Persistence — even if it is the whiny, likely undeserved, lunkheaded legal version of it — certainly pays off.

But you have to marvel at the bizarre karma going on, given that my favorite matching pair of digital ottomans, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, are poised to collect up to $300 million from the shares they got in a settlement with Facebook and its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of the social networking giant.

That’s right, folks, the rich do get richer, especially if they pursue their case well past the point of shame.

It’s not clear how many of the 1.2 million shares the Winklevii still have from the settlement they got in 2008, since they wrangled with their own lawyers over it, and the stock has also split.

But let’s assume the Olympic rowers kept a chunk, which will be worth a lot of gold-plated oars if Facebook reaches the upward of $80 billion valuation it is expected to in its upcoming initial public offering.

Facebook filed its long-expected IPO earlier this week.

And here’s a lovely tweet about the IPO from Cameron Winklevoss, who is looking very fetching on his Twitter page, even if it is perhaps about time to lose the rower meme image thing, given he’s on the closer side of 30 years old.

We r excited 4the #FacebookIPO + wish the company + all involved the very best,an amazing accomplishment! cc @tylerwinklevoss @DivyaNarendra

— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) February 2, 2012

He sent it to his twin brother, Tyler, and also to Divya Narendra, their other partner in the ill-fated ConnectU service.

Without going into all the well-gone-over deets (go see the Aaron Sorkin-penned movie and believe about 26 percent of it), ConnectU was the Harvard University dating site that Zuckerberg allegedly submarined in order to start Facebook.

Well, presumably water under bridge — unless you are talking about the perpetually disgruntled Winklevii.

At the time they finally dropped their seven-year fraud lawsuit this past summer, they then reopened to a different one then pending.

“The Social Network 2: The Overly Compensated Vii Strike Back,” anyone?

MORE ON THE FACEBOOK IPO:

• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg Is the Billion-Share Man: Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
• Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money”
• Mobile Highlighted as Key Risk Factor (and Opportunity) in Facebook Filing
• Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Temporarily Crashes SEC Web Site
• Zynga Accounted for 12 Percent of Facebook’s Revenue in 2011
• Facebook Has 845 Million Users
• On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in Massive IPO (Get Your S-1 Here!)
• Go the F**k Back to Sleep, Silicon Valley: Facebook IPO Likely to File Later Today at Earliest
• Dude, Where’s My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton’s on Hold!)
• The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
• Facebook Board Meeting Today for Final IPO Okays
• Facebook (Eye)PO: Tracking the Truth of the Biggest Deal of Web 2.0
• Viral Graphic: Visualizing the Facebook IPO
• Is Facebook IPO on Track for Late May?
• IPO Watch: Facebook Hiring Brunswick to Help With Comms for Expected Public Offering
• Complete Facebook coverage

Right now I’m just in the thinking-about-it stages. It’s a really big movie and it’s going to be a great movie no matter who writes it.

– Aaron Sorkin, discussing the possibility of writing a biopic about Steve Jobs for Sony

Saverin, who also helped inform the plot of Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Network,” invested in the company’s $6.5 million round back in March. He will also oversee the company’s entrance into the Asian market, although today the company is launching in the U.S. and Europe.

The goal of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is to make entering a user’s credit card information into an online form a snap, while also making it much more secure, according to Jumio Founder and CEO Daniel Mattes (pictured right).

It works like this: To purchase something online, consumers hold their credit card in front of their webcam. The card is quickly recognized and verified without taking a picture or storing the data on the computer. The information is then entered in the correct format.

The technology will soon also be adapted for mobile phones so merchants can accept payments in person by using the phone’s camera.

Mattes said it solves two pain points — usability and security.

During trials, he said Netswipe was able to decrease the number of consumers who abandoned their purchases at checkout to 21 percent from slightly more than half. It can also cut down on fraud, because consumers must have the actual card in hand.

“It’s almost impossible to make and use fake cards. We can detect if the type is embossed or if there is a hologram,” Mattes said. “We spent a lot of time and money and effort on accuracy.”

With so many advances taking place in the payments space right now, the technology is already similar to a couple of solutions on the market.

First, there’s Square, the well-backed San Francisco start-up, which has created a card reader that plugs into either a cellphone or a tablet, so that payments can be accepted cheaply and easily in person. Second is Card.io, which captures payment data by holding a credit card up to a phone’s camera to automatically read the card information and enter the appropriate data.

Mattes said Jumio is “like Square for online,” although Jumio will also soon be coming out with a mobile version for making in-person payments.

Jumio will have three products initially, which will let merchants decide how comprehensive a payment network they want. If merchants only want to use the scanning technology via the webcam, it costs 15 cents a scan; for more comprehensive services, smaller merchants will pay a flat rate of 2.75 percent per transaction with no set-up or monthly fees.

