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MySpace cowboys

Summary: http money cnn com magazines fortune fortune archive 2006 09 04 8384727 index htmMySpace cowboysThey run the fastest growing Web site on the planet They have 100 million friends Not bad for two guys who just wanted a place to hang out By Patricia Sellers Fortune editor at largeAugust 24 2006 10 28 AM EDT Fortune Magazine One night this past April Tom Anderson was surfing MySpace com as he does for hours every night when he spotted a link to something called kSolo on another member s profile page The service Anderson learned lets you record karaoke online and e mail songs to friends A karaoke man himself he used to be the lead singer in a band called Swank he immediately tried kSolo playing a scorching anthem called Cowboys From Hell by the thrash metal band Pantera It was cheesy but great Anderson says The next day he told his business partner Chris DeWolfe to check out the site Just three years ago the exchange between Anderson and DeWolfe might have ended there a failed musician and a frustrated entrepreneur bonding over karaoke But Anderson and DeWolfe don t just obsessively use MySpace they founded it Last July News Corp Charts agreed to buy their company and they decided to stay on as president and CEO So DeWolfe tested kSolo too playing a Bon Jovi song from the 80s He and Anderson quickly contacted kSolo and invited its founder Nimrod Lev to fly from New York to Los Angeles to meet with them Meanwhile they sent word to News Corp president Peter Chernin who told his boss CEO Rupert Murdoch about the music site Within a week the media mogul struck a deal to buy kSolo as a trinket for the expanding MySpace empire It s nice to have a billionaire sugar daddy to help you build the world s fastest growing Web site It s even nicer to earn a really great living doing what most guys do for fun Out of their personal passion for the music scene in Los Angeles where they live Anderson 30 and DeWolfe 40 created an Internet site to promote local acts and connect fans and friends who connected friends who connected friends until by last summer 20 million people had joined MySpace The two had a friendship based on business then they quite literally founded a business based on friendship And when Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million for MySpace s parent company Anderson and DeWolfe though reluctant to do the deal each made millions MySpace is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon For those who haven t logged on the site is the online equivalent of your high school lunchroom your college quad your favorite bar Except it doesn t sell much of anything at least not yet It s simply a place to hang out and express yourself The users the hardest core being teens and twentysomethings post profiles and decorate them with photos music videoclips blogs and links The site is home to 2 2 million bands 8 000 comedians thousands of filmmakers and millions of striving attention starved wannabes 100 million actually MySpace passed that number of registered users in early August and on a typical day it signs up 230 000 roughly the population of Scottsdale A year ago it passed Google in terms of traffic and now MySpace ranks second to Yahoo in page views with one billion daily according to comScore Media Metrix While there are hundreds of social networking sites Facebook Friendster Xanga Bebo Cyworld to name a few MySpace the most risqu and chaotic of the majors accounts for 82 of traffic in the category according to Hitwise a leading Web site tracker With Murdoch s backing the site has an astonishing number of projects underway a Google pact to sell text ads on the site a MySpace Records label a VoIP feature to let users call one another international sites in Britain Australia France with nine other countries in Europe and Asia coming soon DeWolfe counts 20 new products in the development pipeline We think we can extend MySpace around the world and it can be a major force globally says Murdoch whose Internet ambitions have helped drive News Corp s stock up 18 this year That however puts the MySpace guys in an awkward spot They founded their Web site on the principles of user control grass roots growth and authenticity The users govern the site DeWolfe says adamantly But now he and Anderson have News Corp s financial targets to hit a chief revenue officer to contend with and serious pressure to make MySpace safe for advertisers Already there s a backlash Witness sightings of Tom Is Not My Friend T shirts and fake Murdoch profile pages headlined FUQ RUPERT and EVIL BILLIONAIRE TYRANT The question facing the MySpace founders now Is it possible to sell out without selling out A site with a soul It was well past midnight and Tom Anderson was hard at work He had been hunched over his computer for 8 hours refused to break for dinner and showed no signs of letting up Why Well the work was actually scouring MySpace for amazing indie bands After a meeting to brainstorm about a new venture called MySpace Records he and Interscope Records senior vice president Luke Wood decided to take a look around for some promising talent As often happens MySpace addiction set in We sat around his computer from 6 P M to 2 30 in the morning and did nothing but listen to unsigned artists Wood recalls