoddy, silly reporter and a lousy, lazy reporter. He reports and writes not as if he's a graduate of Harvard, but as if of the ESPN and Sports Illustrated Night School of Journalism. But he does have one gift, and it's to track down a great story. "Bringing Down the House" was a great story and a terrible book, and "The Accidental Billionaires" is an even better story and a more terrible book.

What makes "The Accidental Billionaires" so terrible is the sheer shoddiness and superficiality of the work. It seems that the author talked to the Winklevoss twins (who have always claimed that Facebook was their idea), to Eduardo Saverin (who initially financed Facebook back when it was a Harvard dorm enterprise), and a bit to Sean Parker (the founder of Napster who introduced Mark Zuckerberg to VC capital) -- individuals who all have good reason to hate Mark Zuckerberg, and to have their side of the story told. Besides these self-serving interviews Ben Mezrich fails to do anything more substantive, and essentially tells the story from the perspective of these bitter and biased individuals.

Yes, the Winklevoss twins, Eduardo Saverin, and Sean Parker felt betrayed by Mark Zuckerberg, but the question is why?

The Winklevoss twins were future Olympians and alpha males at Harvard who were looking for a geek to build them a website so they can meet the girls they would like to screw (a website seem to them the most time-efficient way to advertise their sex appeal because they were so busy with their rowing). They wanted someone who could "get" (Mezrich uses the word "get" a lot in the book, and it's possible that he's the only writer who's ever dared to use the word "getable" not ironically in a book) the idea and have the technical ability to build the website. But anyone who "got" the idea and was a computer whiz kid probably also "got" that he really didn't need the Winklevoss twins.

Eduardo Saverin prided himself on being a businessman, and he saw Facebook as a good investment, and in hindsight, considering his return on capital, it will always be the best investment of his life. But for Mark Zuckerberg Facebook was a passion and an obsession. For him, Facebook was not about making billions and getting laid (those were side fringe benefits) -- for him, it was about a revolution and total world domination (in the "Pinky and the Brain" sense of world domination). Mark Zuckerberg probably saw the movie "Gamer," in which the computer genius villain literally controlled people's minds and actions with his social networking sites, saw how the movie was purposefully attempting to mock him, and liked what he saw.

And there's really no mention to explain why Mark Zuckerberg dumped Sean Parker because even Parker conceded he was out of control.

Mezrich's book, while meant to be a condemnation of Zuckerberg, offered insights into why ultimately Facebook succeeded. Being incubated at Harvard helped and it was truly a great idea, but there's also no doubt in my mind that the main reason Facebook succeeded (and not other campus social networks) was because of Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg was a totally focused, driven, and disciplined individual (he's been called "socially autistic," whatever that means), and the defining characteristic of such an individual is intolerance for those who are not like him. The Winklevoss twins were useless, Saverin was not committed, and Sean Parker was too Sean Parker -- so they had to go. But those who stayed with him and shared his zeal were well-rewarded, and will continue to be so.

Mezrich may not have been able to interview Zuckerberg, but a writer is supposed to have an imagination and be able to construct a character. The book vitally depended on an interior view of Mark Zuckerberg, and the author failed to construct one. It's not enough to just say that Zuckerberg was a genius or even that he was "socially autistic." We learn nothing about his childhood, his parents, his Exeter days, his fascination with computers, and his awkwardness with girls. And so we learn nothing about Zuckerberg.

My best guess is that Zuckerberg is even worse and will become even worse than the way he's portrayed in this book. He's similar to Bill Gates and the Google founders in that they all have similar drive and discipline, but Microsoft and Google are real companies with real revenue models. But Facebook is more hype than anything else. Zuckerberg is living in a castle in the sky, and because he's so removed from reality he will eventually implode and may even go insane (if he's not insane already), but not before destroying a lot of what is good and noble in this world.

I just finished reading this novel in one sitting, from cover to cover. I used to do that a few years ago, and this may be for the first time since early 2009. That being said, I really don't get the hype surrounding this book.

I'll admit it was interesting conceptually, and was interesting story-wise, as I thought the history behind Facebook would be worth reading about. But the whole time I felt like I was reading a first novel, and not even a good one at that. For one, almost nothing happens... no really, NOTHING HAPPENS. The chapters are so formula. It's basically this: Have long descriptions and useless anecdotes, a few second person scenarios, characters say a few things, a paragraph more of useless anecdotes, end chapter.

In addition, his constant rants about Asian chicks are annoying and take up HALF THE CHAPTER. As do the endless descriptions of the Winklevoss Twins' muscles rippling through their suits, Eduardo's jet-black hair (which was mentioned at least 938465830274658 times), Sandwiches, etc. I thought this was Mezrich's first novel, but I was shocked to find he had already written ten novels!!!!! Not a good sign.

