My name is Terryn, and I am addicted to Facebook

Photo from Collective Thoughts, Social Media Thinking

I heard about Facebook for the first time at a dance competition in 2007. One of the girl's competing in my class was from Ontario and was talking about keeping in touch on Facebook. Wanting to fit in, I nodded and pretended that I knew what she was talking about.

Honestly, I had no idea what Facebook was. At the time, other networking websites such as MySpace and Nexopia were still popular among my friends. I promptly went home after the competition and went to see what Facebook was. There was no turning back from there, I've been addicted ever since.

With Facebook being accessible on my iPhone I've been even more addicted since I got it last December. When I heard about The Social Network coming out, I was so excited to go see it since I didn't really know anything about Facebook's creators or history, just how it worked.

I thought the movie was going to be a promotional almost advertisement for Facebook, but I was very wrong. They told the story of how it was created and what's happened within the company from then until now.

If I were Mark Zuckerberg, I would be very happy that a movie came out profiling my company. In my opinion, all publicity is good publicity. Even though it shows him being sued and going through court, people are still going to remember the movie, his name and more importantly, Facebook.

Though the movie doesn't show Zuckerberg in the most positive light, it didn't make me hate him either. I felt that they showed a good balance of both sides of the story, letting the viewer decide whose side they were on for themselves. On one hand, I felt bad because Zuckerberg did end up firing his friend, but I thought that he wasn't happy about it. He was just thinking of what would be more beneficial for the company. Everyone has the right to be selfish.

Zuckerberg's response to the movie, as outlined by the PR Post's article, "Zuckerber,Hearst and Hollywood: PR Lessons Learned from the Past" seemed very uninterested.

I would've expected him to be slightly unimpressed that some people would see him in a bad light because of the movie, but he didn't seem to care. I think he should have showed more compassion since it is an honour to be featured in a film and people might think he's just a self-centred egomaniac who thinks he's indestructible.

It was necessary for him to react to the film, I just don't think he did it in the right way. He should have clarified things more.

For example, he characterizes the film as fictional and insignificant, according to the PR Post's article. He doesn't answer any questions as to why or how this is. If he's going to make claims he needs to be able to back them up.

Overall, I did learn a lot from the movie that I didn't know before and enjoyed it for that aspect. After reading about Mark Zuckerberg's response to the movie on the PR Post, I have lost some respect for him. But, I still love Facebook and will continue to frivolously check my friend's status updates, creep on their pictures and press "like" too many times a day.

Check out this YouTube video of  Isk & Honi's "Facebook Addict Song" posted by LurveMyMusic.