Myspace, the Sequel

By: Ellen McGirtThu Aug 7, 2008 at 7:30 PM

"Social Network" is so 2005. MySpace Cofounders Chris DeWolfe (left) and Tom Anderson are calling their site a "social portal". | photo by Jill Greenberg

With Facebook surging, cofounders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson have gone back to their roots -- music, pop culture, and a proven cash-flow ad model -- to spur a next phase of growth. Will that be enough for boss Rupert Murdoch?

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Chief operations officer Amit Kapur came aboard MySpace three years ago as the "first business-development guy." | photo by Jill Greenberg

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Technology Chief Aber Whitcomb | photo by Jill Greenberg

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Chris Dewolfe, the lanky, shaggily hip CEO of Myspace, is holding his last meeting of the day from a prone position, a collection of long limbs stacked on a tiny red love seat. The early evening powwow, taking place in the cramped office of his senior communications director, is interrupted when I come crashing in to say good-bye.

DeWolfe can be forgiven for putting his feet up. Along with cofounder and MySpace president Tom Anderson, he has lived through a lot of long days lately -- about four-and-a-half years' worth since the site first launched. In fact, a slight defensiveness hangs in the air here about the site's age. Not that it is too old, but rather that it is younger than most Web watchers seem to remember. Everyone I talk to at MySpace HQ in Los Angeles, from DeWolfe and Anderson on down, mentions the four-and-a-half-year figure, as if to remind me that their biz is only a month older than their chief social-networking competition, the upstart some 350 miles to the north, Facebook.

It's understandable that the MySpace folks would feel a little slighted by all the attention Facebook has been getting. It was MySpace, after all, that grabbed headlines in 2005 when Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. acquired it for $580 million. It was MySpace that proved social networking could be a mass medium, attracting 10 million users, then 20 million, then 50 million -- prompting Murdoch to crow about its "meteoric rise" -- back when Facebook was still a college-focused niche player. Yet over the past year and a half, Facebook has quickly gained traction and fans, its fresh-faced CEO piling up TV appearances and magazine covers (including Fast Company's in May 2007). Suddenly, Facebook's worldwide user base surpassed MySpace's in size. Then on June 30, MySpace's financial reputation was dinged when Fox Interactive Media (FIM), the News Corp. division that houses the site (along with Photobucket, Fox Sports Interactive, and other properties), closed out its fiscal year without hitting its revenue target.

I visited the next day, but the MySpace management team wasn't talking about numbers. It certainly wasn't talking about Facebook. Instead, DeWolfe, Anderson, and four other senior staffers -- including chief technology officer Aber Whitcomb, hired by DeWolfe "nine years and four companies ago" (he built the original MySpace site in 30 days) and 27-year-old chief operating officer Amit Kapur -- spun out a vision of unwavering ambition and optimism. Hey, did we mention that we're profitable? And that we have 115 million monthly visitors worldwide? That we're outpacing Gmail and Hotmail in messages sent? And giving YouTube a run for its money in video downloads?

During my rounds at the offices -- which will be traded in next June for a new 300,000-square-foot FIM facility in Playa del Rey, which the company claims is the biggest real-estate transaction in L.A. in 25 years -- the crew opened up about the pros and cons of working for Murdoch. They also laid out a dizzying array of new initiatives, from an imminent site redesign to major marketing alliances with big-name brands. They practically strutted about an unprecedented new foray into the music business, set to be rolled out in early fall, and revealed that MySpace is no longer a social network at all, but -- wait for it -- a "social portal": a global, content-rich hub with a social component. The MySpacers weren't shy about touting the advantages they feel they have over Silicon Valley stars such as Google and Apple. They weren't shy about much of anything, actually (except their own ages, which DeWolfe and Anderson wouldn't confess). In their view, they have come farther, faster than almost anyone these days gives them credit for. In many ways, they are right.

Several hours before DeWolfe's collapse on the love seat, I sit down for lunch with him and Anderson in a sunny corner conference room. Anderson arrives late and inhales a steaming tin of cheesy Mexican goodness before beginning to speak; DeWolfe picks at a salad, then abandons it to better connect and chat. He is an easy talker, radiating an "I've been everywhere, man" vibe in the best sense -- cool, calm, with a low center of gravity. It seems odd, sitting with them, that Anderson is the more famous of the two. He is everyone's first "friend" upon joining MySpace and has become the de facto face of customer service, routinely alerting users to changes and problems through his MySpace blog. He's also a formidable pollster: When he asks members for feedback, he has been known to get some 20,000 responses -- in under 10 minutes. Anderson has 237,991,950 friends on MySpace as of my visit; DeWolfe has barely 200. "I keep a lower profile," DeWolfe says simply.

From Issue 128 | September 2008

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Recent Comments | 22 Total

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Myspace, the Sequel

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