Facebook has gone one step ahead of itself in Hollywood. Based on Ben Mezrich’s book “Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal” and adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network” revealed its first poster online today, and somehow I fear it will serve more to stoke the fire than extinguish it.

In the ongoing bittersweet saga of the most popular social networking website’s recent dilemmas, including the recent uproar over privacy of user data, Zuckerberg seems to have found yet another reason to reach for the aspirin. In addition to being eye-catching, the poster almost declares that Facebook has 500 million users before Facebook itself got to do the honours.

Featuring a close-up of Jesse Eisenberg, the actor who portrays Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the movie, includes the tagline saying “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies”. Interesting enough, the first part of the quote more so than the rest.

While both the official statistics and the CEO maintain that the network has “more than 400 million active users”, that figure was pegged at 450 million towards the end of May. Third-party statistics, though, place that estimate as much closer to 500 million. This is further reinforced by Facebook’s recent plans of celebrating their 500 millionth user, for which they predicted we could keep our eyes and ears open sometime before June 25.

Now, if what we think is right, the movie on Facebook has just stolen the thunder from its rightful owner. During the marketing campaign of “The Social Network”, the viewers are even conspicuously guided to 500millionfriends.com, which then redirects them to the official site- thesocialnetwork-movie.com.

All that remains to be seen now is if Facebook moves faster than its movie, which is slated for an October 1 release in the US this year. Given its current pace and its mysterious ways, Facebook might be as well long past 600 million by the time we catch up to it.