A short documentary now playing on the Internet is the best movie about
Mark Zuckerberg yet. It’s studded with clues to the workings of
Zuckerberg’s brain, and possibly even clues to the future of Facebook,
which makes its initial public stock offering on Friday.
The film is called “Facebook IPO Roadshow,” and it runs a little over 30 minutes. The ingenious and disturbing film was conceived as the centerpiece of the dark-charm offensive that Facebook launched to beguile new investors. (Those investors, who didn’t feel properly courted by the canned appearance, soon began demanding to see Zuckerberg in person, presumably so they could touch the hem of his garment rather than watch a Facebook-produced video that any schmo could see.)
But as an ambitious propaganda piece that doubles as gloss on the current state of the digital everything, “Facebook IPO Roadshow” is well worth watching. The film is at pains to deny it’s a commercial. As the flat-affect movie puts it, its entire purpose is to “enable your investment decisions” and help “you get to know Facebook better.” Very Silicon Valley. You know there are tens of billions on the line when company leaders get this low-key.
Though several members of the Facebook brass show up, and the film is thick with groovy b-roll and data visualization, Zuckerberg, in his matte blue-gray outfit and matching eyes, steals the show—though he seems, as usual, to have turned in his performance by Facebook chat.
Never has a mortal seemed so laconic and blasé about a company he founded and now hopes to see valued at $100 billion. It’s almost as though, like any garden-variety Harvard kid, he feels entitled to any valuation he dreams up.
by Virginia Heffernan, Yahoo News | Read more:
The film is called “Facebook IPO Roadshow,” and it runs a little over 30 minutes. The ingenious and disturbing film was conceived as the centerpiece of the dark-charm offensive that Facebook launched to beguile new investors. (Those investors, who didn’t feel properly courted by the canned appearance, soon began demanding to see Zuckerberg in person, presumably so they could touch the hem of his garment rather than watch a Facebook-produced video that any schmo could see.)
But as an ambitious propaganda piece that doubles as gloss on the current state of the digital everything, “Facebook IPO Roadshow” is well worth watching. The film is at pains to deny it’s a commercial. As the flat-affect movie puts it, its entire purpose is to “enable your investment decisions” and help “you get to know Facebook better.” Very Silicon Valley. You know there are tens of billions on the line when company leaders get this low-key.
Though several members of the Facebook brass show up, and the film is thick with groovy b-roll and data visualization, Zuckerberg, in his matte blue-gray outfit and matching eyes, steals the show—though he seems, as usual, to have turned in his performance by Facebook chat.
Never has a mortal seemed so laconic and blasé about a company he founded and now hopes to see valued at $100 billion. It’s almost as though, like any garden-variety Harvard kid, he feels entitled to any valuation he dreams up.
by Virginia Heffernan, Yahoo News | Read more:
