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."

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

[dominion]

Unconcerned with technological bells and whistles and geeky one-upmanship ...or, y'know, testing their code or any kind of quality assurance.

I continue to be amazed at the amount that Myspace.com breaks. Messaging will sometimes go down for weeks at a time. The "chat" feature has never really worked. Pages just randomly come up with errors. And not to mention the spam and the security errors. $586 million dollars, and they can't build a decent site?

I guess that's what they get for creating a massive website using Coldfusion.

Proof

[Monoman]

Myspace is just another proof that quality is always what is important.

My impression after seeing Myspace for the first time was it was like the early days of web page design. The users were more atrracted to the cheap "gee whiz" stuff. Inline audio and video took the place of flashing/scrolling text and huge animated gifs.

I have some friends that like to use Myspace so I check it out every once in a while. It is still a horrible site from a snobby tech geek point of view. To others, it is a great thing.

Myspace is bullshit. Sorry.

[Hamster Lover]

I fucking hate Myspace. I am sorry, but everybody on the site seems to love to fuck with their background adding music, pictures and other bullshit making it first of all impossible view to their page correctly, and second the annoy the living hell out of you by playing the same music track continuously. Yes, I know you can "pause" the music, but so many people seem to fuck up their own pages that the text boxes are all screwed up and crap gets moved all over the page. A friend from college asked me join Myspace and hook up with him. I tried to add him as a friend, but his page formatting is whacked and I cannot find his contact box ANYWHERE on the page, so I just gave up.

My friends on Livejournal don't have this stupid problem.

Re:Myspace is bullshit. Sorry.

[cluke]

Saw a good comment recently, that MySpace is nothing new, just Geocities 9 years on.

Yeah, because craigslist is bleeding edge

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

"Unconcerned with technological bells and whistles and geeky one-upmanship"

It doesn't take much to out do craigslist. I mean, even a CSS style sheet with a few lines could improve that website greatly. Good to see nobody is striving to outdo craigslist, we wouldn't want creativity and innovation running rampant on the web now, would we.

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Yeah, I know, mod me down. My Karma is good today.

Proof that luck is a huge factor

[Infonaut]

MySpace tapped into youth culture in a way that cannot be planned for or predicted. The technology was adequate, and the kids were apparently looking for something like MySpace. Don't be surprised if some new service displaces MySpace in a while. After all, youngins have fickle taste.

That is an excellent observation.

[Hamster Lover]

I am all for people experimenting with the web and making their Myspace page their own, but I assume that people would desire substance over style. If someone like me, a fairly experienced web and computer user, can't even navigate your Myspace page and complete a simple task like making a friends request what's the point in even having a page? It's the triumph of superficiality over usabilty and in that regard Myspace is far worse than any Geocities page ever was.

I guess I can't blame Myspace completely for this phenomenon as it seems to be an attitude that is pervading our entire society: it's better to look good than actually be good. Mspace seems to reinforce that message.

Re:Myspace is bullshit. Sorry.

[Zphbeeblbrox]

Myspace is nothing like Geocities. Geocities let people design decent web sites. Myspace just forces people to use crappy web technology giving them no choice but to have crappy websites unless they send a significant portion of their life hacking the system. That comparison is an insult to geocities.

Re:Peer Review

[tashanna]

I don't even think it'll take monitoring all the most popular profiles - look for sudden spikes in traffic to a profile or image. If it's a double-plus-ungood photo, it'll probably draw a crowd. It won't take long to rule out /. effect (heck, getting posted on slashdot may be a good indicator that its inappropriate) or a genuinely interesting/funny photo.

- Tash
Vrooom... [tashcorp.net]

Re:Proof that luck is a huge factor

[ClamIAm]

MySpace tapped into youth culture in a way that cannot be planned for or predicted.

In other words, it's a fad!

Re:Peer Review

[RobertLTux]

good luck one that one since you would have to cover a very wide range of colors some of which are not on people (i mean wood and just random stuff may be insde or within a few hex of say a dark toned african person or what about the other side of the range ie albino folks that are a pale pink)

Ideas this bad should have the meme version of a darwin award given to them

Re:Behind myspace? eew

[kpaul]

But he's my only friend!

