The Facebook Movie Is Here, the Critics Love It–So Let the Panels Begin!

The world of Facebook did not stop last Friday–although its unusual downtime was kind of spooky–when “The Social Network” made its debut in New York.

The much-anticipated movie opens wide this Friday for all to see what the hubbub is about.

And for everyone in Silicon Valley to debate, of course, grokking the film that looks askance at the origins of the powerful social networking site and especially its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

BoomTown will be doing so on Friday after a 2 pm screening sponsored by Eastwick Communications, which will be followed by a panel discussion titled: “Trust, Privacy, and Ethics in the Facebook Age.”

Panelists include M. Ryan Calo, director of the Consumer Privacy Project at Stanford Law School; Matt Cohler, one of Facebook’s earliest execs (where he remains a special advisor) and now a VC at Benchmark Capital; FutureWorks’ Brian Solis; and ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik.

It sounds very lofty, but I plan to be hopped up on Red Vines and Jujubes–so please send some suggestions for questions to ask the panel to @karaswisher on Twitter.

Until then, I leave you with this terrific picture below of Zuckerberg and Newark Mayor Cory Booker at a KIPP school there that was posted by Solis.

Frankly, I don’t give a fig about whether the timing of his $100 million donation to help reform education was or was not to burnish his image, after seeing the promise on the faces of these kids.

It is hopefully one of many more to come from the vast wealth Zuckerberg will have after Facebook goes public.

In fact, I’d like to know what the Winklevii did with their $65 million payout, other than flap their lantern jaws about how they needed more dough for creating exactly nothing.

Zuckerberg might deserve a lot of smacking around for serious issues related to how he runs Facebook now and in the future–and he surely is about to get a truckload related to the founding of the company.

But for the donation alone, let’s all try to drop our deep cynicism for just one moment–even as we all enjoy a movie at his expense too.