Aaron Sorkin to write Facebook, the movie

The life and times of Mark Zuckerberg (pictured), the 24-year-old billionaire co-founder of Facebook, could soon be immortalised in a Hollywood movie. According to author Ben Mezrich, who is currently penning a history of the social networking site, the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, best known for the The West Wing, has already been signed up to adapt Mezrich's book into a movie.

Mezrich's book, which will be published by Doubleday late next year, will examine Facebook's controversial beginnings in early 2004 at Harvard University, when several students were working on social networking sites simultaneously, only to find Zuckerberg and his cronies coming through with the winning formula.

Both book and film promise much. According to an outline proposal that was leaked on US gossip blog Gawker, Mezrich, whose bestselling Bringing Down the House inspired the film 21, does not intend sparing the blushes of Zuckerberg and his co-founders.

One gem he claims to have discovered is that Zuckerberg and a friend produced a program called 'FaceSmash' to rate Harvard women based on their "hotness". A Rolling Stone article published in June claimed that Zuckerberg created the programme after being rejected by a girl. His idea was to hack into the Harvard computer system, download female students pictures and so allow online users to vote on their attractiveness compared with farm animals.