So far, Mattes said Jumio has five merchants signed up, but he wasn’t willing to name them at this time.

What he can successfully do is go on “Saturday Night Live” and be a good sport, appearing alongside two men who have played and parodied him: “The Social Network” actor Jesse Eisenberg and SNL’s Andy Samberg. Here’s the clip from tonight’s show:

Without Aaron Sorkin writing his dialogue, the real Zuckerberg is lacking in zingers. His review of “The Social Network”: “It was… interesting.”

“That guy’s like my evil twin and that’s just Andy Samberg,” Zuckerberg tells SNL creator Lorne Michaels while being mock-sequestered backstage. “Those guys are such nerds….C’mon, I invented poking.”

Meanwhile, Eisenberg admits, for all the sticklers in the room (and one of them in particular), “I wasn’t really ‘doing’ Mark Zuckerberg; I was interpreting a fictional character in a movie script.”

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

The movie was nominated for best picture, while Jesse Eisenberg was nominated for best actor for his portrayal of Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, David Fincher for best director and Aaron Sorkin for adapted screenplay.

We probably won’t be seeing the famously underdressed Zuckerberg in a tux anytime soon. Given the film was unauthorized and took liberties with all-too-recent history, it’s highly unlikely he would attend the awards show. But Zuckerberg has had more of a sense of humor about the movie than might be expected–he rented out a local theater so he and his staff could watch the film on opening day, and has said in interviews that the creators did get his hoodies and T-shirts right, if nothing else.

“The Social Network” was also picked as a finalist for the Academy Award in cinematography, film editing, original score and sound mixing.

But it wasn’t the most-lauded film of the morning. “The King’s Speech” had 12 Oscar nominations and “True Grit” had 10.

“The Social Network” has already won Golden Globes for best picture (drama), best director, best screenplay and best original score, as well as a pile of film critics’ awards.

The movie was chosen for the group’s best picture award, while David Fincher got best director, Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg was named best actor and Aaron Sorkin received the best screenplay award.

The win is a strong indication that the movie is going to be the one to beat at the Oscars, which take place February 27. Nominations for the top prize for movies will be announced January 25.

“The Social Network” has already won awards from critics in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Indiana and the National Board of Review.

It has also been nominated for multiple Golden Globe Awards, and was named to the American Film Institute’s top 10 of 2010.

(See the movie’s Web site for a thorough list of awards and nominations.)

Wouldn’t it be cool if Mark Zuckerberg donned a hoodie-tuxedo and ran up and grabbed any statuette actor Jesse Eisenberg won over the next few months, as the Hollywood awards season gears up?

Eisenberg, of course, played the Facebook co-founder and CEO in the movie “The Social Network,” which just grabbed a clutch of Golden Globe Awards nominations today.

Next stop, the Oscars, where the controversial retelling of the founding of Facebook will likely also garner a spate of nominations when they are announced in early February.

And many in Hollywood think the “The Social Network” will win big at the Academy Awards, even though it was not a blockbuster, due to the rave reviews and its fancy pedigree.

Along with Eisenberg’s Best Actor nod for the Golden Globe Awards–which take place in mid-January and is often a harbinger for the Oscars–writer Aaron Sorkin got a nomination for Best Screenplay, David Fincher nabbed one for Best Director, and Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer each scored for Best Supporting Actor.

The film itself, in a key category, got a nomination for Best Motion Picture in the drama category.

Maybe a sequel is in order?

The All Things Digital readership has spoken: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was wrong in declaring that the Apple iPad was not mobile.

In fact, 1,671 takers of a survey BoomTown ginned up on the subject using SurveyMonkey disagreed with him 85.1 percent to 14.9 percent.

The larger number picked the answer– “No, Mark needs to get out more!”–when asked: “Was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg correct in asserting last week that the Apple iPad is not mobile?”

The smaller number agreed with the statement, “Yes, Mark is a visionary!”

Well, he actually is, but not about this debate.

A week ago, BoomTown wrote a post titled “Dear Zuck: The Apple iPad Is Mobile (So Sorry!),” countering Zuckerberg’s sudden statement at a recent press event that the popular tablet device was not.

As I wrote about what the kingpin of the social networking giant said:

Ben Parr of Mashable asked a question everyone has been speculating about recently–whether and when there would be an iPad app for Facebook coming.

A fumbling “no comment” would have worked fine, but the real Zuckerberg seemed to have decided to channel the clever Aaron Sorkin-ish repartee of the fictional Zuckerberg in the movie “The Social Network.”

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” he said flatly.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” noted Parr.

“Well, sorry,” Zuckerberg spat out, his voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm that only a super-nerdy Silicon Valley engineer can pull off properly.

I disagreed, noting:

The iPad is a computer, because that is technically true, even though that makes a smartphone a computer too. (And, now that I think of it, my car is a computer.)

