The Man Behind MySpace

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian has an article looking at the life of Chris DeWolfe, a co-founder of the popular MySpace community site. The article details some of his previous work history, and the thought process that went into creating the site." From the article: "They pinched the best bits of everybody else's sites (Craigslist, Evite, MP3.com) and put them together in a manner that made sense. Unconcerned with technological bells and whistles and geeky one-upmanship, they instead set out to appeal to the people they knew and, beyond them, the youth tribes of middle America."

Re:Oh, yeah, they didn't care about any of that.

[finnif]

I've heard that myspace is migrating their servers from an old CF platform to CFMX and CFMX7.

AFAIK they're migrating to straight up ASP.NET 2.0. [asp.net]

As for bugs on Myspace, I wouldn't know. I think I'm over the age limit for frequent myspace use by about 17 years.

Want to know more about Tom?

[brak512]

[Tom] Anderson was in the creative department at Xdrive, in charge of advertisement design and later became an assistant in DeWolfe's marketing department. According to sources, while at Xdrive, Anderson rarely showered, spent an unusually high amount of time with DeWolfe, and took the bus everywhere despite the rumor that he was making an additional $5,000 a month from running a pornography website. However, no proof the porn website could be found. Most of this can be confirmed in a recent interview with Anderson on an LA radio station Indie 103.1. This article has some interesting information about both Tom and Chris DeWolfe. http://www.trentl.com/?name=News&file=article&sid= 50 [trentl.com]

Re:Why would they care? They just got half a B...

[dylan_-]

Who the EFF ever heard of "Chambers Dictionary" as an authoritative source?

Actually, Chambers is a well known and respected dictionary; in fact, it's the official dictionary of Scrabble in the UK. As an aside, the life of Robert Chambers is quite interesting, not least for his authorship of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation". Well worth looking up.

On the "about us" section they claim to be a publisher, i.e. a company with a vested interest in slanting the debate.

Oh, please! It's a reference work. Don't you think someone would have pointed out if they were mistaken?

The etymology just says "16c" so where do you get this "1800s" bit from and how do you know it applies to copyrights rather than high seas?

Since I have access to the OED, I'll give you their sources:

2. The unauthorized reproduction or use of an invention or work of another, as a book, recording, computer software, intellectual property, etc., esp. as constituting an infringement of patent or copyright; plagiarism; an instance of this.

[1654 J. MENNES Recreation for Ingenious Head-peeces clxxvi, All the wealth, Of wit and learning, not by stealth, Or Piracy, but purchase got.] 1700 E. WARD Journey to Hell II. vii. 14 Piracy, Piracy, they cry'd aloud, What made you print my Copy, Sir, says one, You're a meer Knave, 'tis very basely done.

Actually, I don't like the use of the word "piracy" because I think copyright is stupid and unnecessary. So, since I'm undermining my own efforts, I at least hope that my post has held something of interest for you!