about that night last year Tom experiences music in an innate primal way The hours may be long but that s what happens when your main leisure activity is also your job Tom lives inside the product observes Chernin That s not just a metaphor Anderson is automatically the first friend of anyone who joins MySpace and as the public face of the operation he s photographed with celebrities at company bashes approached for autographs on the street and deluged with e mails from users He has put blocks on his e mail but if he hadn t he says I would be getting more than 40 000 a day Now I think I get 2 000 or 3 000 Successful startups tend to have one person who is the soul of the business and inherently understands the users says Geoff Yang of Redpoint Ventures who invested $15 million in MySpace early last year The other is the smart businessperson who has a compelling vision Anderson then is the soul Typically wearing a trucker hat and flannel shirt even on 90 degree L A days he has an unvarnished forthright manner that makes him seem almost childlike He spends a lot of days toiling with the techies at MySpace to put out fires or add new features to the site though lately he s been getting pulled into meetings about partnerships and ad ideas He sees his role as the guardian of the user Most evenings he s at home alone surfing the web Since his band Swank broke up in 2000 he clashed with a fellow band member Anderson has had little time to play his guitars or go to L A clubs Still Anderson has racked up 100 million online friends DeWolfe meanwhile has 177 Married to a former record executive with his first baby on the way the businessman with the vision is a lot more polished than Anderson and a lot more guarded In person with his laconic charm shaggy gray hair and string bean frame the 6 foot 3 DeWolfe comes across as uncompromisingly cool Though he paints himself as a workaholic at the office from 9 30 A M to 9 P M most nights he allows that he spends weekends at a beach a little north of here a downmarket rental in Malibu He begs me not to name the chic Colorado town where he skis in the winter it begins with an A Asked why he s so guarded he replies anxiously I m by nature I m not a flashy person It s just not who I am A laid back anti authority vibeUnlike Anderson and most MySpace members DeWolfe prefers not to express himself He keeps his MySpace page private though he agrees to friend me so I can see it Under Chris s Interests he lists Work trying to figure out new people I meet going out to bars clubs once in a while Hogan s Heroes and Lost in Translation about a washed up actor searching for meaning in Tokyo are first on his list of favorite TV shows and movies In the About Me section he writes Usually friendly but sometimes prickly I like being around creative people funny people crazy people MySpace s laid back anti authority vibe has everything to do with where its founders came from DeWolfe who was raised by two teachers in Portland Ore bucked the family tradition by studying business at the University of Washington and then going to USC s Marshall School of Business while Anderson whose entrepreneurial father had one crazy idea after another rebelled by majoring in English and rhetoric at Berkeley bouncing from band to band and eventually going to film school The two met in 2000 when Anderson deep in student debt answered an ad to earn $20 testing a product for Xdrive a data storage company He hated the Xdrive product But DeWolfe who had landed a gig as the company s head of sales and marketing liked Anderson s candor and offered him a job Chris rescued me from a lifetime of unemployment says Anderson who immediately took to DeWolfe s hands off style I remember I asked Chris What do I do He said Go figure out how to make money That s why I always liked working with Chris It was never Here s the job I want you to do While Xdrive ended up in bankruptcy a casualty of the dot com boom the pair s second venture an Internet marketing firm called Response Base took off Within a year they sold it to an outfit called eUniverse for several million dollars and joined the company Around this time in late 2002 Tom decided that social networking should be their next big bet I had looked at dating sites and niche communities like BlackPlanet AsianAvenue and http money cnn com magazines fortune fortune archive 2006 09 04 8384727 index htmMySpace cowboysThey run the fastest growing Web site on the planet They have 100 million friends Not bad for two guys who just wanted a place to hang out By Patricia Sellers Fortune editor at largeAugust 24 2006 10 28 AM EDT Fortune Magazine One night this past April Tom Anderson was surfing MySpace com as he does for hours every night when he spotted a link to something called kSolo on another member s profile page The service Anderson learned lets you record karaoke online and e mail songs to friends A karaoke man himself he used to be the lead singer in a band called Swank he immediately tried kSolo playing a scorching anthem called Cowboys From Hell by the thrash metal band Pantera It was cheesy but great Anderson says The next day he told his business partner Chris DeWolfe to check out the site Just three years ago the exchange between Anderson and DeWolfe might have ended there a failed musician and a frustrated entrepreneur bonding