But actual civilians don’t make these kinds of distinctions and, if one spends any time watching consumers use tablets, mobile is entirely how they think of it.

The post got a lot of comments, and tweets on Twitter too, so I thought I would post a survey so that everyone could cast their own vote.

Here it is below again, with the results under it (click on full screen to make it ginormous):

SurveySummary_11092010

[Photo from CafePress, and thanks to SurveyMonkey for calling our survey a "smart, savvy, and even downright sexy" embed.]

Yesterday, BoomTown wrote a post titled “Dear Zuck: The Apple iPad Is Mobile (So Sorry!),” countering Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement at a press event earlier this week that the popular tablet device is not.

As I wrote about what the kingpin of the social networking giant said:

Ben Parr of Mashable asked a question everyone has been speculating about recently–whether and when there would be an iPad app for Facebook coming.

A fumbling “no comment” would have worked fine, but the real Zuckerberg seemed to have decided to channel the clever Aaron Sorkin-ish repartee of the fictional Zuckerberg in the movie “The Social Network.”

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” he said flatly.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” noted Parr.

“Well, sorry,” Zuckerberg spat out, his voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm that only a super-nerdy Silicon Valley engineer can pull off properly.

I disagreed, noting:

The iPad is a computer, because that is technically true, even though that makes a smartphone a computer too. (And, now that I think of it, my car is a computer.)

But actual civilians don’t make these kinds of distinctions and, if one spends any time watching consumers use tablets, mobile is entirely how they think of it.

The post got a lot of comments, and tweets too, so I thought I would post a survey so that everyone can cast their own vote.

And I won’t blame the economy if I lose, so click away (and I will post the results later):

Because while those who live in the echo chamber of Silicon Valley are frequently wrong, but never in doubt, a gigantic amount of time is spent being more technical than realistic.

And by “technical,” I mean annoyingly detailed in making a point as to completely obfuscate the essence of anything.

Let me explain.

In the middle of yet another dullish release of features–this time mobile-related–at an event at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, Calif., on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of the social networking giant, finally livened up the proceedings in the Q&A part at the end.

Ben Parr of Mashable asked a question everyone has been speculating about recently–whether and when there would be an iPad app for Facebook coming.

A fumbling “no comment” would have worked fine, but the real Zuckerberg seemed to have decided to channel the clever Aaron Sorkin-ish repartee of the fictional Zuckerberg in the movie “The Social Network.”

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” he said flatly.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” noted Parr.

“Well, sorry,” Zuckerberg spat out, his voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm that only a super-nerdy Silicon Valley engineer can pull off properly.

And, while he quickly backtracked and declared a deep love of Apple products, it was clear Zuckerberg meant what he’d said and said what he’d meant.

That the iPad is just another version of the kind of computer he cut his geek teeth on and it is not at all like the mobile smartphones that are now moving squarely into power pole position in the digital universe.

Except, not so fast.

First, the creators of the iPad over at Apple do consider it mobile, and its own often-disdainful leader Steve Jobs has said so on many occasions.

While that does not make it so, of course, imagine if he got up and said Facebook was not actually a social network as much as, say, a glorified portal with more chitchat. Sort of an AOL-Plus!

You could make that argument, although it would not take into account a lot of key elements Zuckerberg did not take into account in his iPad-is-a-computer zinger.

But that’s not a good enough counter, of course, so let’s focus on real people using the iPad or tablets like it, such as the Amazon Kindle e-reader.

First, the iPad is a computer, because that is technically true, even though that makes a smartphone a computer too. (And, now that I think of it, my car is a computer.)

But actual civilians don’t make these kinds of distinctions and, if one spends any time watching consumers use tablets, mobile is entirely how they think of it.

If you want to get technical, I supposed “portable” is a better way to describe it, but not in the way a laptop is.

And here are the five simple reasons why:

No. 1: A tablet is typically carried around like a book or magazine, which are perhaps the most portable of all media.

While it has a hard shell, an iPad has the elements of those much more so than a computer laptop, which is much harder to manipulate, due to its clamshell design and keyboard.

No. 2: A tablet is largely used via a touchscreen, which allows the device to be intimate in a way a computer never is.

Watch people use a laptop and an iPad in a public setting and you will easily see the relationship is much different.

A laptop is treated more as a work device and an in-a-pinch entertainment player. Like a phone, the tablet is used close in and with no sense of boundaries.

No. 3: A tablet is largely used as a consumption device, with interactive and inputting elements, while a computer is an interactive and inputting device with consumption elements.

No. 4: The tablet, like my phone, is always on, with no boot up. It is persistent, while a computer is more periodic.

And a tablet is smaller and thinner than any computer and will only get thinner over time. Again, this kind of form factor makes it more and more a mobile device.

No. 5: And, even now, as large as the first iteration of the iPad is, it never sits on my desk.

