OLD SCRATCH

fractalzone

danielg

mrfixit

antenna51

I wonder whether they are enforcing the rules at some point - or even try to convert those to commercial accounts.

Cheers,
Juhani

juhani

Look, MySpace is clearly viral. Maybe not on Day1, but it certainly is now.

As for the story being fabbed: That's pretty much the bane of WOM (Word Of Mouth) content distribution. Everybody spins it a little more until the truth is hard to find.

I think it might be valuable to take the view presented here, and do a mind-meld with the recent Wired article on Murdoch, blend, and then see where the truth lies (interesting sentence, eh?).

I think this angle has some merit, but I'd like to swing a little less for the fences. Aside from PRWeb.com, I've seen few web firms that are 100% clean. And I've seen many hundreds.

Mark Alan Effinger
RichContent.com

eAgent

"MySpace built a good product. They have an interesting enough product that keeps people interested."

um, some people dont' think so. i don't think so. MySpace is at best Web 0.8
http://www.vincenthorn.com/2006/09/05/myspace-is-web-point...

but anyway, they've got the user base, hence the "success."

c4chaos

kobalt7

profane

In reality myspace allowed people to have a identity and platform from which they could build a network of friends in a place that everyone could go to, which has been one of the toughest tasks on the net, but because it gathered enough steam it managed to do what many companies like msn, aim, and yahoo havent been able to do with tons of cash, better programmers, more evil, and just as much PR work on their instant messenger products, which is still split into 3 major brands which are for the most part still incompatible, leaving the idea of a larger open network of friends. Myspace succeeded with half the work. the true succes was because of its true value to the individuals that used it. It also allowed propective artists in all areas not just music to promote themselves in a smaller more direct network, and on their own terms.

Sadly they think their success had to do with them,it was just lucky, and like most people who let it go to their head, and deceptive business moves and content censoring will constribute to its loss of the very people who gave it success, , it will self destruct because people will find something better or build it themselves.

kobalt7

BIG DEAL!

cunty

berman

berman

Catalonia

Don't like it? Don't use it.

How is it SPAM if you're electively using *their* site, and using *their* bandwidth to view your messages? You can't deal with a couple flashing banner ads?

You don't like it? Who cares.

MySpace offers an incredible networking opportunity to independent artists and musicians... it is not unsolicited advertising - you are only able to communicate with people *as long as they accept your friendship!*

This article sounds like such crybaby snivel.

Friendster took a dump because they were having MAJOR performance issues - the site was dog slow. Many people (myself included) migrated to mySpace because they were tired of waiting for Friendster to load.

meannate

Too much guilt by association ("oooo... shady businessmen investing in Internet companies!"), no actual information on the marketing of the psuedo-friend Tom Anderson (which was an interesting angle), and repeated references to the glib concept of "Spam 2.0", which he never explains. (I read it as "advertising" and dismissed Lipinski as a sophomoric ad-hater. His personal site actually has a more-interesting definition, but those thoughts are absent from this article.)

Hopefully someone with more investigative chops and ability to string together facts into a story (and less dependence on one, vocal, disgruntled former exec) will do a better job.

shs

Okay, That said:

To be perfectly honest, this does not seem like too much damning evidence. So Tom isn't a codemonkey, why should that matter? SO he didn't program the whole thing in his basement, but he hired two other people to do it for him. Did Bill Gates write MS-DOS? Did Linus Trovalds write anything more than a software kernel? Based on the hyperlink text, I expected him to be some lowely subordinate in the company hired months after it's initial conception. He is actually the President of the company, which doesn't seem like such a lie to me.

To me it just seems as if the headline for this story should read, "Marketers Lied -- But amazingly story is that journalists bought it!"

Nick, I can't recall seeing a single article here that wasn't hilarious or tantilizingly salacious. You put up some great stuff, honestly! But I feel I would be doing you a diservice but not telling you strait up: this was not one of those pieces.

Gavin

"Tom isn't real?? This is made from a big bad corporation???"

Although it's slightly shady, so is everything else in the world, and people aren't afraid of exposing themselves.

