Movie depicts seamy life of Facebook boss

The website and its 400m users have been beset in the past week by rows over changes to its privacy settings.

However, they have nothing on the invasion of privacy facing Zuckerberg in a £40m black comedy called The Social Network, adapted from The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing.

Six years ago Zuckerber created what was to become the internet phenomenon Facebook in a “tidal wave” of grief after being dumped by his girlfriend.

On Friday, as Zuckerberg celebrated his 26th birthday, he faced another tsunami of anger, this time from Facebook users who turned the socially awkward youth into the world’s youngest billionaire.

Zuckerberg wanted to enjoy his birthday in the Caribbean. Instead, the pale-faced supergeek is spending the weekend in crisis meetings in California, seeking ways to calm many of Facebook’s users who fear that website changes mean he is going to sell details of their on-line lives to the highest bidder.

A horrified Zuckerberg told colleagues he wants to establish himself as a “good guy”, a task made more difficult as the draft script of the film leaked online.

Read more in Times Online...