A desktop computer, of course, does. My laptop sits on my desk, plugged into a big screen, and is often unplugged and taken with me when I travel.

But my iPad is never on my desk. Unless it is charging or synching, it is in my bag with my phone and always ready to go.

As in, mobile.

Mark Pincus can sure talk a blue streak. Mark Cuban can easily be classified as a chatterbox, both online and off. And Marc Andreessen certainly knows how to keep up his end of the conversation.

In other words, the pantheon of famous digital entrepreneurs is full of blabby Marks.

But Mark Zuckerberg, not so much.

So, when watching “The Social Network”–the movie about the rocky origins of Facebook–a person who has known the co-founder and CEO of the social networking powerhouse even longer than BoomTown has leaned over and said, “The Mark in this movie has said more in 15 minutes than I have heard the real Mark say in the first few years I knew him.”

And how.

If you want to know, although critics are raving over it, it’s like a very talky, very geeky version of “The West Wing.”

The Mark Zuckerberg in the movie, as penned by master wordsmith Aaron Sorkin, is able to parry with top-notch lawyers and deliver perfectly crafted rejoinders one after the next to friend and foe alike.

He can conduct several conversation streams at once–so much so that a soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend remarks that talking to him was like “being on a StairMaster.”

I’d agree with that statement about the real Mark, except that the effort is quite the opposite of being dazzled by wild verbal gymnastics.

In fact, unlike a lot of Internet moguls, it has often been a struggle to get him to be fully articulate about the company, due mostly to a more taciturn, awkward and incredibly precise way of speaking.

When Zuckerberg famously asked Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” in a television interview–”Was that a question?”–right after she asked a question, I shuddered in recognition at the exchange.

In that way, he is a lot like the original leader of AOL (AOL), Steve Case, a person who created the first major social explosion online while also being incredibly shy and terse in real life.

Actor Jesse Eisenberg (pictured here) playing Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” certainly has the clipped delivery and often furrowed brow down–but the rest is a dude I certainly would love a chance to interview.

That said, he also plays Zuckerberg as a dour and wary person, also nothing like the real thing.

While I am in no way a personal friend of Zuckerberg’s, I have spent enough time with him to say that he strikes me as someone who generally tries to get along with people and makes a big effort to seem like a regular Joe, despite his fame and, well, billions of dollars worth of stock.

That does not mean he can’t be a bit robotic in tone or that he is not very much in charge at Facebook–indeed, one thing the movie does show is how very much the company is a creation of his single-minded devotion, restless innovation and intense forcefulness.

What I found perhaps most interesting about the movie was that it seems to, in fact, make the very case it is not trying to make.

Which is that, as the movie Zuckerberg says to the trio suing him for stealing the basic idea for Facebook: “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.”

Exactly. Because even if Zuckerberg did swipe the kernel of an idea about making a social network about friends from the Winklevoss twins at Harvard University–which seems obvious that he did indeed do– they were still incapable of creating what he created, even if they had gotten bigger head start.

Though hysterically played by actor Armie Hammer (pictured here, who does both of the Winklevii), these two seem more like rich kids with good chins, great bods and not much else.

So too Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s original partner in Facebook, who got left behind and then diluted out of his stake in the start-up.

While that move by Zuckerberg and his new investors was probably too cute by a half–and they had to pay up later for it–the movie makes clear that Saverin did almost nothing to make Facebook what it was, except write an early check.

In fact, in one scene, it’s clear he does not even know how to use it enough to change his relationship status. This, I believe.

(Also, incredibly, that Justin Timberlake–who plays the devilish Sean Parker–can actually act.)

Finally, there is the part about the impetus for Zuckerberg to make Facebook–which opens the movie–over a bad breakup with a girlfriend.

Again, it would be great for the origins of Facebook to be that interesting, but that trick is only there to provide a good ending shot of Zuckerberg hitting the refresh button.

And, of course, to lay out the big question of whether or not Zuckerberg is an “asshole” or not.

That’s from “The Social Network” and not me, which at the end twists that grand theme again.

Instead, it posits via a woman lawyer–the only truly positive portrayal of a woman in the entire film, by the way–to the Zuckerberg character that: “You are not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be one.”

I am afraid that is not really true either, at least in my experience.

Sure, Zuckerberg has been diffident, has treated some friends shabbily (even recently) and has even been borderline disingenuous once or twice with me.

But that’s not that different from a lot of people I cover in tech and that does not make him that proverbial “asshole” of the movie.

Oh, I sure have known a few of those in my time covering Silicon Valley, but that’s a list I’ll keep for my movie.

Kidding. Sort of. (You know who you are.)

The Facebook movie is finally here, the reviews are in and–no surprise–the critics are raving.

After all, it was done by Hollywood pros director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin, who have apparently transformed the appalling badly penned and very fictional book “Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal” by Ben Mezrich into some bit of cinematic art.

