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The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal |  | Author: Ben Mezrich
Publisher: Anchor
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  92 reviews
Sales Rank: 696
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 338
ASIN: B002FQOHW4
Publication Date: July 1, 2009
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: Kevin Spacey on The Accidental Billionaires
Kevin Spacey’s films include Superman Returns, Beyond the Sea, The Usual Suspects, American Beauty, Swimming with Sharks, Seven, L.A. Confidential, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Negotiator, Hurlyburly, K-Pax, and The Shipping News. He will next be seen in Men Who Stare at Goats opposite George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, and Jeff Bridges, as well as Nick Moran’s film Telstar opposite Colm O’Neil and Pam Ferris. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Accidental Billionaires:
 I first met Ben Mezrich when I produced and starred in 21, the film adaptation of his great bestseller Bringing Down the House. Ben has a gift for finding high-energy, strange-but-true tales and The Accidental Billionaires is no exception. You may think you know the story of the Facebook phenomenon, but you haven’t heard the whole story and never like this. Recreating the unbelievable rise of the world's biggest social network—not to mention the planet's youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg—Ben tells a captivating story of betrayal, vast amounts of cash, and two friends who revolutionized the way humans connect to one another—only to have an enormous falling out and never speak again. Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were two geeky, socially awkward Harvard undergrads who wanted nothing more than to be cool. While Eduardo chose the more straightforward path of trying to gain acceptance into one of the school's ultra-posh, semi-secret Final Clubs, Mark used his computer skills by hacking into Harvard's computers, pulling up all the pictures of every girl on campus to create a sort of "hot-or-not" site exclusive to Harvard. Though the prank nearly got Mark kicked out of college, he and Eduardo realized that they were on to something big. Thus, the initial concept of Facebook was born; what happened next, however, was right out of a Hollywood thriller. The Accidental Billionaires is the perfect pairing of author and subject. It's pure summer fun—a juicy, fast-paced, unputdownable Mezrich tale that adds to his canon of lad lit. And Hollywood has come calling again: I'm currently working with Dana Brunetti, Scott Rudin, Mike Deluca, and Aaron Sorkin on the movie adaptation of The Accidental Billionaires. If the book is any indication, the film is going to be a must see.—Kevin Spacey
Product Description
The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook.
Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends–outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.
Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance–and sexual success–was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard. Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order.
Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus–and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.
What followed–a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers–makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart.
The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively readable story of innocence lost–and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another.
Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine. Ben lives in Boston with his wife, Tonya.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 92
 Clearly made-up September 4, 2010
Dr. Sally Mc Collum (London, UK)
This book has all the elements of entertainment: sex, drugs, money, betrayal, etc., but truth was simply not necessary, or even desirable, because the more controversy, sensation and excitement the book creates, the more entertaining it will seem. Unfortunately, however, this book purports to be about real people, so while it may be a good story (good enough to make a movie out of, even), it veers so far from reality that it ends up sounding ridiculously stupid. David Kirkpatrick's book The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World paints a more accurate picture of Facebook's beginnings and makes clear how much Ben Mezrich's book relies on distorted and self-serving accounts by obviously jealous, resentful, inept and greedy people. But, like I said, that's entertainment!
 The start of Facebook September 3, 2010
Joseph Sindicich (long beach, california United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great book. could not put it down.If you ever want to know how being a computer geek can make you rich; this is the book for you. Must read.
Yuck August 25, 2010
Lindsey N. Hennick (Indio, CA USA)
It's hard to believe a lot of what an author writes when he didn't get any information from the people of Facebook. Like other reviewers pointed out all he talks is about chicks, and honestly I'm glad I rented this from local library instead of spending one penny on it. Yuck? Let's talk about having negative stars.
An Ok history of facebook August 1, 2010
Bas Vodde (Singapore)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Accidental Billionaires (soon to be a movie) is about the founding of Facebook. It is an 'dramatized' account based on interviews done by the author. Most of the book reads pretty easy (except for the beginning) and its worth reading if you are interested in Facebook.
The story told is of Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, students at Harverd, both geeks who lack much of a social life. Eduardo is more interested in social activities than Mark and tries to join the Phoenix Harvard club. Mark, out of frustration, creates Facemash -- a site for rating girls -- which nearly gets him kicked out of Harvard. Months after that, perhaps based on inspiration from what became the connectyou site, he created a first version of TheFacebook. At first, this site was exclusive for colleges and it grew very fast. Mark moved to California and got additional funding to build TheFacebook to what it is now, Facebook. During that period, Mark got into several conflicts with Eduardo and the founders of ConnectYou.
I felt the beginning of the book difficult to read. At the chapter starts, the author used way to much words to describe scenes and scenarios which weren't of much importance, making it rather boring to read. As the book progressed, this got better. The book is easy to read, though the focus on scandalous situations rather than technological situations was somewhat annoying. While reading, I got the impression that the author actually doesn't know very much about building a site or developing software in general. It would have been nicer if it dived a little deeper in these parts rather than the current popularized writing. But, ah well, this got the author a movie :P
All in all, worth reading if you are interested in the founding of Facebook, but it is not a definitive must read. All in all, the book was pretty much what I expected when I picked it up. Good but not exciting.
Mark Zuckerberg sex. Yeah sure..... July 22, 2010
Chrobrego (Atlanta, GA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lame tabloid title, and poor tabloid writing style. Revolting read. Got a sample on my kindle, but couldn't finish it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 92
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