In the afterglow of the Friendster craze, a whole slew of social networking sites sprung up that offer all the same features and then some. Disgruntled users, put off by Friendster’s habitual server issues and increasingly draconian policies, defected in droves to the new crop of imitators/innovators. Among them, Myspace quickly rose to the top. Since launching in September 2003, Myspace has been offering users a faster, slicker and altogether friendlier version of the Friendster-esque experience. In the following interview, conducted via Myspace messaging (but of course), Tom Anderson, the 29-year-old founder and active user of Myspace, says meeting people is easy. Why should you listen to him? Not only is he the Myspace President, he’s also a client.
What led you to start Myspace and what was your personal use/involvement in online communities prior to founding the site?
I’d been running online communities before the Internet, actually. When I was 14, I had a BBS running from my bedroom on a single telephone line. It was actually a dating site. Considering the gender-ratio of modem owners at that time—it must have been 500 men for every woman, things didn’t work out quite like I had planned. Then in 1999, I moved to Los Angeles to go to film school. I can distinctly remember being in a UCLA computer lab and seeing an ad for Matchmaker.com. I signed up and that’s when I started using online communities again. So, for the last several years, I’ve been a user on all kinds of community sites—every popular dating site, AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, Migente, Apartment 107, and the blogs Live Journal and Xanga.
What niche/need do you see Myspace filling, in light of the many similar sites already in existence?
I’m not sure Myspace currently has a niche and I’m not sure it needs one. You might assess a site like this from two perspectives—the community of users and the features it provides. The Myspace community is always expanding and changing. When we first started, it was basically LA clubbers and ravers. Gradually, I noticed an ‘80s/emo element showing up. Also, in different cities, you’ll see different kinds of people. Musicians are driving the [Myspace] community in a lot of areas and, in Chicago, there are a lot of art students. From a feature standpoint, I don’t really want Myspace to have a niche. I want it to be the site that people use for most of what they do online.
Jonathan Abrams (founder of Friendster) has been vocal about attempting to keep Friendster in line with his original intent/purpose—a networking tool based on “actual” or real life connections between individuals. He’s stated that fake profiles (organizations, fictional characters, etc.) ruin this valuable networking effect and is adamant about eliminating them from his site. What are your thoughts on this?
To my way of thinking, the [social] “network” is little more than a curiosity or a gimmick. I have twenty friends on Friendster and am connected to 1.5 million people. I have absolutely no meaningful connection to a person five hops away from me. It doesn’t matter to me if the third person in the chain is a fake President Bush. Let’s say the third person in the chain was Lenny from Dallas, TX who is a friend of Dave from Florida, who once met my neighbor Sarah. That’s fun to know, but it’s not very useful to know. I would feel just as comfortable (or uncomfortable) contacting Lenny regardless of how we were connected. In the case of Friendster, it seems like Jonathan came up with an idea he liked and then ignored the way it plays out in reality. A few users have asked me about this networking idea and fake profiles on Myspace. But very few have complained about fake profiles. Jonathan seems to think they threaten the integrity of his vision. I think people just want to socialize and what the network on Friendster really does is limit who you can socialize with.
What are your observations about the relationship between online interactive sites like Myspace and real life interactions?
My perspective is a lot closer to people who are 21 and younger—people who’ve grown up online. For people who grew up online, it’s not geeky to use the Internet to meet people. There just wasn’t a lot of it going on because there was no place for it in the mainstream. Some of the ethnic-oriented sites were the true innovators in this arena—sites like AsianAvenue and BlackPlanet. This is where the under-25 set was meeting online. But Myspace has surpassed both these sites in traffic and really opened things up. People are really looking for friends on Myspace and making them. There’s dating going on, bands starting. Users are finding jobs and finding out about new clubs. I think it’s so cool; I really didn’t expect it, cause I didn’t see this kind of activity going on with Friendster.
I’ve read that you consider Myspace to be at about 20% of what it will become. What do you want to see it become and what will that mean for users?
My goals are quite lofty; I want Myspace to be like Yahoo, a site you set as your home page and do just about everything you need to do there. That’s the long-term plan. I would have thought creating a portal was a ridiculous idea six months ago, but it’s interesting to note that users [of both sites] already spend more time on Myspace than they do on Yahoo. If we gave them things that they use on other sites, why would they ever leave? I like what we’ve got at Myspace—a social network as the base upon which we can integrate more features. I think we’ll be able to design a system that works better for people because we don’t have to destroy before we build. You’d be really surprised to see some of the things we’re developing. I don’t want to tip my hand, but I think it’ll change how people use the Internet.
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