This book could have been great, but instead it came off as feeling as if I was reading the incoherent ramblings of a stoner. I wouldn't say its very flawed movie adaptation was much better either, but at least Sorkin's dialogue is much more entertaining than Mezrich's childish prose.

Mezrich appears to have abandoned substance for titillation in an attempt to add weight to this work. The book provides an overview of the formation of Facebook and primarily deals with the interpersonal relations between the primary characters. It appears to feel the need to focus on the social and partying habit aspects of the founders of Facebook to compensate for the relative lack of real insights into the establishment of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg in particular. As Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed for the book at all, the reader can't be sure of a great deal of the book's accuracy and conclusions, but has to accept the views of parties who claim to have been hard done by Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg is not treated well by the book and it is hard not to feel that he is just a great deal smarter than the other characters involved in the history of Facebook (who all feel that he cheated them in some way). It would be interesting one day to get Zuckerberg's views on the events that transpired and until he makes these available all we are left with is very one sided shallow view. The book though for all its superficiality does at least provide the reader with some good learnings from the events at Facebook. These include: Get everything in writing, get your own lawyer to review anything before you sign it, and you cant be geographically distant from a startup you're supposedly involved in.

I checked out the book after hearing an interview of Ben Mezrich. He came across as a serious and hardworking author. After I read the book, however, I can't say I was not disappointed.

Actually the title of the book should have set my expectation right. But I was expecting to learn something about the social networking business or at least the entrepreneur processes in the Silicon Valley. On the other hand, the book offered a lot of colorful stories but not much insight. I didn't find anything I could learn from if I want to start my own company or start the next revolution. It's a book I will read and forget.

It seems to me the author is not connected with what he tries to tell. The author is very good at describing the scenes and atmospheres. However, there is little soul behind the colorful and vivid language. The stories are charged: "Sex, money genius and betrayal", as the title advertises. However, it does not strike any emotional chord in me. It seems to me that as far as the venue and setting of this story is concerned, the author is still an outsider trying to act like an insider.

Some of the wordings get repeated so many times that I start to suspect that they are used to fill space and make the book thicker. One of the most obvious is the description of "hot girls". The first time it is intriguing. By the end of reading, it becomes tiring. The other is the mention of Roosevelt and other luminaries in connection with Harvard and its clubs.

Overall, it's a good pass time reading but not something worth reading again or think over.

I absolutely loved Ben Mezrich's "Bringing Down the House," so I had to pick this one up. I saw the New York Times review calling the book "non-fictionish" and full of "hot air". But I thought this book was great. I understand the quasi-misogynistic references to women. This book isn't really written "for girls". In fact, I think that Mezrich's gift is targeting the young male audience. Not only is this book targeted at men--it's targeted at every geek that's ever had sand kicked in his face. If this book was a commercial--it would be running on the SPIKE network during an UFC bout. Get the gist?

I think that some of Mezrich's tales are a bit of a stretch, but apparently he didn't have much access to Zuckerberg (the CEO of Facebook). So he must have had to rely on a lot of anecdotal evidence.

The book could have used a more vicious editor, but it's still great reading. Some of the stuff sounds clichéd, and Mezrich could have done better on this one if some of the tired phrasing had been left out. But otherwise the book is worth the price. Pick it up, it's a fun read for your next airplane trip or vacation reading!

This is a tabloidesque narrative most appropriate for young undergraduates interested in the birth of what is now a ubiquitous technology. The dialogue and narration are at the level of pulp fiction and an effort to draw an extended metaphor between Facebook overturning traditional social structures and Mark Zuckerberg’s personal triumphs over more traditional Harvard men is simplistic and articulated in a fairly hackneyed format. There is no effort to allow the reader to distinguish what is fact from what is artistic license.

Relatively immature undergraduates may find this more interesting than a real work of journalism like The Facebook Effect but all others should steer clear of something that is closer to the National Enquirer than a real account of the birth of a technology that has now achieved worldwide importance.

Even Ben Mezrich's fiercest critics have to admit, the guy knows how to pick a good story. In 2003 Mezrich grew famous after writing about the MIT blackjack team (Bringing Down the House), and this year he's found an even bigger story to tell: the creation of Facebook.

Maybe "found" isn't the right word; the story was up for grabs. But Mezrich was the one who grabbed it, and now he's reaping the benefits. Kevin Spacey snapped up the movie rights before the author had even completed his first draft. And having read the book, I can see why; The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook--A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal has the makings of a summer blockbuster: swank Silicon Valley parties, gorgeous Ivy League coeds and an unlikely hero: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In Accidental Billionaires, Mezrich reveals that Facebook began as a website that simply allowed Harvard students to vote on which of their female classmates was hottest. According to Mezrich, the first, second and third hottest girls at Harvard all lived together. The last four digits of their room's phone number were 3-8-2-5 (F-U-C-K). "The Harvard housing office," explains Mezrich, "was notorious for bizarre little pranks like that. Putting kids with similar names in the same room ... there was a Burger and Fries, and at least two Blacks and Whites ... Someone probably needed to get fired."

