2 Comments

Eduardo Saverin's Facebook pageThe film The Social Network is about Mark Zuckerberg, sure, but its real story is how Zuckerberg's partner, Eduardo Saverin, got screwed out of a Facebook fortune and a friendship. While the big-screen Saverin's story ends with an onscreen note that his grievances against Zuckerberg were settled out-of-court, the real Saverin's story has continued to unspool – and is doing so, strangely, on Facebook.


If you search "Eduardo Saverin" on Facebook, you'll find a personal page with one Note, from 2006, about that year's hurricane season, and a bio reading "***Please add me at my public page.***" The "private" Eduardo Saverin page reveals, too, that Saverin's favorite activities include hurricane tracking, soccer, and chess, and that he's a fan of Britney Spears and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

On September 15, nine days before The Social Network opened the New York Film Festival, Saverin posted his first note on his public account, which as of this writing has 7,465 fans. "Thank you for liking my page," Saverin wrote. "I will periodically update with thoughts on Facebook, technology, and life in general." He added to the post a graph indicating that Facebook occupies more of its users' time than Google or Yahoo.

Perhaps Saverin's faith in Facebook's allure indicates why he's put his online presence on the site. (He didn't answer Urlesque's request for comment, sent via Facebook message.) But it's a little too convenient. Anyone who watches The Social Network and wants to know more about Saverin can find him on Facebook, charmingly untroubled, it would seem, by his tense history with the site.


And its users do all his talking for him! The first archived comments on Saverin's September 15 note begin October 3 – two days after The Social Network saw wide release. It's unlikely Saverin's deleting old and impolitic comments – the second comment, from Erik Kryzak, reads "YOUR AWESOME BRO, U CREATED FACEBOOK !!! NOT MARK !!!"
Saverin graph

Of course, Facebook is home to a broad and free-ranging discourse – another user rebuts Kryzak, "You are a fucking idiot, sir. He fronted the money. He wrote 0 lines of code." Saverin, in life and in the film, was more of a concept man than a tech guy. There's nothing technically revolutionary about a Facebook public profile.

But it stands to be pretty embarrassing for Zuckerberg, as while the movie Saverin tried to calm down Facebook's rambunctiousness, the real-life Saverin curates it. Saverin looks easygoing, making the movie's portrayal look all the more accurate. Zuckerberg's Facebook page, comprised of Facebook corporate news, can't compete with the seeming intimacy of Saverin's, but it's a moot point. Zuckerberg controls Facebook; Saverin, while obeying the terms of his gag order, is subverting it.

Saverin Comments

His second, more recent public post is a photo of Harvard's Jewish fraternity, with the caption:
Thank you for the comments thus far. I really appreciate your support. I will try to update this page as much as possible. Here is a funny photo I found of the Harvard AEPI Farternity [sic] back in the day - can you spot where Mark and I are in the photo?
Zuckerberg, protective of his image, would likely rather not have college frat photos floating around, but he's not the focal point. The 65 comments tend towards Jean Dalere's: "I KNOW WHERE YOU ARE MR GODSENT. THE HANDSOME GUY WEARING SUNGLASSES? HOPEFULLY I'M RIGHT? AM I? LOL." Saverin, using Facebook as it was originally intended back at its start – to post pictures of parties at Harvard – looks classy and "handsome." In The Social Network if not in real life (Saverin would know, and he's not telling), Facebook, before it blew up, was intended just to document friendships; the post-Sean Parker Facebook creates global buzz. Like it or not, Saverin's playing by someone else's rules.