Facebook wasn’t built out of a Harvard dorm window. And I would never throw a laptop at someone, like it appears in the movie. Not even at Mark.

– Eduardo Saverin, in an interview with Fábio Altman in Brazilian newsmagazine Veja

Here’s a new trailer for HBO’s upcoming series “The Newsroom,” by famed Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

The series — by the man behind the hit television show “The West Wing” and the Facebook movie “The Social Network” — is set at a cable news channel under siege in the new-media age.

In other words, lots of hand-wringing over blogs and tweeting, along with the drama.

It looks tasty, and Walt Mossberg and I will be asking Sorkin about it at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference at the end of this month, where he will be appearing as a speaker.

Enjoy (I also included another trailer, that starts off the “Newsroom” series):

Add another speaker to the stellar list for the 10th D: All Things Digital conference, which is taking place in a little more than a month: Aaron Sorkin.

For those who have followed the long and award-filled career of the well-known playwright and Hollywood writer, it’s an astonishing litany of success — from “A Few Good Men” to “The West Wing” to “Moneyball” — filled with more unusually clever lines than anyone has ever penned.

But, most famously for tech, Sorkin also wrote the screenplay (and also won an Academy Award) for “The Social Network,” about the rise of Facebook and its unusual co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The film caused a lot of controversy in Silicon Valley over its depiction of Zuckerberg as an evil genius of sorts, of course, but few can argue that it was not a corker of a movie.

We are excited to talk to Sorkin about that experience, as well as his take on the state of entertainment in the digital age. He’s about to debut a new HBO show in June called “The Newsroom,” set behind the scenes at a cable news show. It deals with the massive changes roiling through the media industry and it begins, natch, with a viral video.

Sorkin is also set to make his Broadway debut as a librettist for the upcoming musical “Houdini.” And he’s also working on another new movie, based on a book about the downfall of Sen. John Edwards, which he’ll adapt, produce and direct.

Sorkin will be joined at D10 — which will be held in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., just south of Los Angeles, at the end of May — by a litany of major players in tech and media, including: Apple CEO Tim Cook, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz and many more.

And we still have more speakers to come, but until then, here’s the famous line from “The Social Network” — something about a billion dollars:

The comedian, who played the Facebook CEO on “Saturday Night Live” and even appeared at Facebook’s developer conference, has co-founded the new travel start-up CanaryHop.

The Los Angeles-based company is creating a marketplace where travelers can look for tours from well-established vendors or any individual professing to have a skill and looking to make a few bucks.

CanaryHop officially launched yesterday.

The site explains that a “Canary” is “a tour guide, a local, someone with a special talent, a person who is passionate about their community, an expert at something, or a teacher.” For example, it could be a professional chess player willing to give lessons, someone who runs a surf camp, or simply a foodie who knows the best restaurants in Chinatown.

Meanwhile, a “Hopper” is a traveler.

Still don’t get it?

Samberg does his best to act out how it works in a funny and pretty entertaining video. In it, he wakes up not knowing where he is, but for some reason has a bunch of new talents, like being able to speak French, throw knives and charm snakes. Unfortunately, you’ll have to visit the site here in order to see it.

Instead, here’s Samberg impersonating Zuckerberg on SNL, right after the release of “The Social Network”:

And in 2012 — which also happens to be the 10th anniversary of the confab of tech and media titans — it’s already shaping up to be another fantastic event in terms of programming, with a lineup of onstage appearances that is sure to make some news.

There are many more very big names to come, but Walt Mossberg and I are pleased to introduce the first group of interviewees, which will give you a glimpse into the firepower we expect at D10 in late May. It is again being held in Rancho Palos Verdes, just south of Los Angeles.

The initial speakers we have confirmed so far include: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; serial entrepreneur Sean Parker, who will appear with Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek; Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus; Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz; LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman, who will appear with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner; and Skype CEO Tony Bates.

It’s hard to imagine someone we have wanted to have onstage more than Michael Bloomberg, a man of many talents and interests. He’s known worldwide as the 108th Mayor of the City of New York. First elected in November 2001 (and again in 2005 and 2009), he is also one of the most compelling politicians in the U.S. today.

But Bloomberg is also a pioneer in terms of the business of digital news and information technology, having built a huge and groundbreaking media company and information service. Bloomberg (the company) has 310,000 subscribers to its financial news and information service, and more than 15,000 employees worldwide.

There will be a lot to talk about with him, from the upcoming presidential election to the state of our government to the future of innovation, news and technology.