Along with funny anecdotes like that one, Accidental Billionaires offers everything from pop sociology ("To the Epsilon Pi kids, a Jewish girlfriend might be nice, because it would make Mom and Dad happy. But, in reality, an Asian girlfriend was much more likely") to technological criticism ("You didn't go on MySpace to communicate, you went there to show yourself off. It was like one big narcissistic playground. Look at me! Look at me! Look at my Garage Band, Comedy Routine, Acting Reel, Modeling Portfolio and on and on and on"). But the one thing the book doesn't offer is abundant firsthand knowledge.
In the book's preface, Mezrich concedes that Zuckerberg turned down all interview requests. So Mezrich was forced to do a bit of literary dot-connecting in the form of imagined scenes. Mezrich begins certain passages with phrases like, "We can imagine him ..." and "We can picture what must have happened next ..." It's frustrating, but at least Mezrich admits what he doesn't know. That's more than you can say about a lot of narrative nonfictionists.

The thing that upset me about Mezrich's speculations is that, throughout the bulk of the book, I'd assumed the author had done extensive interviews with the two secondary players (student financier Eduardo Saverin and Napster co-founder Sean Parker). But late in the book, Mezrich has imagined scenes involving both of them. So either he didn't interview them after all, or he didn't do so as thoroughly as I would have liked.

My other complaint is that Mezrich tries to be clever at the wrong times. For instance, when describing the music that played at a 2003 Alpha Epsilon Pi Meet & Greet, Mezrich writes, "The iPod was churning away, filling the air with a mixture of pop and anachronistic folk rock--either the result of a schizophrenic's playlist or some bickering committee members' poorly thought-out compromise." Suddenly music genre juxtaposition suggests bureaucracy or mental disorder? Come on, Ben.

Mezrich is best when he keeps the editorialization to a minimum and action at a maximum. The part when Zuckerberg hacks into Harvard's computer system and steals the names and photos of the undergrads is fantastic. If Mezrich can keep writing scenes like that one, if he can keep finding the right stories to tell and if he can keep expanding his brand of populist narrative nonfiction, he'll be in good position to become the Washington Irving of the 21st century.

"A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal" should have been the tip off. Really. I thought that I was getting a non-fiction history of the founding of this massively important site, however, it is a techno-drama filled with the base outline of the true story and filled with mounds of creative writing. Seeing as how Eduardo Saverin was the main consultant on the book, there is obviously a skew in the views and where this is coming from (which overall is not bad), though what I could gather from the reading Mr. Saverin was really a small player in the grand scheme of things and wanted to think he was big. However, I believe that the author really does focus on the girls, the parties, the glam and glosses over the actual important bits.

With that said, the overall story, if you rip out the gimmick hype-type settings (the parties in California with the
"Victoria's Secret" models, for example) then you do at least have a basic understanding of how the outfit got started. For a user (reader) who has not been around Facebook for a long time, it might have been helpful for a bit more of the technology into it. Afterall, if someone was not at least somewhat interested in this aspect of the story, they more than likely would not be reading this book. However, that is more than likely why they added the tag line highlighting the sex, because otherwise, there is not much substance.

I am still going with 3 stars over this for the main reason that I am not sad that I read this book, nor am I missing the time that I spent reading it. Though, I would not read it again, it was not an absolutely terrible piece.

I thought that this book was informative while still managing to remain entertaining. Mezrich is a great story teller and this book is a testament to that. The book also did a good job remaining unbiased and told the story in a point of view that did not favor either side. However, sometimes the book would feel like it would talk about things that were not really important for too long which made it feel boring to read at some points. Despite this, I would most definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in start ups.

"This is just silly" constantly entered my thoughts between eye rolls and groans while reading this book. Ben Mezrich's story about facebook's conception is an obvious stretch to fit a pre-determined marketing plan. It's boring and the crude terms and references to women and getting laid are cringe-inducing.

I thought this could still be a fascinating story, even without an interview from Mark Zuckerberg. But instead of finding more sources and interesting facts, Mezrich just fills 98% of the story with unneeded details (`Tyler was really hungry as he ate his ham sandwich, still warm, half wrapped in paper' and `Zuckerberg could probably still smell the girl's perfume in the air as he left the computer lab'- who cares!?). Mezrich gets input from a few people close to the development of facebook, but doesn't seem to have any other sources to better demonstrate how exactly facebook took off and how hugely successful it is.

