While the upcoming movie The Social Network is offering one view of Facebook, another big-screen release is taking a personal look at the power of internet site on a shoestring.
Low-budget documentary film Catfish has grossed £1m so far after being played at Sundance earlier this year and is predicted to take a whole lot more when it reaches cinemas.
Catfish tells the tale of Nev Schulman, a New York City photographer who develops a close online relationship with three members of a rural Michigan family.
It begins when the young daughter of the family, Abby, starts painting adaptations of some of the photographer's work.
Nev also starts an intense Facebook relationship with Abby's older sister, while conversing with the sisters' mother as well.
Schulman's filmmaker brother, Ari, and his business partner Henry Joost, frequently shot the dull day-to-day doings in the office shared by the three of them.
But when Nev started internet correspondence with an eight-year-old girl, an art prodigy, the filmmakers were intrigued, and began to fix their lenses on Nev's life.
Things soon got more intriguing when they begin to suspect not all was what this "Facebook family" was claiming.
With its story of the possibilities and pitfalls of personal connection through the internet, Catfish is said to play like a scrappy sequel to The Social Network.
"The Social Network is obviously an explanation as to the construction of that world, and into the mind of the man who invented it," Schulman said.
"But Catfish is really a story about where it has taken us, and the real-life implications of what that website has created.
"So, I think they are a terrific double feature. I recommend seeing The Social Network and then going to see Catfish. It is wonderful because it is more than anything the start of a conversation."
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