With the tagline “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies,” The Social Network is sure satisfy Facebook fanatics’ desire to learn more about social media king Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the revolutionary website back in 2003. An almost faceless figure for some time, Zuckerberg has not shared much about how he created the website that forever changed the way we communicate and made him the youngest billionaire. From the trailer, it seems that the October 1 release will reveal how Zuckerberg’s desire for female attention and power led him to create the phenomena during his Harvard undergrad.
However, Zuckerberg claims the movie is simply a piece of fiction, with a quote in the August 20 edition of The New York Times reading, “Honestly, I wish that when people try to…write stuff about Facebook that they at least try to get it right,” said Zuckerberg, “The movie is fiction.”
From his summer controversy over privacy on the website to the upcoming film, Zuckerberg seems to be in need of a few lessons in using public relations to help him present an accurate image of himself and the site. Here’s an idea, Zuckerberg: Harness the power of social media and become more open with the public via your Facebook page. This may seem obvious, but Zuckerberg should open up his page to the public so they can get a better understanding of who he is as a person. Zuckerberg should let users know what is on his mind or what he is up to with clever status updates and share more information about himself in the “interests” and “about me” sections. Essentially, he should create a public image of himself that is honest, yet professional. After all, he created the website to allow users to reach out to others and ultimately get a better understanding of who people are. So doesn’t it seem logical that Zuckerberg would want to make his page more open, to humanize himself as more than a billionaire social media revolutionary?
Ultimately, good public relations is about openly presenting information to the public, so that people are not left to believe what they hear through the grapevine. It is always better for the subject to send their message directly to the public, rather than having the public speculate over what the message really is.
For those of you who just can’t wait for the October 1st release, indulge your Facebook cravings with a look at the trailer: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thesocialnetwork/itrailer/.
This guest blog was written by PRowl Public Relations staff member Shari DaCosta.
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