I reluctantly dragged myself through the entire book looking for interesting details on facebook's popularity explosion and Zuckerberg's life as a billionaire. Other than a page or two about Zuckerberg as a college student and the amount of effort it took to create the initial site (surprisingly, not much), the interesting facts are seriously lacking and this book is just plain bad.

If you're looking to learn the serious history of Facebook by reading this book you might be disappointed. Take a look at the subtitle (A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal) and you're going to get a better idea at what you're in store for. I really wanted to check out this book before the movie came out since I'm pretty sure the movie is going to be a bit over the top. But the book is also over the top so I wouldn't think anything else. You can tell that the story has been jazzed up a bit, either way I found the story very enjoyable. I finished it over a long weekend because it was relatively short and extremely engaging. It's interesting to hear about such a success story and really it only all happened just a few years ago. I wasn't too aware of some of the "history" that went on at Harvard during the creation of Facebook, just pieces here and there that I read. I did feel like the story gave you a decent idea of who Mark Zuckerberg is and why there are a large group of people that really don't trust him.

It's amazing to hear about the growth of Facebook and continue to see the company grow. Facebook transformed most people lives and continues to change more everyday. I still receive friend requests from new people that I've met or have just joined the site. If you're really upset some of this book is made up then skip it but it you're looking for a fun story and maybe even something to spark you to work harder, then I recommend this book.

This book is basically about how Facebook comes to be. Even though this is based on real-life events, some of them are made up to make a book more interesting. However, I think it gives a great overview of how Facebook started by Mark who struggled through obstacles and faced hardships with human relationships. It gives me an example life of how a programmer starts and build it into a multi-billionaire company. I would recommend this book for those who are interested in programming and building a start-up.

When the author thanks his Hollywood "brothers" for their help, one quickly senses a book angling for the silver screen. Admitting in the author's note that Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, would not talk with him, the author's story regresses to an inferential, hearsay apologia for those who may have assisted Zuckerberg along his way - but now chagrined - obviously did not possess the technological savvy, work ethic and the survival instincts of Zuckerberg. This is a shallow, generalized book, more like a long magazine article one might find in Vanity Fair. Mezrich is comfortable writing about Harvard, its crimson rugs, its wood paneled clubs but not with the technologies, the corporate legalities of contracts and corporate ownership, the actual machinations, an overview of Facebook or the real reason for its popularity.

The Accidental Billionaires is a story of the founding of Facebook - and from the story told, this creation was anything but easy. The good, bad, and ugly of human nature are aired for all to see and is provided from the viewpoint of others, not including the key player, Mark Zuckerberg. This book is a quick and easy read, and well worth your time if you are interested in Facebook and the dirty details behind the site's founding and life at Harvard. The Accidental Billionaires did seem a bit incomplete by not having Mark Zuckerberg's perspective - perhaps another book by that founding member?

It looks like most of my complaints about this book have already been expressed by other reviewers, so I'll be brief. Ben Mezrich chose his topic well, as Facebook is an engrossing subject on a lot of levels--personally, interpersonally, legally, technologically, economically, you name it. Unfortunately, The Accidental Billionaires is only a quick, shallow look at the creation of Facebook.

Mezrich's book only scratches the surface of the events it describes. Events happen, one thing leads to another, this happens, that happens, and the book ends. The story spaciously accommodated in this book could be found much faster as an outline on Wikipedia. I was left wanting to know more about everything that happened, but the brisk pace swept me along to the next event, leaving only general impressions and no real grasp of Facebook's history.

Mezrich tries to write in a hip fiction-like style. To be fair, I haven't read anything else he's written so my perception may be flawed, but he's not a good enough writer to pull it off. He tries to be Tom Wolfe and winds up sounding like Dan Brown. Every chapter is constructed around one or two dramatic incidents, each of which is chopped up to make room for backstory and exposition. The result is a very clunky read. It's hard to keep track of what's going on and why any of it matters. The salient point of the book simply seems to be that Mark Zuckerberg is an inscrutable jerk. Suffice it to say that this is not enough of an idea to prop up a book-length work.

Mezrich states at the beginning of the book that he is not writing history, but rather a dramatic recreation, which essentially means this story is as reliable as a TV movie about the same events. Through most of the time I spent reading this book I wondered what actually happened and what was a "dramatic recreation," with the result that I didn't really care about or believe any of it. A definitive history of Facebook remains to be written.

Not recommended.