But that’s not BoomTown talking, so here is a rundown of five reviews by top critics, as collected by the terrific Rotten Tomaties site (you can click on the links below for the full reviews):

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times:

“Smartly written by Aaron Sorkin, directed to within an inch of its life by David Fincher and anchored by a perfectly pitched performance by Jesse Eisenberg, ‘The Social Network’ is a barn-burner of a tale that unfolds at a splendid clip.”

Owen Glelbermann, Entertainment Weekly:

“‘The Social Network’ has everything you want in a thriller for the brain: Huge doses of ego and duplicity, corporate backstabbing, and some very layered performances.”

Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal:

“This account of Facebook’s founder, and of the website’s explosive growth, quickly lifts you to a state of exhilaration, and pretty much keeps you there for two hours.”

Bob Mondello, NPR:

“‘The Social Network’ is terrific entertainment–an unlikely thriller that makes business ethics, class distinctions and intellectual-property arguments sexy.”

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News:

“Weeks after seeing it, moments from it will haunt you.”

Hauntingly sexy is simply not the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that I know or what most think of the powerful social networking site, but it seems to go on and on like that in the reviews, with every critic using the film to wax poetic about life in the digital age.

(Personally, I find all my life lessons in “The Terminator” series, but no one seems to grok my profound insight here.)

On Rotten Tomatoes, which you can see above, the movie got a 97 percent critics rating, although only an 81 percent audience vote. Still, only Ben Affleck’s “The Town” is as close.

In other words, Mark, even if it is trashing you as a person, what you represent seems to have inspired analog ecstasy and movie magic.

And for most film critics, it seems, a very happy ending.

I will be seeing “The Social Network” later today at a special screening in Silicon Valley, sponsored by Eastwick Communications, which will be followed by a panel discussion titled: “Trust, Privacy, and Ethics in the Facebook Age.”

I am the moderator, and the interviewees 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.

Video TK, natch, although I am going more for wobbly, rather than exhilarating.

I certainly could not do much better than another genius version by Next Media Animation from Taiwan. While only in CGI, there is bathroom sex, beatings, peepholes and–say what?–a gay love triangle.

Really and truly–enjoy:

It’s just a post on the popular entertainment blog “Deadline Hollywood.”

But it’s a clear indication the makers of the movie about the origins of Facebook are gunning for maximum attention and Oscar buzz with only a few weeks to go before its debut.

In fact, awards columnist Pete Hammond was pretty much channeling the marketing plan of Oscar-winning producer Scott Rudin for “The Social Network,” which has its premiere in New York on September 24 and its wide rollout on October 1.

Rudin–the volcano of a producer about whom I would like to see a biopic like the one he is sticking it to Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg with–has apparently been personally inviting every online chatterbox (not me!) and their mother to screenings of the film from the Sony (SNE) movie unit, Columbia Pictures, in recent weeks.

Writes Hammond:

It’s a smart strategy but even without a personal invitation from one of the film’s producers this is already the current must-see movie on every Oscar watchers list. As an example of that, one blogger actually got on a plane from Toronto to New York just to see Social Network, then headed immediately back to Toronto. His subsequent review was a rave declaring it the one to beat for Best Picture (a little premature on that I think). That’s just one example of the praise now starting to hit the Internet from Hitfix to Slashfilm to Chud and all cyber points inbetween.

A little premature perhaps, but it seems to have worked with Hammond:

I saw it at the first opportunity on Monday and would have to say fairly objectively that The Social Network is Sony’s best shot at Best Picture in years, a lock for Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards. And most importantly, Oscar nominations in every major category including Director for David Fincher, Writing for Aaron Sorkin, lead actor for Jesse Eisenberg (playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg), Supporting Actor for both Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score, editing and so on. It also looks like it will be a major box office hit, hitting a nerve with the young demographic that are on the front lines of moviegoers…

Despite its high-tech bones, what Fincher and Sorkin have managed to do is tell a time-honored very human story, a social document for a generation that has as much relevance now as movies like On The Waterfront, Network, All The President’s Men, and The Graduate did in their time.

Expect more of the same from those who get sucked up into the marketing machine for “The Social Network” in the next weeks, even though it appears it will be devastating to the real-life version of its main subject, Mark Zuckerberg.

And really, really unfair, according to MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka, by taking one aspect of his personality–awkward arrogance or perhaps arrogant awkwardness–and twisting it into a much deeper malevolence.

I have no doubt in my mind that Zuckerberg pulled an epic geek sandbagging on the clueless Winklevoss twins by promising to work on their goofy concept for a social networking site at Harvard University, then not doing so and working on his own ideas instead.

And, for sure, he had a painfully typical start-up falling-out with his own early partners.

But let’s get real here–they all got paid off plenty for being present at the creation of something they themselves never could have created.