Also sure to be voluble is Sean Parker, the legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has been on the cutting edge of innumerable important digital trends of the recent decade. In 1999, Parker co-founded Napster, the controversial and industry-changing music service, at the age of 19.

He followed up with early contact information service Plaxo, and then shifted over to his critical involvement as founding president of Facebook in its early days as a start-up, an experience which was dramatized in the movie “The Social Network.” Parker continued to found and also invest in companies, from Causes to Spotify to his most recent, Airtime, a social video company that he is doing with his Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning.

Parker will be appearing onstage with Daniel Ek, another serial entrepreneur and technologist, who started his first company in 1997 at the age of 14. The Swedish native later co-founded online music phenom Spotify in 2006, with Martin Lorentzon.

The former CTO of Stardoll and founder of Advertigo leads a company that is changing the way music is delivered and consumed by fans, against a backdrop of intense change in the industry, succeeding even as a plethora of other services have stumbled.

Also a groundbreaker is Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus, yet another serial entrepreneur, whose latest effort in the online gaming arena has finally resulted in his biggest success. It recently went public, and now has a nearly $10 billion market cap.

Before founding Zynga in 2007, Pincus had already started three other companies: Push start-up Freeloader in 1995; automated tech-support company Support.com after that; and early social networking site Tribe.net in 2003.

(I met Pincus when he was at Freeloader in Washington, D.C., while writing a profile of him for the Washington Post, so I have enjoyed tracking his progress since then.)

Pincus is also an avid angel investor, with early stakes in Napster, Brightmail, Twitter and Facebook.

Reid Hoffman was another early investor in Facebook, along with many of Web 2.0’s most successful ventures. Well-known in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and VC, and recently dubbed the “start-up whisperer” by the New York Times (although I am not sure exactly what that means), he’s also chairman of LinkedIn, the business-networking service that also recently went public (at a $10 billion valuation, too).

He’ll appear with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who started out life in Hollywood, but soon made his way to Silicon Valley as a top exec at Yahoo. After running its media division, Weiner spent a short time at venture firms before going operational again at LinkedIn.

What it takes to build and maintain momentum as tech companies move into more mature stages, as well as how the social networking space evolves, are among the many topics on tap for the pair.

The evolution of a start-up phenom — in this case, Internet telephony service Skype — will be among the topics covered by Tony Bates, who is now a president at Microsoft, which bought it last year.

As such, he is responsible, says the software giant in its description of his job, “for overseeing the company’s direction, strategy and overall mission to become a global communications service that will eventually reach billions of users.”

That’s a tall order for Bates, who came to Skype from a top job at Cisco. Bates has deep roots (or maybe, routing?) in the guts of the Internet, having done backbone-engineering strategy for Internet MCI. The U.K. native also holds nine patents.

Lastly, given all the activity we expect will happen between government regulatory agencies and tech companies over the next few years, we felt it was key to bring in FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. He has been at the FTC as a commissioner since 2004, but was given the top job by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Among his priorities, according to his bio, is “promoting competition and innovation in the technology sector through law enforcement and policy initiatives; and protecting consumers’ privacy — especially while they are using the Internet.”

Uh-oh!

Leibowitz knows from regulation, having served as the Democratic chief counsel and staff director for the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee from 1997 to 2000, where he focused on competition policy and telecommunications matters, as well as a similar stint at the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism and Technology before that.

There will be a lot more speakers to come, of course. But, so far, we think D10 is off and running fast.

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?

