Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2009, with the threat of Facebook's growing popularity looming over their company, Chris
DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, the co-founders of MySpace, appeared on The Charlie Rose
Show. DeWolfe explained that MySpace was more than a social network; it was a portal
where people discovered new friends and music and movies-it was practically where young
people lived. 'We have the largest music catalog in the world,' DeWolfe said. Anderson pre-
dicted that by 2015, MySpace would have up to 400 million users. DeWolfe said the site's
worth was 'in the billions.'"
But MySpace failed to meet competition with new innovation. Why? The founders
blame the profitability demands of New Corp. A signal disadvantage, DeWolfe told Gil-
lette, "was the pressure to monetize the site. While developers at Facebook, Tumblr, and
Twitter-startups backed by venture capital-were more free to design their products without
the immediate pressure of advertising goals, MySpace managers had to hit quarterly reven-
ue targets. That pressure increased dramatically in the summer of 2006, when Google paid
$300 million a year for three years to be the exclusive search-engine provider on MySpace
on the condition that the social network hit a series of escalating traffic numbers."
DeWolfe: "When we did the Google deal, we basically doubled the ads on our site."
Clutter ensued. And the blatant proliferation of ads became annoying for users.
Add to this the fact that while up-and-coming rival Facebook created an elegant open
platform and wisely encouraged outside developers to build new apps, MySpace kept all
software development in-house. "We tried to create every feature in the world and said,
'O.K., we can do it, why should we let a third party do it?'" comments DeWolfe. "We should
have picked 5 to 10 key features that we totally focused on and let other people innovate on
everything else." As of this writing, Rupert Murdoch - who not so long ago was delighted
to acquire MySpace out from under the nose of another would-be purchaser, Viacom - is
actively seeking a buyer for the troubled franchise, which he cannot get rid of fast enough.
Viacom, meanwhile, is not interested.
Google's and MySpace's nemesis Facebook began to take root in October of 2003 when
Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg wrote
Facemash
, through which friends in the Har-
vard community could share ideas, photos, comments, and so forth. Just a few months later,
when a promised official Harvard "facebook" network failed to materialize, Zuckerberg
took matters into his own hands.
"When Mark E. Zuckerberg '06 grew impatient with the creation of an official universal
Harvard facebook, he decided to take matters into his own hands," noted
The Harvard
Crimson
on February 9, 2006. "After about a week of coding, Zuckerberg launched
thefacebook.com last Wednesday afternoon. The website combines elements of a standard
House face book with extensive profile features that allow students to search for others in
their courses, social organizations and Houses. 'Everyone's been talking a lot about a uni-
versal face book within Harvard,' Zuckerberg said. 'I think it's kind of silly that it would
take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can,