Does anyone honestly believe the Winklevii were capable of making Facebook, or any reasonable facsimile, any more than Zuckerberg was capable of rowing in the Olympics?

While hitting some right notes about Zuckerberg’s mannerisms–conversations with him can be very perplexing–the Mark of “The Social Network” is largely fictional.

Certainly, he has some glaring faults (and so do I!).

But they are no worse that other tech leaders’, from Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT) to Steve Jobs of Apple (AAPL) to Silicon Valley’s own twins, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google (GOOG).

Interestingly, the night before what turned out to be a very difficult onstage interview at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June, at a dinner just south of Los Angeles, Zuckerberg fretted to me about the film.

“It’s what a lot of people will think I am like, because it’s a movie and that has impact on their perceptions,” he said with a lot of concern in his voice.

I pooh-poohed his complaints and told him not to worry about it too much.

“It’s just a movie,” I said. “No one believes what they see at the movies anymore.”

But as this film chugs along–gaining Oscar velocity right onto the stage of the Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard on February 27, 2011–I can now see Zuckerberg might have been right all along.

The gift bags (crates?) also included some comfort for the sole: Havaianas flip-flops.

Oh. This year’s entertainment? The amazing and amusing stylings of Cirque du Soleil. Maybe this year’s theme was Flexibility.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s three months of Dish service, not six.

I saw a screening of the movie last week, and can report back that it’s just as rough on the Facebook CEO as his people feared it would be.

Not because of scandalous scenes involving sex and drugs–there aren’t many of those, and they’re quite tame*. It’s because the film portrays him as an insecure jerk who screws over people and becomes a much-richer insecure jerk.

At the end of the movie, there’s a suggestion that Zuckerberg may not actually be a jerk–he may just be someone who acts like one. That’s about it when it comes to the upside of his character: He’s the bad guy in his own creation myth.

But I liked the movie a lot–I’ll see it again once it comes out in October. And given that you’re seeing these words, it’s a good bet that you will, too. If you like reading about start-ups and growth rates and valuation, then you’ll like seeing it on a big screen, right?

The best hope for Zuckerberg and his team is that the wider audience for this one could be relatively small.

The movie may not be accurate–it’s based largely on Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires,” which Mezrich admits has many doses of make-believe–but there is lots of inside tech/investing baseball here**, and it spends a lot of time in lawyers’ conference rooms. It’s a dark movie with a climax that hinges on stock dilution, and the only vampire to be seen is Justin Timberlake’s version of Sean Parker.

So that may be a hard sell for a really big audience, at least at first. But no matter how well it does, it’s the only version of Mark Zuckerberg that most people are going to know about, and it’s a terribly unflattering one.

If that doesn’t make you feel at least a twinge of sympathy for the guy, then I definitely don’t want to be your Facebook friend.

*Note for Henry Blodget and crew: The coke and boobs scene made it into the movie but the girls keep their bras on. There is also a scene involving a 12-foot bong, which Zuckerberg is not involved in, and another one involving two couples having bathroom sex. He is in that one.

**The movie is chock-full of real names that the start-up set will recognize, from Dustin Moskovitz to Peter Thiel, but there’s one glaring omission. Sequoia Capital and partner Mike Moritz, both singled out by name in a version of Aaron Sorkin’s script that surfaced last year, have been replaced with fictional entities in the final cut. Would love to know the backstory there….

The New Yorker finally came out with its profile of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today, titled “The Face of Facebook.”

And while the magazine piece by Jose Antonio Vargas reads well, there is not much new in it for those who have followed the career of the innovative young wunderkind of social networking.

Exeter computer prodigy, Harvard computer prodigy, Silicon Valley computer prodigy. Throw in the Winklevii’s ceaseless quest to say they could have been somebody (they couldn’t have been), mix in Sean Parker and set to bake to billions.

Vargas did score a few interviews with Zuckerberg, including a visit to his current home and a short glimpse of him interacting with his longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan.

But, like Zuckerberg himself, it’s kind of all gray T-shirt and hoodie and working at Facebook.

The best part is Hollywood writer Aaron Sorkin, who penned the upcoming Zuckerberg-slasher, “The Social Network,” finding out his subject loves his television classic “The West Wing.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” he responded to Vargas.

Oh, suck it up, Aaron, as Mark surely will have to when the movie comes out October 1.

Until then and as usual: Gray T-shirt, hood and, of course, Facebook.

As Kara Swisher pointed out in July, Facebook isn’t accepting ads from Sony (SNE), the movie’s distributor. The reason, in so many words: Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg don’t like the movie.

Fair enough: Sony has figured out plenty of ways to get buzz for the movie online, via both paid routes (“Promoted Twitter” ads) and unpaid gambits (viral videos, of course).

And now, in a lovely bit of irony, the “The Social Network” is being advertised on Facebook, after all. For free. By Facebook’s users.