Re:That is an excellent observation.

[apflwr3]

I guess I can't blame Myspace completely for this phenomenon as it seems to be an attitude that is pervading our entire society: it's better to look good than actually be good. Mspace seems to reinforce that message.

Well, why do you think teens are flocking to it in droves? You think they care more about substance than style? They (and by "they", I don't mean Web 2.0 geeks, I mean the unwashed masses) love it because Myspace is the closest approximation we've seen yet of the (junior) high school experience. Mucking with layout with editors, tacking up animated GIFs and music bits is the not much different than putting stickers or writing band names all over their notebooks and lockers. Sure, it's clunky but isn't everything at that age?

But the real genius of Myspace is the friends system. Friendster missed the mark by making it all-inclusive (if you're one person's friend, you're everyone's friend.) With Myspace, you have to actively collect them (or be so popular that people are asking you.) The friends system is not that much different than the little cliques that form in school-- and the ability to "deny" lets you deal out the sting of rejection with as much pain as in real life. And the "top 8" is like choosing who to sit with at the lunch table (forget the "interests" section, you can gather the most sense of who a person is by seeing who their best friends are.)

Of course it's all very juvenile-- but it's for kids. And for adults who stil have that junior high mentality.

Re:This story is PR bull

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you're right or wrong on this particular story (my guess is right), but I wish you would be modded up as uber-insightful because you are pointing to a phenomenon concerning "Web 2.0" which is not fully understood or highlighted.

"Web 2.0" is like the old Internet wolf in new sheep's clothing. The first time around, businesses went broke when they thought they could willy-nilly use the 'Net to scarf up as much personal data about folks as they wanted and the populace said, "No thanks."

But now THE ONLY THING THAT HAS CHANGED IS THE MARKETING, but the ugly intrusive business impulse is still there and still operating in the same manner. But because of all the garish sales pitch (or maybe people are just desensitized on privacy issues after 6 years of Fuhrer Bush) people are succumbing much more easily this time.

This "Web 2.0" story will eventually be taught in business school marketing classes with the same wistful tones reserved for the manner in which inferior VHS or inferior Microsft products were sold en masse thanks to superior marketing. I can just hear the professor now, "Yep, and in the early 2000s the companies came back with the same exact bill of goods they were trying to foist on people in the 1990s but this time they hid their real intentions better and the marketing worked. Turn to page 363 of your textbook and we'll discuss why this was so."

Re:That is an excellent observation.

[geminidomino]

But the real genius of Myspace is the friends system. Friendster missed the mark by making it all-inclusive (if you're one person's friend, you're everyone's friend.) With Myspace, you have to actively collect them (or be so popular that people are asking you.

Except not really. The whole "extended network" idea got screwed up as soon as Tom made himself everyone's friend by default. Then everyone on the site is "in your extended network."

At this point, I honestly hope that banner just stays there and they don't waste the cycles actually determining this...

Re:The man is bound to fail

[geminidomino]

There is no way this guy can succeed. He is doomed to fail, not because he lacks any professional skills, luck, or foresight. But, rather, because he lacks common decency and will never be socially responsible in our society.

Either you're kidding, or you're new to "our society." Hell, that's a RECIPE for success.

Don't beleive me? One word: Lawyers.

MySpace And BBSs

[Pax00]

The one thing that I see that myspace has brought back to us is a sense of community.

When I started getting on the internet I felt completely alone. I saw almost no one then internet that I knew. On the BBSs there was a community. Myspace has brought that back for me. I use it to keep in touch with people that I know personally all over the world. It is nice having pics of their friends that they may talk about when we chat or talk on the phone or whatever.

Also, it has really helped out with finding people that have simular interests that I would have never found, even in my local area.

yeah, it has its flaws, but damn, what doesn't?

I thank these people for giving back to the internet a sense of community