Picked up this book before I watched the Social network and I have to say I could not put it down. I hear that there isn't confirmation that the events described in the book actually happened however that does not stop this book from taking you through an entrepreneurial roller coaster ride from a tipsy night in a dorm room to a 50 billion dollar company. Hearts get broken and feelings get hurt. All that is left is a Billionaire and a website that has changed a lot of things in the world. This is definitely an entertaining book and I highly recommend it.

I just "went through" the 7+ hour audio-book version of this book. I enjoyed both it and also the 14+ hour _FB Effect_ audio-book version of "The FaceBook Story."

I think that the accusation of "this" version as being sensationalistic, while the other version as being "special access" fluff, have certain elements of truth, and that the "real picture" is somewhere in-between, is probably correct...so if you have the time and trying to make a similar impact on the world, you want to try both!

From the outset Mezrich has a problem. Namely, how does one write the history of Facebook without the cooperation of Mark Zuckerberg, the person most responsible for Facebook's creation. In Mezrich's case he chooses to just fill in the blanks with stuff he makes up.

I'm not calling the author dishonest. Mezrich acknowledges at the beginning of the book that Zuckerberg chose not to be interviewed or cooperate with the book. Mezrich also describes the book as employing a "narrative" structure. However, this book contains not merely fictionalized passages but entire chapters that are wholesale fabrications.

Thus, some of the most "memorable" scenes in the book aren't anyone's memories, merely the author's imagination: Zuckerberg "breaking-in" to a Harvard dorm (by himself) to hack into the system to "steal" names and photos of his fellow Harvard undergrads, Zuckerberg surreptitiously sneaking past a janitor to gain access to an off-limit room with an ethernet port, Zuckerberg diving behind a couch to elude capture by a couple of horny co-eds looking for a place to make-out, Zuckerberg standing alone in his dorm wearing a yellow, Adidas hooded fleece, cargo shorts and flip flops feeling triumph and panic after realizing that TheFacebook is viral and he was about to change the world.

This would be compelling stuff if any of it actually occurred. Unfortunately it isn't true; it's not even gossip. These "scenes" are just BS masquerading as journalism/history. I found this "narrative" technique of storytelling to be an infuriating distraction. This is a book length version of a Stephen Glass article in The New Republic.

EDIT ADDED 10-18-2010

I just saw the movie "The Social Network" that this book inspired. The movie was fantastic. Aaron Sorkin packed narrative punch into the screenplay by telling most of the movie in flashback via legal depositions. He also made Mark Zuckerberg tragic instead of the one dimensional bad guy Mezrich portrays. If you loved "The Social Network" avoid Mezrich's book at all costs. "The Accidental Billionaires" is the rare exception to the maxim that the book is always better than the movie.

This recommendation is only for people who work in higher education. Civilians should stay away.

I have 3 reasons why you should read The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, by Ben Mezrich. (None of these reasons have anything to do with the book helping you figure out your Facebook privacy settings).

But before I jump into my 3 reasons to read the book, I'd like give you 3 reasons as to why this is not a good book:

Bad Book Reason 1 - Accuracy: You can pretty well assume that many (if not most) of the details in the book are inaccurate. Zuckerberg did not agree to be interviewed, so therefore all of the first person accounts that the narrative is based on will be largely self-serving and one-sided.

Bad Book Reason 2 - History: This would have been a much better book if Mezrich had done his homework better about the history of Internet startups and the technologies and companies that preceded Facebook. We learn little about either, although both are critical in understanding the rise and impact of Facebook.

Bad Book Reason 3 - Sociology: Mezrich's description of both campus and start-up life resemble neither reality that I'm familiar with. It is as if he telling the story of someone else telling a story of college and company life, as opposed to actually going and spending time in either environment.

Now that I've told you the 3 reasons why this is a bad book - I want you to forget them all and read the book anyway. Here are my reasons to read:

Reason to Read 1 - Lessons: Despite every shortcoming, I was left with a powerful feeling that we (people who work in higher education) should be doing everything we can to catalyze (fertilize?) the next Facebook. The Accidental Billionaires is really the story of a bunch of college kids who spent most of their time doing non-college type things (classes, studying, etc.), while devoting the bulk of their attention to their start-up ideas. This is not an original thought, but what if we could harness "the propensity to truck, barter and exchange" (Adam Smith) directly in our curriculum?

Reason to Read 2 - Therapy: As a survivor of the original dot-com bubble (1999 to 2001 with Britannica.com Education), this book helped me work through my own deep-seated psychological issues. Okay, maybe this is a slight exaggeration. But it was fantastic to revisit again the pure excitement of taking an idea, starting up a new business, and having people throw money at you.

Reason to Read 3 - Fun Factor: This bad book is a blast to read. Fast paced, absorbing, and often funny. If you keep your expectations low (the secret to happiness in all things), you will enjoy spending time with the Accidental Billionaires.