As Forbes’s Dorothy Pomerantz explains, Sony is asking Facebook users to “like” the movie, and they’re complying: So far, some 29,000 Facebookers have endorsed the movie via a button click, which translates into some 29,000 individual “thumbs up” ads appearing in Facebook users’ streams.

Pretty clever, no?

I’m giving the movie a previewing thumbs-up, too, for what it’s worth–I’m really excited to see it. And not because I think it’s going define Generation Y or anything like that (beware of explicitly “generation-defining” movies, by the way–you’ll end up with “Reality Bites”). It’s because I think it’s going to be awesome: Aaron Sorkin is great with the words, and David Fincher makes great images.

And if that doesn’t sell you, maybe another view of the trailer, scored by a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” will help.

(Happy Birthday, Ben!)

Apparently, the review is in–only one review, so far–but it’s a corker.

Although “The Social Network,” the Columbia Pictures movie about the origins of Facebook, is not coming out until its premiere at the New York Film Festival in October, Scott Foundas, a reviewer for its publication, Film Comment, is loving it in a piece in the September issue.

The magazine operates under the auspices of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which throws the film event where “The Social Network” is debuting.

After a lot of film reviewer throat-clearing about not using social networking tools, harrumphing on its global implications and then bizarrely boiling Facebook down to being “born of a romantic rejection,” Foundas writes in the review titled “Revenge of the Nerd”:

This is very rich material for a movie on such timeless subjects as power and privilege, and such intrinsically 21st-century ones as the migration of society itself from the real to the virtual sphere–and David Fincher’s “The Social Network” is big and brash and brilliant enough to encompass them all….

Adapted by “The West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin from Ben Mezrich’s nonfiction best-seller “The Accidental Billionaires,” “The Social Network” was one of those “buzz” scripts that seemed to be on everyone’s lips in Hollywood for the past couple of years, and it’s easy to understand why. The writing is razor-sharp and rarely makes a wrong step, compressing a time-shifting, multi-character narrative into two lean hours, and, perhaps most impressively, digests its big ideas into the kind of rapid-fire yet plausible dialogue that sounds like what hyper computer geeks might actually say (or at least wish they did): Quentin Tarantino crossed with Bill Gates.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Now, I am beginning to feel bad for CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, because it looks like this film might even be Oscar-worthy for Columbia’s Sony (SNE) bosses.

But more:

From a legal perspective, it’s a thorny case of he-said/he-said, though the movie is less concerned with assigning blame than with considering Zuckerberg’s precise degree of assholedom, or lack thereof….But to the sure nervousness of the studio, and the potential discomfort of some viewers, Fincher and Sorkin chart a more treacherous course straight down the middle of Zuckerberg’s many contradictions, one in which there are no obvious winners or losers, good guys or bad–only a series of highly pressurized social (and genetic) forces.

Oh, dear, a treacherous course, well charted.

Lest I seem to suggest otherwise, I hasten to add that “The Social Network” is splendid entertainment from a master storyteller, packed with energetic incident and surprising performances (not least from Justin Timberlake as Napster founder Sean Parker, who’s like Zuckerberg’s flamboyant, West Coast id). It is a movie of people typing in front of computer screens and talking in rooms that is as suspenseful as any more obvious thriller. But this is also social commentary so perceptive that it may be regarded by future generations the way we now look to “Gatsby” for its acute distillation of Jazz Age decadence.

Oh, dear, Gatsby, and back to fabulous. May I have the envelope, please…

What to do then?

Here are BoomTown’s five steps to reclaim the ground in this seemingly surefire Hollywood invasion of Silicon Valley.:

1.) Even though he looked at me like I was tripping, I wasn’t kidding when I recently told Zuckerberg to attend the New York premiere. With me! (Elliot can come only if he keeps a lid on it.)

If Zuckerberg attends, he is the story, sucking the oxygen away from the movie itself, especially if he looks fly and laughs a lot.

A tux, going up to the actor who plays him and saying the resemblance is astonishing and general self-deprecation can go a long way.

Especially when you are the only one who ended up a soon-to-be billionaire, including the moviemakers and their bosses.

2.) Throw a movie night at Facebook for the staff–and make it a double feature with the excellent “Catfish,” about a scammer on the social networking site.

Then, lead a discussion group about the fact versus fiction. Ignoring this film, especially if it is a hit, does not make its impact go away.

Invite the filmmakers and all the players from back then to talk too–Winklevii alert, but this time Zuck has security! To be sure, this is a risky one, given Zuckerberg’s sometime awkwardness in public.

3.) Unveil all the original documents–and I mean all–about those years, making them available on Facebook for all to see. The Winklevoss case and others are settled now, so there seems little need to hide what was clearly a rocky start.

If Zuckerberg and Facebook truly believe in transparency, use the movie to get it all out there and be done with it.