RELATED POSTS

• In Its First Acquisition as a Public Company, Facebook Buys Social Gifting App Karma
• Zynga’s Stock Tanks After Facebook Fails to Pop
• The Price Is Right: Facebook Closes Near Opening Price
• And We’re Off! Facebook Shares Hit the Nasdaq at a Slight Increase Before Settling Back.
• Hear That?
• $$FB$$ Has Arrived: So Now What?
• Facebook Cheers On Mark Zuckerberg. Wall Street Gets Its Chance Soon.
• The Verdict Is In: Facebook Share Price Set at $38
• How Will Facebook’s Zuckerberg Adapt to Working in the Public Eye?
• Facebook IPO Halo Boosts Social Media Stocks
• How Will Facebook Ring in the IPO? With a Hackathon, Of Course.
• What to Expect When Facebook Is Expecting: Five Predictions for Facebook’s First Public Year
• Facebook Is Still Figuring It Out. Will Advertisers and Investors Wait Around?
• Investors Told Facebook IPO Will Be in $34 to $38 Price Range
• Facebook Roadshow Bloopers (Comic)
• Facebook’s Latest S-1 Amendment: Yep, We’re Still Weak on Mobile
• $FB Is a Buy, Analysts Say
• Facebook’s Road Show Kicks Off Electronically With Zuckerberg in a T-Shirt (Video)
• After Public Offering, Mark Zuckerberg Will Still Control More Than Half of Facebook
• Facebook IPO Docs Could Get Approval This Week, Followed by Road Show With Zuckerberg (No Guarantee on Tie)
• Updated S-1: Facebook’s Yearly Revenue Growth Up 45 Percent, But Down Six Percent From Last Quarter
• SecondMarket Lays Off 10 Percent in Light of Facebook IPO
• SEC Cracks Down on Firms Trading Facebook Pre-IPO Shares
• Tidbits From the Facebook IPO Filing: I’ll Have What SV VCs Marc Andreessen and Jim Breyer Are Having!
• During the IPO Quiet Period, Please Enjoy the D Stylings of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg (Video)
• 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

That’s good for Sony, the people who paid the bill for “Dragon Tattoo,” right? Nope. Terrible, says Sony.

The studio is livid that the New Yorker is running Denby’s review today, more than a week ahead of a Dec. 13 embargo. Why does the studio care? If you want a good explanation of modern-day movie marketing and the push-pull between filmmakers and film reviewers, check out this lucid explainer from NPR’s Linda Holmes.

But for everyone else, this won’t matter at all. New Yorker readers (and now, drive-by visitors as well, since the review has been placed in front of  the magazine’s online paywall) will see the review, and a larger group of people will have a vague idea that the New Yorker likes it. That’s about it.

And that’s the moral for folks like myself in the technology-news-industrial complex, who spend way too much time thinking about, fighting with and cursing embargoes. This stuff can matter a lot (sometimes) to us, but that’s really only because we decide to agree that it matters. Readers don’t care at all.

I’d spend more time explaining this, except that if you care about this at all, you’ve already read many boring essays about it — perhaps even today! And I can’t tell you that I’m swearing off embargoes, because I can’t — I worked with three of them last week, have probably at least one more embargoed story coming this week and, I’m sure, many more down the road.

But this is a nice reminder that every time I do deal with one of these, it almost always means I’m not spending time on something geniunely interesting. Like news no one else is writing about, or a fresh take on something everyone else has already written about. Or even seeing a good movie.

Spoiler: It’s up!

That’s good news for a Web video company that’s trying to go public, and also not surprising. But the survey is a fun skim (PDF), with interesting nuggets about consumption on different kinds of platforms — Apple versus Android, etc. — and from different kind of publishers — TV-based sites like Hulu versus pure-play sites like YouTube, etc.

And buried in there is a good reminder of exactly what it is we do when we watch video on the Web: We don’t stick around.

We’re most likely to watch longest if we’re watching on a “broadcast” site like Hulu or NBC.com, but even then we’re not parked very long: The average session for one of those sites clocks in around 3:30, Brightcove says. It’s much less for anyone else.

So here’s a clip that’s just a tad over the broadcast average, and which should be on a broadcast site. Alas, NBC’s unlamented “Studio 60” isn’t available anymore on Hulu, so to track it down online you’ve got to hunt and peck on YouTube. This excellent “Network” homage is how the show’s pilot kicked off in 2006.

And while we’re on the topic — weird that this failed Aaron Sorkin show doesn’t get more love, especially in a post-“Social Network” world. Yes, it’s overwrought, over-the-top stuff, which treats a “Saturday Night Live”-like show as if it’s every bit as important as “The West Wing” — there’s even an Afghanistan kidnap plot late in the show’s single season. But whatever! I’d rather watch hours of flawed Sorkin stuff than almost anything else on TV. Surely there have to be more people like me out there. Right?

The upcoming movie from Justin Timberlake — who starred in “The Social Network” playing hyperactive entrepreneur Sean Parker and who recently was part of a group that bought Myspace — is also techtastic.

In the futuristic film “In Time,” Timberlake plays a man who must steal time to live longer. It feels a little like “Logan’s Run,” but with better clothes.

Timberlake, who is also a singer, is trying to leverage the good notices he got from the Facebook movie to a more wide-ranging Hollywood career.

Enjoy:

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.

Here’s a spectacular first trailer for “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which is the latest movie remake about the web wonder.

