Eduardo wrote an equation with a grease marker on the window.
"Give each girl a base rating of 1400. At any given time “Girl A” has a rating R-a and “Girl B” has a rating R-b." he explained.
"When any two girls are matched up there’s an expectation of which will win based on their current rating, right?" Mark asked.
"Yes. And those expectations are expressed this way," Eduardo answered.
"Let’s write it!" Mark exclaimed.
MARK makes a few last key strokes and a new website comes up on the screen.
FACEMASH
MARK makes a few more keystrokes and two pictures of two Harvard girls come up on the screen.
After a moment...
ALL
The one on the left.
MARK clicks the girl on the left and another picture takes the place of the girl on the right.
ALL
On the right.
MARK clicks the girl on the right while another picture takes the place of the girl on the left.
ALL
Still the right.
"It works," Eduardo says.
"Who should we send it to first?" Mark and Eduardo's friend Dustin asks.
"Dwyer," Eduardo says.
"Neal," their other friend Chris adds.
"Who are you gonna send it to?" Eduardo asks.
MARK’s made the link to e-mail and hits send.
"Just a couple of people. The question is, who are they gonna send it to?" Mark answers.
(ANOTHER DORM ROOM - NIGHT)
Two male students are at a laptop. They look at a comparison of two girls.
"The one on the left," one says.
(ANOTHER DORM ROOM - NIGHT)
This time three male students at a computer.
"On the right," they all agree.
(ALL NIGHT DINER - NIGHT)
A bunch of students around a computer.
"The right," the almost say at the same time.
(FINAL CLUB - NIGHT)
Dozens of partiers are around the computer.
"That’s my roommate," a girl says.
(CYBER CAFE - NIGHT)
A bunch of students around the computer--
'This is pathetic," complains a girl.
(ANOTHER DORM ROOM - NIGHT)
A few students gathered at a computer--
"On the left," they agree.
(ANOTHER DORM ROOM - NIGHT)
Three or four students gathered at another computer.
"On the right," they say.
Many people all around were voting.
DORM ROOM - NIGHT
In the background a girl is at her computer and in the foreground Erica is sitting in bed taking notes from a textbook.
"Oh shit," the girl (Erica's roomate) says.
She goes on, "He blogged about you."
Erica looks at her for a moment, then gets up to look at her roommate's computer.
"You don’t want to read it," Erica's roomate says.
Erica ignores her roommate. Her face becomes mortified as she reads, and at that moment three guys appear in her open doorway. They look drunk and they're smiling and one of them is holding a bra.
"Erica," one guy says.
Erica looks over at the guys.
"Is this yours?" he says laughing.
"Get the hell out of here!" Erica's roomate says.
The three guys go on their drunken way. Erica is frozen in her humiliation.
(MARK’S DORM ROOM - NIGHT)
Sets of photos go flying by on Mark's computer screen. MARK is staring at the chaos of activity he’s created in the middle of the night.
"This is an awful lot of traffic, I think maybe we should shut it down before we get into trouble," Eduardo says.
Mark ignores him as the photos continue flying across the screen.
(BEDROOM - NIGHT)
A man named Cox is asleep next to his wife. His phone rings. Cox wakes up and answers it.
"Hello?" Cox says into the phone.
He listens.
"Wait, what?" He asks.
He listens again.
"At 4 in the morning?" He asks.
(HARVARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE - SAME TIME)
A tired Grad student who spends the night monitoring the campus computer system is looking at his computer.
"Well there’s a very unusual amount of traffic to the switch at Kirkland," He says into the phone.
"You’re saying it’s unusual for 4 in the morning?" Cox asks.
"No, this’d be unusual for halftime at the Super Bowl," The grad student answered.
"Alright," Cox says.
COX hangs up the phone.
"I have to go in," Cox says to his wife.
"What’s going on?" His wife asks.
"Harvard’s network’s about to crash," He answers.
YOU ARE READING
The Social Network
Non-FictionHarvard student Mark Zuckerberg creates the social networking website that would become known as Facebook, but is later sued by two brothers who claimed he stole their idea, and the co-founder who was later squeezed out of the business.