Ben Mezrich usually writes very similar books. They usually involves a male, with a simple, yet unsatisfying life who goes on to achieve massive success. His genre can be described as 'male-lit' and I credit Ben for getting young men interested in reading again. Many people have seen '21' starring Kevin Spacey which was based on an earlier book of his.

'Accidental' is no different. It documents the birth and rise of the web-phenomenon, facebook. Although the story goes on for about 250 pp, it feels that it could have been nicely summed up in a magazine article. The history of facebook, though filled with controversy, is not highly interesting. Further, it doesn't have the same cliff-hanging, high adrenaline feel of his other stories.

I was expecting more information about the brain child of the operation, Mark Zuckerberg (despite numerous attempts, Zuckerberg declined to talk to the author). This leaves one wondering how complete a story we're getting. Many people are curious about Facebook, and many college students say their experience would not be the same. However, 'Accidental' doesn't provide enough factual information or story for me to suggest it for a reading.

Good Evening, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Today is mental Monday, when this Rabbit reviews a book, today's is The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich.

The story starts in October 2003 and ends in May 2008 with a where are they now in 2009. It follows Mark Zuckerberg's progress of building what was initially called "The Facebook" through Harvard and into the business world. My key take outs from this book were:

* Mark is a VERY VERY focused guy who will get whatever he wants eventually - regardless of who he has to step on to get it
* Mark had a very clear vision and nothing stopped him from achieving that vision
* You need to be passionate about what you are doing to achieve your goals
* Don't care what other people think of you, eg Mark attended a meeting with potential investors in his pajamas
* If you can play the game you can win, eg the pajamas meeting was to make the investors feel that they could control him in business, because obviously he had no idea

Obviously it is hard to know when reading this book how much is fact and how much the author embellished. I wonder if Mark actually contributed to the book, it seems very very unlikely. It is far more likely that his first business partner Eduardo Saverin contributed, there is a lot of info in the book about how Mark basically took advantage of him in the early days and was then "persuaded" to devalue Eduardo's shares to nothing.

Regardless of this, the book is all about power, people who want power, people who want to be seen, to be recognised and use their IT skills to stand out where normally they would be labeled "geeks". Mark is portrayed as someone who is so focused he will stop at nothing to keep his beloved "Facebook" growing, and yet when people who work with him have fulfilled their usefulness they seem to "disappear", not in the killing them off sense, but that they are no longer part of Facebook. The reasons seem to be that they are a liability, or have exhausted their usefulness.

This is a very easy read, and even it is not 100% true, it is a very interesting story that makes you want to find out what happened to the players in the end, although of course we all know that Facebook survived.

The main points that I got were that the vision and focus above all else will help you to achieve your goals no matter how big. This is because you don't worry about what others think, you don't worry about upsetting people, you just worry about "your baby" working, growing and succeeding. Plus if you put in a lot of hard work you will succeed, there are many times in the book when the Facebook team are coding for 4 days straight with no sleep, that is how passionate and driven they are to achieving the results.

So this weeks book, was perhaps rather frivolous, versa others that have been reviewed, but as in Crush It! it is all about the hard work and dedication that get results. If you've read it tell me what you think in the comments below or on the Social Rabbit Facebook page.

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This is definately not Ben's best work. It lacked the detail of some of his past work. He really had to stretch to make this book interesting enough to read. I think the one big difference is that with four of his other books, the main characters in the story actively participated in Ben's research phase. For this one, most of the main players refused to be interviewed. This was not my favorite book from Ben Mezrich.

The book starts with Mezrich's personal style of descriptive writing with semi cliff hangers at the end of each chapter. Only problem is that the content is not incredibly exciting or suspenseful. Zuckerberg goes to a party and sees friends, etc. It felt like Mezrich was trying to make something out of nothing.

The book picks up speed about 3/4ths of the way in and the general details are laid out involving the various lawsuits and how Zuckerberg basically annihilated anyone in his path in making Facebook what it is today. Not sure if this aspect of Zuckerberg's personality is slightly biased by the author or the real deal for the computer genius/nerd.

I think once again that Mezrich did his best with the limited amount of details he was given but it is not near the read of Bringing Down the House and if you are expecting such a read, you will be disappointed. This is a very quick and mindless read and afterward you will most likely feel slightly empty and guilty for reading essentially trivial fluff but also possibly inspired to go within and conjure up that million/billion dollar idea within to be the next Zuckerberg of the world.

The book is, however, slightly motivating in that vicarious living kind of way, with the likes of Bringing Down the House conjuring images of the rock star lifestyle of wild parties, easy, incredibly hot women, and exotic cars and travel. However empty one finds this in the end, it makes for fantasy and escape while reading which for many is why they read. 3 out of 5.

