A good plot to next Social Network movie: Google+?
The Social Network, a film about Mark Zuckerberg's founding of Facebook and the resulting lawsuits, was a worldwide box-office hit last year. With Facebook's 700 million active users and other and the coming of its most serious rival yet, Google+, social networking sites are generating massive traffic. Another movie about a social network would certainly generate interest from audiences around the globe.
Here are what we think are interesting potential plots for The Social Network 2:
Google+. Google, operator of the world's popular search engine, can take the cue of the movie Rudy, a true story of Rudy Ruettiger, an aspiring football player who proved that with hard-work, we can defy the odds. Google, though home of the best minds about algorithm used for everyone's queries, have failed with their fast efforts to unseat Facebook -- Buzz, Orkut and Google Wave were all a dud. Finally getting a hit with Google+, which rightfully allows us to segregate our friends, would be a good ending. A story as inspiring as Forrest Gump or Kevin Costner's Tin Cup could focus on Google founder Larry Page, who despite being told that social networking is not their thing and it's already late in the game, he still pursued Google+. How Google defeated all the other search engines and e-mail services, how its Android put Nokia's Symbian into extinction, and how Google's successfully won against Facebook could also be a good story-line.
Facebook. Yes, we already had a movie about Facebook last year, but we could have another one since the first one was simply about the lawsuits. But the social network probably netting $100 billion in its sale of shares to the public (IPO), could be a good plot, assuming there would be some tensions like Oliver Stone's Wall Street. Sharespost, which tracks trading of shares of private companies, currently values Facebook at $82 billion. Like the movie In the Pursuit of Happyness (about a homeless guy who made it big), Social Network 2 could be about how a Harvard geek transformed himself to become one of Wall Street's richest men.
MySpace. Movies that don't inspire or don't have happy endings -- unless they're part of the Friday the 13th franchise -- are usually hard to sell. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in 2006 and then went into oblivion after. Just look at the figures -- media giant News Corp. bought the site for $580 million in 2005, spent additional billions, and sold it for just $35 million. But the story doesn't end there: Justin Timberlake, who took the role as Napster founder Sean Parker in the Facebook movie, could play "himself" in the movie about MySpace. Timberlake is part of the group that recently bought MySpace. Specific Media and Timberlake aim to resurrect the once popular social entertainment web site. If Justin succeeds, we'd have a movie as inspiring as Russell Crowe's A Beautiful Mind, but in the end we'd have Justin singing 'Cry Me a River'.
Twitter. Who would have thought that a social network that limits your entries to 140 characters at a time could spark a feud between celebrities, destroy a career (ask U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner), and result to news reports that a president has died (blame the hackers who got in to Fox's account)? Twitter doesn't have the Mafia Wars and other apps that Facebook is offering, it doesn't have MySpace's music portfolio, but the microblogging service has been a worldwide hit, with more than 200 million tweets per day. How Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone thought of the brilliant idea that 140 characters could speak a thousand words, and more than that, net billions of dollars in the bank (it will likely have an IPO by 2013), is really cool. Did they come up with the idea over beer? While they were playing poker? We'd love to know.
LinkedIn. Who needs a business-related social networking site? The more than 100 million people from more than 200 countries apparently need the professional networking site founded by Reid Hoffman. The Stanford University grad founded an online dating service (that nobody knows about) but won big with PayPal and LinkedIn. After its recent public offering, LinkedIn is now worth $8.93 billion, with Hoffman having a stake worth more than $2.3 billion. A movie about Hoffman could be at par with that of legendary investor Warren of Buffet and take-over king Henry R. Kravis (see the movie Barbarians at the Gate). Hoffman himself has been tagged Silicon Valley's most prolific angel investor. He made 80 angel investments in tech companies, including Facebook and leading social network games provider Zynga. Not as action-pack as the movie Swordfish, Hoffman and his touch of gold should be as feel-good as the blackjack movie "21."