AnnaCanSeeYou

robertopa47

This is such a good blog. I am going to finish more about NewsCorp and there current company used TO SPAM people. Check it out, Its Called TAFMASTER

ekowalc

Conrad

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/05/30/mac-rumors-are-boring/#c156...

Conrad

-Daniel Fischer
http://www.danielfischer.com

DFischer

http://myspace.com/namesrtaken
Come see all the neat stuff I have to sell!
XD

myspace-namesrtaken

Ēl Bunchö!

amex_black

Awesome article, kudos to you and Trent. Great piece and from what I've heard on the street this is very much fact.

Sad isn't it...whats gonna be Spam 3.0? Any guesses?

juhbuh

Nice work.

And_Then

buffawhat

psychicfriend

David

ResearchZilla

JimXugle

Ha! And I noticed in Vanity Fair this month they repositioned MY revelation of Steve Jobs' shoe size as a Valleywag exclusive. Infamy, infamy.....they've all got it in fer me.

pimpmyPR

Brian Solis

Back when the whole online networking thing really took off, Friendster was at the top of the heap, but the service grinded to a screeching halt under the sudden exponential traffic growth.

Enter MySpace, which essentially did what Friendster did, but actually worked when everyone tried to join! And so the exodus began, everyone messaged their Friendster buddies and said, "I'm going to MySpace, follow me!"

I don't disagree with any of the facts presented in this article, but as far as why it's so popular, Friendster's failure to scale is 90% of MySpace's success.

Malaclypse

There is a story to tell here, but it has more to do with spam, content censoring, and deceptive business practices.

Jonathan Grubb

mjlambie

I think you missed Denton's point - if MySpace is not a viral success, what is? Fine, so MySpace had eUniverse's email list. But, just those lists were not enough to make it a success. People began to join because there must have been value, and sent to their friends. There's a reason MySpace is around, and Friendster lacks friends. Ha, pun.

But, thus far, nothing is really surprising, especially if you were around during the boom and bust.

MySpace built a good product. They have an interesting enough product that keeps people interested. There will be challengers that carve out their own pieces of the pie, but that's the Internet.

Jeremy

/pd

"Nothing is a viral success"? I suppose if you take a very very narrow view, this is probably true. Most companies do advertise, even if it's just using Adwords.

But I think most people consider "viral success" to be where a majority of your customers are driven to you without advertising (including emails and spam, like MySpace did).

Google, at least in the early days, clearly falls into this category. So did eBay early on.

I can tell you that my company, SmugMug, derives somewhere between 60% and 80% of it's subscriptions through only word-of-mouth, and we've done zero advertising other than Adwords.

There are viral successes out there, to be sure. It's a rare things, but they're there. And MySpace certianly doesn't qualify and certainly is getting tons of press on how viral they were.

I tend to agree with you on all of the other points, though. :)

onethumb

"1. MySpace is NOT a viral success."

Well, by that standard, *nothing* is a viral success. So what if eUniverse had a directory of email addresses? There had to be some value in the service, and viral spread, if it was to attract the number of users it has.

"2. The whole site is, in essence, a marketing tool that everyone who registers has access to."

Um, sorry, couldn't this apply to every single blog platform, to all of web publishing, in fact?

"3. Tom Anderson did NOT create MySpace."

Shock. Horror. One colorful person gets a disproportionate share of attention in the telling of a startup's history. Like that's never happened before.

"4. MySpace's CEO Chris DeWolfe is connected to a past of spam."

Well, spamming is one of the few real taboos on the web. So I'll concede this point, if the facts are established.

"5. MySpace was a direct assault on Friendster.com."

Oh, this takes the biscuit. One startup copied another, mimicking its strongest features, and avoiding its mistakes. Hmmm, a little like Valleywag is a take on Gawker, which is a take on Spy, which was a take on Private Eye. Please, enough of the manufactured outrage.

Nick Denton

wireless

SeannyFunco

soxiam

soxiam

Where's the part about Tom owning asian porn sites eh?

I love hearing about that

alaskamiller

JustGuessing

Matt_