Mezrich writes sort of like a dime-store Michael Lewis. He does have an eye for the dramatic story but lacks the narrative skill to mine the story for true gold and instead relies on hackneyed cliches. Both Bringing Down the House and Accidental Billionaires are riddled with factual errors (history of the Harvard quad and graduation logistics, for example) and sloppy writing, but the fundamental premise of Billionaires (the geek desperate for cool-kid affirmation) is just kind of silly and does not seem consistent with reality. If you look back at The Harvard Crimson archives, you'll see that Zuckerberg had already been profiled for Synapse well before he launched thefacebook. A kid who turned down a million bucks from Microsoft in high school is going to be perceived at Harvard as WAY cooler than a couple of crew jocks (talk about dinosaurs) who belong to the Porcellian Club. (As a former member of the Fly Club, I can attest that finals club members are not the social envy of other Harvard students. On the contrary, there's real social stigma attached to belonging to a club, which are viewed as pathetically elitist throwbacks - though students do enjoy the free beer at the parties.) The most impressive thing about Mezrich's book is that he really does offer what feels like a pretty balanced and fair perspective of the main characters - does justice to Zuckerberg's brilliance and ambition and questions Eduardo Saverin's wisdom, despite extensive access to the latter and none to the former. The more interesting story here is not the one about the epically talented and ambitious entrepreneur who elbows competitors and partners out of the picture (welcome to capitalism) but the corrosive deep frustrations of the less talented folk who get shoved aside (Saverin, the Winklevoss twins).

So, I learned a lot reading about FaceBook -- a site that I hardly ever use and am constantly puzzled by. (What am I missing?) The book was pretty biased, though, mostly because it did not have enough inputs from the principle characters.

"Bringing Down The House" was a good book, "Busting Vegas" was a decent read also, and "Ugly Americans" was entertaining enough. Mezrich's narrative style can wear a bit thin after a while (particularly when it becomes obvious that he's padding the dialogue and storyline a bit), but if the material is decent he's capable of producing a compelling if light read.

Unfortunately though, I think he's sold out. It seems as if he's now seen as the go-to-guy for anonymous insider exposes of twenty-somethings who make money by unorthodox means, and clearly the pay is too good for him to pass up on even when the material is so poor that it should be passed on.

"Rigged" was a good example of this, and sadly "Accidental Billionaires" is too.

The former dragged you squirming and yawning through almost 300 pages as you waited for something to happen, yet nothing of interest did (are we really supposed to get excited about the Merc opening a franchise in Dubai?), leaving you ultimately wondering how the book even got published.

Following the same formula, "Accidental Billionaires" is a mundane story of petty squabbling that in this case would be entirely uninteresting if it didn't involve the world's richest wunderkind. Like "Rigged", the characters are all one-dimensional, the dialogue is dreary, and the intrigue is remarkable only by its absence.

This book should never have graduated beyond a magazine article. Reading it was like how I imagine it must be to watch the extended home movies of any tech zillionaire ... vaguely interesting for voyeuristic reasons for the first few minutes, but soon you're begging for it to end, and if the remote control is anywhere nearby you'll quickly be zapping thru it at 20x speed just to see if anything interesting happens (but nothing does).

Unfortunately, even if you speed-read this one you'll wish you'd spent your time doing something more constructive.

After being blown away by the movie "Social Network," the first "grown up" movie I've seen in a while, I ran out to score the book in order to fill in the gaps. We all know how this story ends. That said, the stacatto, cut to the chase, active writing style of the author, short chapters, the authors insider description of the Harvard social scene-- the pecking order of a class system that perhaps exists nowhere in America but the Ivies, the brilliance, genius,and renegade ethos of the silicon valley cowboys....all conspire to produce a compelling read that satiates my lust to understand the psyches of those who seek greatness and court risk regardless of the danger or lucre involved.

This is truly a modern day book. I literally forgot this was based on facebook. It was amazing how the author gets into the mind of real characters and at a point you believe you know this people and what was so brilliant about Ben Mezrich's novel is, he gets you to empathize which every single one of the major players, involved in the creation of FaceBook.

This book is a fascinating look at how Facebook started and what it means to go from a college dorm room to a multi-billion dollar valuation in just a few short years. It is not surprising that there are some casualties on a rocket ride like that, but you cannot explain away all of the deception, backstabbing and betrayal that easily. The book points a finger squarely at Mark Zuckerberg the original brains behind the operation, as the likely cause of many of Facebook's troubles. The book does elude to the irony that is someone like Mark Zuckerberg, who is by all accounts socially awkward if not entirely inept, running the biggest social networking site the world has ever seen. The book is a work of non-fiction (or near non-fiction), but it reads like a fiction novel and is easily digestible. I am the first to admit that I resisted the lure of Facebook until late in 2009, so I was kind of late to the Facebook party. Now with all of the bad press Facebook has been getting lately because of their seemingly cavalier handling of their user's personal data, I am starting to question whether I made the right decision to create an account at all. This book clearly raises the question as to whether you should be trusting your personal data to Mark Zuckerberg.

