As we already know that 'The Social Network' was based on a book called 'The Accidental Billionaires' by <PERSON>. Now if you check the wikipedia entry it tells us something about the production.
Screenwriter <PERSON> said, "What attracted me to [the film project] had nothing to do with Facebook. The invention itself is as modern as it gets, but the story is as old as storytelling; the themes of friendship, loyalty, jealousy, class and power. I got a 14-page book proposal that <PERSON> had written for his publisher for a book he was going to call The Accidental Billionaires. The publisher was simultaneously shopping it around for a film sale. That's how it wound up in my hands. I was reading it and somewhere on page three I said yes. It was the fastest I said yes to anything. 26
But <PERSON> hadn't written the book yet, and I assumed that Sony was going to want me to wait for <PERSON> to write the book, and I would start a year from now. They wanted me to start right away. <PERSON> and I were kind of doing our research at the same time, sort of along parallel lines."
However, according to <PERSON>, <PERSON> did not send him material from his book as he wrote it: "Two or three times we'd get together. I'd go to Boston, or we'd meet in New York and kind of compare notes and share information, but I didn't see the book until he was done with it. By the time I saw the book, I was probably 80 percent done with the screenplay." <PERSON> elaborated:
So it's like the book and the screenplay for this movie were almost written in parallel.
So when the book was released in 2009, pretty soon the movie als got released in 2010. So my point is - The Social Network's production just followed the production of the book - The Accidental Billionaires. And the book followed what was an interesting story at that time. So it is only coincidental that the movie's release and facebook's boom occured at the same time. 26