Even before its release, on the 1st of October, the Facebook film; The Social Network has created a media hive of speculation, as it focuses on the creation of a site that is thought of as a global phenomenon in regards to web communication. Its tagline ‘You don’t get 500 million friends without making a few enemies’ highlights the sinister aspects that circulate on the site, as well as serving as an existing link to the fact that Facebook reached its 500th millionth user in July.

The movie is based on the book ‘The Accidental Billionaires’, which reveals how individuals accidentally stumble upon infinite gold mines, so to speak. The movie concentrates on the young Mark Zuckerberg and the first few turbulent years of Facebook’s conception, recounted in a series of courtroom flashbacks. Facebook is not portrayed entirely positively, together with Zuckerberg who commented; “I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive”; his reaction communicates his belief of the media’s ability to alter perception, while holding back from a direct attack that could potentially cause more detriment to an already tarnished character.

Facebook has dismissed the movie as fiction, which is ironic in a sense as the site operates on that very basis; it is used as a tool in which we perform a digital transformation of ourselves, relying upon careful editing, where photographs are used to document the highlights in life but not normally the lowlights. A movie dedicated to social networking reveals how fanciful some of the elements can be, as friend lists become indicators of social worth and updates confirmation of an interesting life. Many portrayals online create enhanced versions of reality, including the creation of alter-egos, demonstrated by avatars which point towards insecurities, as we delete our shortcomings.

According to reviews, the plot captures emotion and betrayal; these elements can be seen clearly as a presence laid out on the digital profiles of Facebook, as the development of relationships are played out in front of an audience. The notion of a film’s captive audience translates directly to the workings of Facebook, which creates a digital stage of sorts, on which real life dramas are played out in front of an eager audience. However, the difference is that Facebook allows interaction, so that an individual can become part of the action.

The Social Network is from the director David Fincher who is known for his dark films and although the content is not driven by sweetness and light, there are flourishes of humour that separate it from other Fincher films, such as Se7en, the Panic Room and Fight Club. An instant injection of cool is administered through the portrayal of Napster founder Sean Parker, played by Justin Timberlake; the film’s edgy feel is also reiterated by the Hollywood comments of actor Kevin Spacey, who described the film as a “great story for people that don’t really know how it happened. Very filmic, very modern, very cool”.

This is the first genre of its kind. It is surprising that the concept has not been made into a movie sooner; in a society where news stories, such as the murder of Meredith Kurtcher are controversially snapped up as a cinematic opportunity; the comparatively mild media of Facebook seems to have been left to simmer. However, with a guaranteed interest of half a billion people, who are users as well as the extension of people who know a user and few signs of waning interest, now seems the perfect time to capitalise further upon the global sensation. Just as an insatiable curiosity fuels Facebook, so does it work to attract a loyal fan base to the box office.

It has been claimed that social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter now hold just as much influence on a teenager’s development as parents, peers or family.  Is this surprising?  A teenager is impressionable, willing to experiment and looking for adventure, and all this could be affected or achieved whilst sitting in front of their computer screen.  At a time when Facebook has just accumulated over 500 million users, will all the people be an appropriate ‘friend’ and should social networking be taking the place of parents and family?

Social Networking is a major sector of the technological world, with businesses, celebrities, and hundreds of millions of users online.  There is certainly a range of cultures, perspectives and information made available to users, and they can then form their own thoughts on this.  Celebrities are a big influence on teenagers and with verified accounts on Twitter, a teenager can ‘follow’ their favoured celebrity, mentioning them in posts and can ‘re-tweet’ anything they find important.  Having this connection with a celebrity is a good thing for an impressionable teenager; however can this go too far? Appreciation groups, fan pages and community pages are ever present on Facebook, and are all of them suitable for a teenager to read or even be a member of? Generally Facebook is good at monitoring these pages, and keep any unsavoury pages offline.  But does this stop them making an impression on the reader?