One cannot but feel sorry for the author. This book should be a case study on "how to get an excellent idea and then squandering it with immature, direction-less, poorly researched narration style"....the constant referencing to "asian chicks" and portrayal of women as waiting to be "taken" is annoying, insulting, and really generates some sympathy to the state of the author's mind.

While the premise of the book - an expose on how one of the biggest Internet/social networking phenoms was founded was promising - the poor quality of research and shoddy writing completely destroys any redeeming quality the book has (the only "quality" I can think of is that the book is written like a tabloid - you can finish the entire book without any cerebral activity). Perhaps my expectations were framed by the numerous books I have read on Google - most of which provided some unique take. For readers with even a remote knowledge of the key players in the Facebook story, this book will come across as a total joke. For the uninitiated, if you really feel compelled to read this book, library is an option.

Found this to be an interesting story with things you never would have thought about and certainly wouldn't have seen simply by logging into Facebook or looking at their very skilled marketing material and whatever else they're releasing to make them appear the darlings of the online world. Reading this will certainly change your perception of the company.

Other people have talked about how this compares with the author's other books. Have a feeling that what he had to work with wasn't nearly as interesting as he made it out to be. Definitely not "Bringing Down the House" in its writing or interesting story, but I feel it was a pretty good read, especially since Facebook is happening NOW and anybody reading this book can see what the end results are, not just read about them on paper. Perhaps that's the reason it wasn't written as well? Maybe he just wanted to get it out while people still care about Facebook.

Good book that is better than I expected but don't compare it to the author's other books or have expectations. Instead, look at it like an interesting "behind the scenes" to something you wouldn't normally get to see and a way to enforce that what we do see isn't always what it appears to be.

I agree with all the other critiques of this book such as the low-quality of the writing, the formulaic set-up, the clearly "made for hollywood" storyline, and the questionable veracity of some aspects. However, Mark Zuckerburg is poised to hold immense power over American (and global) society: he controls a treasure trove of personal information and has more financial wealth than almost anyone else on the planet (or will soon, once facebook is monetized). Control of Information + Control of Wealth = Control of Power. Hats off to Ben Mezrich for trying to shed some light on the 25 year old kid who is on the verge of becoming one of the most powerful people on the planet.

As mr. Mezrich reminded us (via Balzac): "A great fortune is always built on a great crime." Putting aside the difficult-to-prove issues of whether Mark stole intellectual property from 2 of his classmates and basically misappropriated funds from another, the factually provable elements of this story certainly raise questions about this young man's ethics. Mark built one of his most successful ventures at the time by committing a crime: breaking into Harvard's computers and publicly disseminating private information. Since that time, Facebook, and Mark by extension, have gained a vast reach into data on the personal lives of millions of people around the globe. What will Mark do with all this personal information? Mark's history seems to indicate he is someone with little regard for the law, for contractual obligations, for personal privacy on-line, for the ethics of keeping secure information. Facebook's official "privacy policies" regarding how they can use the information gathered are murky at best. Various interviews with Mark (available on YouTube) on this topic show him obfuscating like a pro. Something to think about before you make your next post on facebook.

Other fact-based items in mezrich's book shed further light on who Mark Zuckerberg is. Mark and one of his co-founders held memberships in exclusive all-male fraternities and sexist social clubs at Harvard. One of Mark's first major projects was to create a misogynist website to publicly rate women on campus based on looks. Later, he used offensive and derogatory language on his business card ("I'm CEO...bitch!"). True, being a sexist or misogynist does not make one guilty of a crime. But it does raise questions about how one views and treats ones fellow human beings.

So read the book. Borrow a friend's copy or check it out at a library. Just don't purchase it - I would hate to see any more money fueling the misogynist fire that underlies this story. As it stands, Mark is clearly profiting from his sexist behavior, and now so is Mr. Mezrich, and so will all the male directors and male actors who will be handsomely paid by Hollywood to tell the story again on the big screen in 2011. So many men profiting from such a dim view of women. Just another reason to be disturbed by this whole story.

Mezrich knows the formula....write a history about an incredibly successful enterprise (Facebook in this case) and make lots of $$ doing it.

The reviews here pretty much summarize the quality of the book -- as many people thought it was terrible as thought it was good. I'm in the middle. Because of Facebook's incredible success, lots of people will read the book. Lots of people will also see the movie.