Speaking of the Web, the star of the 2012 reboot is Andrew Garfield, best known for playing Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin in 2010′s “The Social Network.”

This time, instead of suing Mark Zuckerberg, he’ll be swinging from skyscrapers in his red-and-blue suit and looking all distant and moody when he is not.

From the way this teaser unfolds, that’s going to be riveting.

Reed Hastings’ company says it’s a cost issue. If people are going to use both his DVD-by-mail service and his Web video streaming service, he’ll need more money to support both businesses. That’s probably true.

Here’s what’s more true: Reed Hastings doesn’t want most of his customers to pay more. He wants them to pay less, and drop DVDs in favor of a streaming-only service.

To recap: Yesterday, Hastings kept the price of his streaming-only video service at $8 a month. But he raised the price of his companion DVD-by-mail service from $2 a month to $8 month, which will push many subscribers’ monthly fees from $10 a month to $16 a month.

Unless they stop using DVDs. Which seems to be what Netflix wants. Even though they haven’t said so out loud, to date.

Still, the message seems to have gotten through to Wall Street. The move is designed to “further drive streaming-only plans and adoption,” says Barclays’ Anthony DiClemente. Same sentiment, with more flourish, from BTIG’s Rich Greenfield: The price hike “is aimed at killing off the DVD business as fast as possible,” he says.

It is also resonating in Hollywood. A studio boss I talked to yesterday says Hastings instituted the price hike “because people aren’t moving to streaming fast enough. He’s trying to force them to go faster.”

The problem, as every disgruntled Netflix subscriber on the Web can tell you, is that Netflix streaming and Netflix DVD are two different beasts: Netflix on the Web gives you instant gratification, but has less than 20 percent of the content that Netflix DVD-by-mail options give you.

The reason Hastings can offer a much bigger DVD catalog is because he doesn’t have to get permission from Hollywood to rent out its discs — he just needs to buy them. But every movie he streams is licensed from the studios, at a cost that’s only going to get higher.

And while Hastings never has to worry about getting “The Social Network” on disc, streaming deals give Sony the ability to cut off his digital access completely. As has already happened, at least temporarily.

So doesn’t upping the number of streaming subscribers give the studios more leverage?

In the near-term, yes. But Hastings seems to be betting that the studios will continue to give him digital access, as long as he keeps writing them checks, no matter how much they posture.

And every digital deal — and every digital customer — he accumulates gives him that much more bargaining power.

Netflix has lots of potential competitors, but the only service that’s really offering something competitive at the moment is Hulu with its Hulu Plus subscription offering, and that’s on track to accumulate something like a million subscribers this year. Netflix was 24 million last quarter, and will likely report a couple million more during its earnings call this month.

Meanwhile, if Hastings really does convince subscribers to abandon DVDs altogether, he can drop his costs significantly. I’ve been paying for, but not using, his DVD service for the last year. But the fact that I might drop a disc in the mail and ask for another one means Hastings has to keep an expensive infrastructure up and running.

Of course, none of this means anything if Netflix subscribers stop using the service altogether.  Which is the impression you’ll get if you scan the wave of angry commentary on Twitter and the Web (I contributed some mild-mannered grousing myself).

Except that Twitter and the Web are pretty much designed for angry commentary. And measuring discontent via the number of Facebook complaints doesn’t really make a lot of sense, unless those complaints get up into really, really big numbers.

Remember that Netflix is already used to fairly high churn rates of about 4 percent, which means that about a million of its 24 million existing subscribers are going to go anyway. And bear in mind that Netflix takes enormous pride in the data it collects on its users’ behavior. I’d be very surprised if they haven’t modeled a scenario where thousands of people complain about the service change on the Web.

Postscript: Then again, maybe Netflix didn’t model quite as closely as they could have. The company, famed for its excellent customer service, seems unable to handle the volume of calls the price hike has generated. Here, via Greenfield, is the message you’re most likely to get when you call Netflix today.

You can chillax, Mark Zuckerberg–it’s not “The Social Network 2: The Winklevii Stroke, Stroke, Strooooke Back.”

In fact, it’s more like: “You’ve Got Social Network Mail.”

That’s because Facebook and AOL will star together in a just signed movie, which will be made from a young adult novel that will not hit the shelves until November.

Titled “The Future of Us,” the book is set in 1996 and concerns two friends who sign onto AOL–the Facebook of its day–only to find their pages on the social networking giant from 15 years hence (as in now!).

Agonized agonizing presumably ensues, probably around how to erase all those drunken college photos.

“The Future of Us” has a Facebook page, of course, which noted its screen-rights sale to Warner Bros. The book itself will be published in November in a big printing by Penguin’s young adult imprint, Razorbill.

It seems Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the Don Quixote twins of the digital age, have tilted at yet another legal windmill unsuccessfully.

So now, after losing another court challenge to overturn a previous court challenge, they’ll have to settle for $65 million.

Actually, $100 million, which is how much shares in Facebook have appreciated since the pair and also Divya Narendra settled with the social networking giant.

Said the ruling from the U.S. Circuit of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in part:

The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace. And the courts might have obliged, had the Winklevosses not settled their dispute and signed a release of all claims against Facebook. With the help of a team of lawyers and a financial advisor, they made a deal that appears quite favorable in light of recent market activity. For whatever reason, they now want to back out. Like the district court, we see no basis for allowing them to do so. At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.

The end? Say it ain’t so! BoomTown, for one, will miss those big lugs.

Not so much Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, especially since the pair allege the tech wunderkind stole the idea for the start-up while a student at Harvard University.

After much legal mishegas, they got $20 million and 1.25 million shares at a price of $8.88 each.

And that’s more than enough, said court to the the Winklevii–it’s their eternal nickname in Silicon Valley now–and they can’t back out of a settlement they made in 2004.

As for the specifics, the three-judge panel struck down every Winklevoss argument:

- They said the terms of the Facebook deal introduced after mediation were typical.

- They said Winklevii should have been sophisticated enough to understand valuation.

- They said Winklevii couldn’t use the sealed mediation settlement documents to argue their case.

It’s true, but it’s also sad to see it all over, since all the litigiousness between Zuckerberg and the Olympic rowing brothers has been so dramatic that it was the subject of the almost Oscar-winning movie, “The Social Network.”

But maybe they can go to the Supreme Court! One can dream!

And with their latest loss and all the Google machinating against Facebook, who’s up for a sequel: “Geek Wars: The Empire and the Vii Strike Back.”

In a statement, Colin Stretch, deputy general counsel of Facebook said: “We appreciate the Ninth Circuit’s careful consideration of this case and are pleased the court has ruled in Facebook’s favor.”

Here’s the full ruling:

08-16745

Here’s a trailer for the next movie that Jesse Eisenberg–the actor who played Mark Zuckerberg in the Oscar-nominated film “The Social Network”–stars in.

It’s actually animated and about a Minnesota macaw who heads for Rio. In fact, it’s called “Rio.”

There is apparently no drunken coding into the night or stock cramdowns or lifting of really good ideas from the muscled elite.

Still, try to enjoy:

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 Social Network” racked up awards in earlier film competitions, but the Oscars of course are the big show. The Academy Awards ceremony is Feb. 27.

For those who want to watch along at home, the nominations Web cast starts at 5:30 am PT on Tuesday, with the contenders in the 10 big categories announced at 5:38.

“The Bachelor” host Chris Harrison, Entertainment Weekly’s Dave Karger, AMPAS boss Tom Sherak and 2010 Best Supporting Actress winner Mo’Nique have been commissioned to wake up early and make reading a list of names slightly more entertaining.

Tuesday’s live show is being put on by Livestream, ABC and the Academy. If you want to catch the big show later this month, you’ll have to tune into actual broadcast TV, though the Oscar Web site will have some red carpet and behind-the-scenes stuff.

“The Social Network” won best picture (drama), best director, screenplay and original score at this year’s Golden Globes, adding to a pile of film critics awards.

If you’re in the mood tomorrow to live stream something more serious (not that honoring a fictionalized version of Mark Zuckerberg’s college indiscretions is light fare), President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address is Tuesday evening. Starting at 6 pm PT, Obama’s speech will play live on the White House Web site alongside charts, graphs and other content coordinated with the subject matter.

Embedded below is a placeholder that should include the Oscar nomination livestream when it starts. See you then!

.

Update: The nominations are out, and “The Social Network” received eight, including best picture.

It was vintage Parker, who always tries to paint himself as more of a geek than the multicolored life of the digital party. In truth, he is very much both.

In these clips, he talks about the fabrications in the movie “The Social Network,” in which Justin Timberlake played him as a hyperactive version of Falstaff.

Parker thought the character was “morally reprehensible,” although that’s what made him so fun to watch.

Parker also took issue with other creative liberties about the social networking site in the movie and noted that the film was “a complete work of fiction.”

As an example, he pointed out how there are “no Victoria’s Secret models in Silicon Valley” as there were in “The Social Network.”

You’re kidding! Hollywood glamorized the nerdtastic tech scene in order to make it more exciting to audiences? I cannot believe it!

(And, frankly, Parker seems to be enjoying the attention as much as he does tweaking the film.)

Parker also talked about Facebook being a neutral platform, making a much more interesting observation about what the true power of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg really is.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/video-sean-parker-on-no-victoria-secret-models-in-silicon-valley-what/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110111/over-here-winklevii-aka-networkeffect-goes-to-court/ http://allthingsd.com/20110111/over-here-winklevii-aka-networkeffect-goes-to-court/#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:00:21 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2216 Today the NetworkEffect staff of one is packing up the MacBook Air and heading to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for a scheduled hearing of “The Facebook, Inc. v. ConnectU, Inc.” The latest action in the long-running case between former Harvard students Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their unofficial underclassman coder Mark Zuckerberg will be in a San Francisco courtroom, where the Winklevii are asking that a previous settlement be re-evaluated.

In hopes of seeing some tall curly haired Olympic rowers and their legal posse in the flesh, I’ll be there bright and early, though the action may not commence until later in the day. The crew from Facebook will also be making an appearance, though we don’t know exactly who will show up.

The twin Winklevoss brothers–who have said their portrayal in the Hollywood blockbuster based on the founding of Facebook, “The Social Network,” was accurate–had settled two years ago with Facebook for $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook shares (worth approximately $150 million now). But they think Facebook purposely withheld the real value of the shares at the time. A reassessment would make their stake worth much more: $608 million at the latest valuation.

For an explainer on the latest ConnectU appeal, see this recent NetworkEffect parsing of a filing from Facebook that effectively poked fun of the Winklevii:

The settlement came after closed-door professional mediation in February 2008. Facebook says it’s outraged that the Winklevii and their lawyers are bringing conversations from mediation back into the appeal, because all involved were sworn to confidentiality…

But after the settlement, ConnectU came back to the table asking for its share to be revalued. It had originally negotiated using a publicly reported valuation from when Microsoft invested in Facebook, rather than an internal valuation from around the same time that would have priced the shares much lower ($8.88 versus $35.90). A revaluation of the shares to a smaller amount would give the twins a larger stake in the company.

If anything interesting happens in court, I’ll be sure to write about it here.

Update: Here’s my report on the Winklevoss hearing.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110111/over-here-winklevii-aka-networkeffect-goes-to-court/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110108/film-critics-dont-just-like-the-social-network-they-love-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20110108/film-critics-dont-just-like-the-social-network-they-love-it/#comments Sat, 08 Jan 2011 23:31:29 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2129 Today, the National Society of Film Critics hooked up with “The Social Network,” the Hollywood version of the founding of Facebook.

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.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110108/film-critics-dont-just-like-the-social-network-they-love-it/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110107/viral-video-cnbcs-the-facebook-obsession-features-more-mark-z-plus-boomtown/ http://allthingsd.com/20110107/viral-video-cnbcs-the-facebook-obsession-features-more-mark-z-plus-boomtown/#comments Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:05:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39268

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is certainly in the midst of a media bonanza.

Aside from all the heat over its recent investment whatever with Goldman Sachs, the young entrepreneur has been touted on CBS’s “60 Minutes” and been selected Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Oh, yes, and that movie–”The Social Network”–which you just know is going to win some Oscars on February 27.

Now CNBC has just aired a documentary on the huge social networking site, titled–appropriately–“The Facebook Obsession.”

There is no new interview with Zuckerberg, and it’s essentially the same story about the Silicon Valley wunderkind, told yet again. But all the old video clips and photos collected all together on another television show are nice.

Also, I always enjoy the Winklevii spouting off hambone arguments about why they are owed more than $65 million for Zuckerberg’s kneecapping of them back at Harvard University.

And, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-me appearance, I also make a showing, apparently as the grumpy one.

But I did not see it, as CNBC did not deign to post the entire report online, as “60 Minutes” so kindly did.

CNBC did do a preview and provide some clips, which are embedded below, as well the the much funnier Jon Stewart take on it all on “The Daily Show,” titled “The Anti-Social Network”:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
The Anti-Social Network
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/viral-video-cnbcs-the-facebook-obsession-features-more-mark-z-plus-boomtown/feed/ 1