Saturday night, we went on a date night sans kids! We went to see The Social Network, a film written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher. I normally would not at all be interested in watching a film about a social-networking website like Facebook. As this film received a lot of buzz and good early reviews, we were intrigued. Why not, you know?

We elected to drop off the kids, catch the earlier 7:40pm show in Freehold using some AMC tickets previously purchased at BJ’s. [Note: At BJ's this week, we found a deal for 4 AMC movie tickets plus a small popcorn, all for $37. Figured that's a decent savings, so we used two for this movie. Next movie, we'll use the popcorn certificate.] I was initially worried about getting seats, but we got to our smack-dab-in-the-middle seats with time to catch the movie. We don’t usually catch a film this early in the evening. Being an earlier showing, the movie theater slowly filled up with groups of loud “teenagers” making a lot of noise.

Oh, I’m sorry, did I say teenagers? I meant 60 and 70-year old senior citizens, but they acted like teenagers. They entered in large groups, talking loudly (“Hey Bernie!”), making a lot of noise, talking loudly, and there was one couple seated behind us having a fight. Do people truly regress as they get older? I’m starting to believe it.

The film itself was very good. It was less about the internet and web startups, and more an interesting character study about smart people butting heads as Facebook was born. It features an excellent features an ensemble cast — Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Rashida Jones, and Armie Hammer. I liked the film, and Aaron Sorkin doesn’t answer the question whether he thought who was right or wrong. It’s up to the audience to form their own opinions, but I thought there was a plenty of douchery to go around.

The Social Network (2010)

Uh, hello, fellow Facebook members. Do you remember how Facebook rolled out the new privacy changes earlier this month? Do you know why?  Facebook has completed distribution deals with both Google and Microsoft to distribute your FB data (wall postings, etc.) Don’t believe me?  It’s true.  Is it interesting that FB’s new default privacy settings allow the less restrictive access (everyone) for its 350 million users?

Read more in Wall Street Journal writer Julia Angwin’s article How Facebook Is Making Friending Obsolete. You know, the common advice is that one should be careful what you post on FB and other social networking sites (and blogs.) You never know who is reading it, even among your friends.  If your data is now discoverable via search engine, it’s even more out there.

The first thing I should mention or announce is that I’m feeling better. For most of last week, I was in a rotten mood. Absolutely rotten. Although I won’t divulge the sordid details, I accidently found out some bad…… things from my college days. See? A long time ago.

After a few days of thinking and venting, I’ve put the situation into context, and realize some people never changed, but remembered that I did. Somewhere along the way, I gained a life, a love, a family, and multitude of good friends that I am deeply grateful for their support.

On the flipside, I’ve had enough of people’s bullshit. People are either your friends, acquaintances, or people I don’t need in my life. On Facebook, I’ve made a number of connections with people from my past. Some have certainly been worth it, but others…. well, I guess that ‘something’ isn’t there anymore. I’m specifically talking about anybody I’ve said “Hi!” towards, in order to catch up via wall post or personal message. You know, if you can’t bother to reply back or, uh, respond, to hell with you. I’m not here to accumulate friends like Tila Tequila.

So, I began the great “unfriending” of 2009. Last week, I started with one college-era person from my past (this goes back to the beginning of this post), and unfriended a slew of people tonight. I wrote to a few additional people who are on the fence.  Maybe there were too busy the last time, so I’ll give them a second chance. Hey old best friend, I don’t want to be the only one of us who wants to catch up after all these years over a beer.  If it’s not that important to you, it sure as hell ain’t important to me either.

You know, for somebody who tries to keep on all the new releases, how did this sneak up on me?  RIM released Facebook for BlackBerry 1.6 last week.  I downloaded it via BlackBerry App World, but you can also try www.blackberry.com/facebook (which btw didn’t work for me.) 

In the 5 mins I’ve tried it out, it looks better, but my Friends list is taking a LONG time to refresh.  A nice new feature that I noticed is that now you can comment on a particular friend’s status directly from the Status Updates screen.   Also, a click to your buddy’s profile picture shows you their wall within the application itself, and you can view and scroll through photos directly within the app. 

Features that have been long overdue, my friends. Long overdue.

Boy Genius Report (BGR) is reporting a new Facebook 1.5 application is is being worked on. It will feature enhancements to the message, calendar, and contact features. Neat, can’t wait.  Facebook is an enjoyable time-waster.