Is social networking helping or hindering our teenager’s development? A recent UK Strategy and Markets Development study found that teenagers spend a quarter of their time on Facebook or Twitter.  What did a teenager do pre-Facebook or Twitter, keeping people aware of what they were up to via ‘tweets’ or ‘updates’?  Now retailers are using social media to advertise their products or service, teenagers are now more than ever susceptible to online media and marketing and clearly have the time to read and digest it.    There has been an increase in the use of smart phones, which means young people can access the internet on the move, receive emails and post straight from their mobile to sites.

Facebook, Twitter and blogging have exploded in popularity surpassing Myspace, and teenagers could be seen at the centre of this.  Facebook originally created for university students has become a global phenomenon, with one of the first questions when meeting new people is no longer for a phone number but ‘Are you on Facebook?’  With such a vast network, it wouldn’t be smart for companies to ignore this.  Restaurants can put reviews up, smaller shops can try and get recognition and big companies can announce launches of new products or services.  Social media should be an integral part of any online marketing campaign as companies begin to realize the possibility of tapping into this lucrative market.

The tech press was abuzz this week with rumours from seemingly well-placed sources that social network giant Facebook was developing a mobile phone designed to compete head-to-head against Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android OS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 offerings.

Facebook attempted to quash the story early on with a curiously-specific statement of; “we are not building a phone”, which only served to add fuel to the rumour as it followed a similar tone to Google’s claims during the development of the now-established Android mobile OS. The inference being of course that Facebook could still be preparing some sort of an assault on the mobile market with third-party device manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung doing the actual phone ‘building’.

With Facebook’s dominant and constantly-growing position on the social networking scene and 500m+ registered members already sold on the web, a mobile OS based around the service would certainly make sense to a vast number of people.

While it remains to be seen whether there’s any truth in the Facebook-phone rumours, the story adds yet more weight to the viewpoint that mobile is the key area in which the major players will battle for the foreseeable future.

Although smartphones have been around in some form for a number of years, it’s only now that they’re finding their way into the pockets of the average mobile user, and they’re certainly not limited to the tech-savvy corner of the market as previously. The functionality of the latest batch of competing smartphones – full internet, html email, apps, GPS, HD video recording and playback, hi-res digital cameras, music, video calling, organisers and of course voice calls – underlines just how far the technology has come, along with how many other areas it is successfully invading.

The landscape of the mobile market these days means that the decision for the consumer isn’t as simple as choosing a phone anymore, it’s more often than not a 24 month commitment to a company and its operating system, and everything that comes with it… and it’s not hard to see why Facebook would want their share of that.

Many companies have a hard time understanding how best to use social media to promote their business online. It’s not that the principles of Facebook, Twitter and the others are difficult to grasp – they’re not – but, the real business potential can be a lot harder to fathom out. Since social media marketing works differently between businesses depending on what their aims are, there are no guarantees that what works for one will work for another.

That’s the beauty of social media, it’s flexible enough to accommodate an incredibly varied range of marketing approaches and still deliver success. It’s not a strict medium.

An uncomfortable fact of today’s commercial world is that people no longer trust messages from companies, on the whole. This makes marketing an increasingly precision process where even the most meticulously crafted promotions risk failure.

What people do trust is word-of-mouth recommendations, and this has always been the case. These recommendations come from fellow customers (or potential customers) and they come with an inherent credibility that companies can rarely match in their own communications. Social media is the biggest opportunity for word-of-mouth recommendations, well, ever. It has a worldwide span, it’s instantly accessible to anyone from anywhere, it’s permanently available, it’s accumulative and it all leads back to your door.

Word-of-mouth has grown from local to global, and it’s going on right now in tweets, Facebook posts, blogs and forums. Failure, refusal or just a straight-forward inability to get into social media for business marketing is tantamount to ignoring the latest incarnation of the most effective form of advertising of all-time. Is that something your business can afford to do?