4.) The ignoring-it option seems only available to an island like Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, who truly does not care what people think of him. On the other hand, Zuckerberg surely and clearly does.

If he wants to take the company public, why not practice with intense scrutiny here, as these incidents at the origin of Facebook are still not purged from the company.

5.) After it’s all over, live well. It’s apparently the best revenge. (Also, at least “The Social Network” is going to be much more interesting than the Google (GOOG) Movie.

How much is BoomTown and everyone else in Silicon Valley trying to nab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s likely-to-be-entirely-made-up-but-who-cares tale of dirty doings at Facebook?

Muchety-much! So much so that I called all my book industry contacts–hey, I am a published author, ya know!–even though I have not actually completed reading a book since the Internet started and gave me permanent attention deficit disorder.

But, so far I have come up peanuts in grabbing an early copy of Mezrich’s tome, “The Accidental Billionaires,” which is set to come out July 14.

Facebook is not pleased, of course, and will likely be challenging Mezrich’s work as specious dreck. But the drama around the book should be interesting, to say the least.

More so, since this week also came news that actors Michael Cera and Shia LaBeouf are being considered to play founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and that David Fincher, the director of the lugubrious Brad Pitt snoozer, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” is “attached” to the movie version.

Even better: “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin will pen it and actor Kevin Spacey will produce the Columbia Pictures film, which will be called “The Social Network.”

Well, Hollywood sure came up with an original title!

It certainly does not signal the juiciness of the proposal for the book–which did manage to leak out last year–with a lot of tale tales in it that seem to have pretty much tracked on its oddly purple subtitle of “The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.”

The cover–which you can see on the book’s Facebook page (the delicious gall of Mezrich!)–features a spilled martini glass and a red bra flung nearby.

Martinis? Red bras? Sex? Facebook? Really?

Obviously, Mezrich has not actually met Zuckerberg, who is a very nice geekish young man, but who has approximately the sex appeal of a rack of Facebook servers.

Powerful yes! Spockish? Yes! Sexy? Um, no, no, no.

I will not even begin to parse the red bra thing, although I am attributing the martinis to stylish former COO (and now MySpace CEO) Owen Van Natta.

But, apparently, the sex part seems to have to do with Zuckerberg starting the company with others while an undergrad at Harvard University, as a scheme to meet some ladies.

I would say there are easier ways to attract the womenfolk–not that I could give tips or anything–but whatever!

Thus, since I cannot get my mitts on the book (yet!), here’s my list of 10 completely made-up, utterly fabricated, just-call-me-Jayson-Blair things that should be in the book.

10.) Facebook was actually going to be called OnlyPrettyLadyFacebook, but cooler heads prevailed.

9.) The Wall? A clever plot by Zuckerberg to build his online service on a fascist construct, touting his hegemony over all he surveyed.

Wait, that actually happened, and now some Russians are even investors.

Long live the Zuckrepublic of Palo Alto!

8.) Reason for stealing, oops, borrowing, oops again, completely separately developing an exact replica of ConnectU social network at Harvard:

The Olympically muscle-headed Winklevoss twins used to beat up the brainy Zuckerberg on his way back to the dorm, prompting a “Revenge of the Nerds” plot line.

7.) Facebook’s Beacon advertising? All Randi Zuckerberg’s idea, so she could find out what she was getting for her birthday from her billionaire-on-paper brother.

6.) Zuckerberg’s famous flip-flops were made in China under dubious working conditions. Wait, that’s true too.

5.) The 20-something Zuckerberg is actually 93 years old, a real-life version of Benjamin Button, which would explain the social awkwardness and staring-into-space-sometimes thing.

4.) The no-breast-feeding-pictures controversy pretty much proves no one is interested in bras or, more precisely, what goes in them at Facebook.

3.) COO Sheryl Sandberg is a cyborg sent to Facebook from Google for purposes of infiltration. She and her crafty sidekick, Elliott Schrage, will become self-aware in 2012 and hunt down Zuckerberg in a thrilling chase that will also become a movie.

2.) The sex, drugs and rock-and-roll stuff actually all took place at MySpace, which really pisses off certifiably dashing co-Founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson because, once again, Zuckerberg stole their mojo!

1.) This work of fiction, oops, “fact”-ion, oops again, nonfiction, is probably not going to sell many copies because it will mysteriously be uploaded in its entirety by a widget that will distribute it free to Facebook’s 200 million plus users while simultaneously SuperDuperPoking Mezrich, by throwing real sheep at him.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Ben.

(By the way, here is an extra for you: The $15 billion valuation for Facebook, along with all the other Web 2.0 ones? Totally true. Just ask any VC.)

And, in case anyone was wondering what the real Facebook looks like, here is a recent video tour I did of its new HQ in Palo Alto, Calif.: