The Man Behind MySpace 186
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."
"Review Pictures" job would get old really fast (Score:5, Interesting)
That job has to be about as exciting as watching grass grow [watching-grass-grow.com] but let assume you can sustain a review rate of one picture/second. In an 8 hour day, this is just under 30,000 pictures a day per employee. And to handle the 4-5 million/day, you'd therefore need about 200 employees (counting vacation and holidays) doing nothing but looking at MySpace pictures - yikes!
Sounds like (Score:4, Interesting)
table table table table tr td
is always fun isn't it! And yes, who the F@#& is this DeWolfe guy, we want to hear about Tom!
myspace.com url (Score:4, Interesting)
Peer Review (Score:5, Interesting)
Ummm, I think they forgot to mention someone... (Score:2, Interesting)
I first learned about social networking (SN) -- specifically Friendster -- from an NPR story. Checked it out, but didn't get an invite right away. However, discovered a slew of alternate SN sites -- Myspace among them. Thought it was a bit crude -- but didn't need an invite to join (IIRC) and you were immediately hooked into the entire network through our old friend Tom.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I think it succeeded. Its utter lack of discrimination. The keys to its success?
- unrestricted access (didn't need an invite, access to everyone on site)
- much, much raunchier content (i.e. photos) with little or no censorship (at least in the early days)
- affordable web hosting for your brother's tacky gararge band
- and a free crappy pop song with every page load!
I don't know if Friendster was the first SN site, but I think it deserves credit for launching the phenomenon. I still feel it's a superior site and remained truer to the spirit of SN longer. But principles don't win you big corporate buyouts, alas.
I will always think of Myspace as the Betamax to Friendster's VHS.
Re:"Review Pictures" job would get old really fast (Score:3, Interesting)
then, you can probably strip out all the ones that dont have any reports on them..which is most i guess..
but I agree, it'll get old FAST, if I can do it part time from home, where do I sign?
New features we could really use! (Score:4, Interesting)
PPC
Tool which would calculate the chance of your new online friend being a Pedo! You would be able to mark real friends as ones you have met in Meatspace, and the PPC would calculate the odds on ones you haven't. Factors would include:
-Few, or no people marking the profile as having been met in Meatspace. This one would be easy to get around by making multiple profiles, but improvements could be made.
-How often their user photo turn up on other profiles, and other websites. (You know, how instead of using a real picture, Pedos will use a picture of some other girl they found online. Pedos aren't the only ones who do it. I don't know how many dating site profiles I've seen where the girl uses pictures of Keyra Agustina's butt and pretend's it's her own)
2) Being able to view pages in Default layout, as opposed to the layouts choosen by the owner of the profile.
Too many idiots think having using a picture of a car as their tile background is cool. Too many idiots pick fonts, sizes, and colors that make their pages unreadable without highlighting the text. Too many idiots have a thing for exclaimation mark strings so long that only a 3200 X 1800 resolution monitor could display them. Wouldn't it be great to just view thier pages without such silliness... who are we kidding... anyone who does do this probably has nothing useful to say anyway...
3)Spelling and Grammar regulations.
Internet Shorthand is acceptable in one place, and only one place. Online games. WHen you need to communicate fast, you can use as many commonly accepted acronyms as you want. When you have time to actually compose your thoughts, there is no excuse for typing like an idiot. If you've ever played Kingdom of Loathing, then you know they have people complete a simple english test before they let them into the chat-room. I say we do the same thing on mySpace!
Re:"Review Pictures" job would get old really fast (Score:3, Interesting)
But, as a parent, I wouldn't want any picture of my kid that was attached to name, address, or phone number. Not sure if MySpace can handle that requirement, so I guess it's my responsibility.
Greasemonkey can save Myspace (Score:2, Interesting)
This story is PR bull (Score:3, Interesting)
Lockin (Score:3, Interesting)
The man is bound to fail (Score:1, Interesting)
1997 vice president of marketing, FBBH
1999 vice president of marketing, Xdrive Technologies
2001 chief executive, ResponseBase
2002 president, ResponseBase Marketing
His experiences involved email (read: spam) and pop-up marketing, as cited in the NY Times (archived behind stone wall at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/business/yourmo
No way. 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.
Am I the only one who found MySpace's tech support (Score:2, Interesting)
The usual response I get from sites which have issues with Opera is "well, don't only, like, two percent of the population use Opera? lol, no point then!". Yes, Lionhead, fuck your forum.
Re:Proof (Score:3, Interesting)