Everybody assumes that MySpace is just a place to meet people that perhaps would have never met otherwise. Alongside, lays the assumption that this website was created by Tom Anderson, a friendly teenager who wanted to share his life with his friends and other pals with his same interests. But this isn’t accurate at all. Tom didn’t create MySpace neither the objective was this naive fairytale.

The awful truth

What MySpace really is, is a focused marketing site in the innocent costume of a social network. Its purpose is actually developing email databases for further advertising and promotion that we all receive (and hate) in our inboxes. In other words: Spam 2.0.

Last year, Hitwise stated that MySpace had “surpassed Yahoo! Mail as the most visited domain on the Internet for US Internet users”, which means that millions of people had signed up for the site, from elementary schools kids to huge enterprise owners. But it also means multi-millionaire profits for a hidden group of corporation behind this phenomenon.

The executives behind this fairy tale

Despite the lie we’ve all heard about the origin of MySpace, there are other many people and companies involved in its creation. Tom Anderson is nothing but a distraction. The executives implicated also have an important history of mass marketing and bonds to investment scandals.

Three persons are specifically essential to MySpace creation: Chris DeWolfe, Brad Greenspan and Tom Anderson himself. DeWolfe was VP of Sales and Marketing at Xdrive Technologies, Inc. a company that blossomed during the dot-com bubble and faded away with the burst of it. He was laid off along with Anderson, and together they founded new email marketing firm called ResponseBase.

On September 9 2002, eUniverse (whose chairman was Greenspan) purchased ResponseBase. And that’s how they met.

Another finance partnership was drawn into this acquisition: TTMM, LP, formed by Andrew and Tiffany Wiederhorn. Andrew knew DeWolfe from high school and had been business associate in late 90s. By the end of 2002, DeWolfe became part of his friend’s new enterprise, Fog Cutter Capital Group; and also by that time, Andrew Wiederhorn was being investigated due to felony charges. Two years later, he had to serve 13 months of prison but, surprisingly, the company kept paying him his annual salary of $350.000.

A little bit of MySpace history

Somehow, DeWolfe received an invitation to join Friendster. He re-sent it to Greenspan, Anderson and other eUniverse employees. Once they recognized the potential of such a social network, they created their own version of it within 10 days, and baptized it as MySpace.

After a short discussion, they decided not to sell the accounts but to keep them free, stating that profits would come through advertising (Greenspan’s idea). Despite so, Greenspan was obliged to leave the company, and with the amazing growth of popularity of the site, DeWolfe came up with the thought of creating a false PR story, having Tom as a leading character. He believed this tale would be more adequate for the kind of people joining in.

Finally, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought MySpace, and a few months afterwards DeWolfe abandoned Fog Cutter Capital Group.

Leaving mischief and frauds aside, MySpace revolutioned social interaction, where everybody can promote themselves the way they want, by only paying the price of watching unsolicited advertisements. Only fate will say where that will lead.