over karaoke But Anderson and DeWolfe don t just obsessively use MySpace they founded it Last July News Corp Charts agreed to buy their company and they decided to stay on as president and CEO So DeWolfe tested kSolo too playing a Bon Jovi song from the 80s He and Anderson quickly contacted kSolo and invited its founder Nimrod Lev to fly from New York to Los Angeles to meet with them Meanwhile they sent word to News Corp president Peter Chernin who told his boss CEO Rupert Murdoch about the music site Within a week the media mogul struck a deal to buy kSolo as a trinket for the expanding MySpace empire It s nice to have a billionaire sugar daddy to help you build the world s fastest growing Web site It s even nicer to earn a really great living doing what most guys do for fun Out of their personal passion for the music scene in Los Angeles where they live Anderson 30 and DeWolfe 40 created an Internet site to promote local acts and connect fans and friends who connected friends who connected friends until by last summer 20 million people had joined MySpace The two had a friendship based on business then they quite literally founded a business based on friendship And when Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million for MySpace s parent company Anderson and DeWolfe though reluctant to do the deal each made millions MySpace is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon For those who haven t logged on the site is the online equivalent of your high school lunchroom your college quad your favorite bar Except it doesn t sell much of anything at least not yet It s simply a place to hang out and express yourself The users the hardest core being teens and twentysomethings post profiles and decorate them with photos music videoclips blogs and links The site is home to 2 2 million bands 8 000 comedians thousands of filmmakers and millions of striving attention starved wannabes 100 million actually MySpace passed that number of registered users in early August and on a typical day it signs up 230 000 roughly the population of Scottsdale A year ago it passed Google in terms of traffic and now MySpace ranks second to Yahoo in page views with one billion daily according to comScore Media Metrix While there are hundreds of social networking sites Facebook Friendster Xanga Bebo Cyworld to name a few MySpace the most risqu and chaotic of the majors accounts for 82 of traffic in the category according to Hitwise a leading Web site tracker With Murdoch s backing the site has an astonishing number of projects underway a Google pact to sell text ads on the site a MySpace Records label a VoIP feature to let users call one another international sites in Britain Australia France with nine other countries in Europe and Asia coming soon DeWolfe counts 20 new products in the development pipeline We think we can extend MySpace around the world and it can be a major force globally says Murdoch whose Internet ambitions have helped drive News Corp s stock up 18 this year That however puts the MySpace guys in an awkward spot They founded their Web site on the principles of user control grass roots growth and authenticity The users govern the site DeWolfe says adamantly But now he and Anderson have News Corp s financial targets to hit a chief revenue officer to contend with and serious pressure to make MySpace safe for advertisers Already there s a backlash Witness sightings of Tom Is Not My Friend T shirts and fake Murdoch profile pages headlined FUQ RUPERT and EVIL BILLIONAIRE TYRANT The question facing the MySpace founders now Is it possible to sell out without selling out A site with a soul It was well past midnight and Tom Anderson was hard at work He had been hunched over his computer for 8 hours refused to break for dinner and showed no signs of letting up Why Well the work was actually scouring MySpace for amazing indie bands After a meeting to brainstorm about a new venture called MySpace Records he and Interscope Records senior vice president Luke Wood decided to take a look around for some promising talent As often happens MySpace addiction set in We sat around his computer from 6 P M to 2 30 in the morning and did nothing but listen to unsigned artists Wood recalls about that night last year Tom experiences music in an innate primal way The hours may be long but that s what happens when your main leisure activity is also your job Tom lives inside the product observes Chernin That s not just a metaphor Anderson is automatically the first friend of anyone who joins MySpace and as the public face of the operation he s photographed with celebrities at company bashes approached for autographs on the street and deluged with e mails from users He has put blocks on his e mail but if he hadn t he says I would be getting more than 40 000 a day Now I think I get 2 000 or 3 000 Successful startups tend to have one person who is the soul of the business and inherently understands the users says Geoff Yang of Redpoint Ventures who invested $15 million in MySpace early last year The other is the smart businessperson who has a compelling vision Anderson then is the soul Typically wearing a trucker hat and flannel shirt even on 90 degree L A days he has an unvarnished forthright manner that makes him seem almost childlike He spends a lot of days toiling with the techies at MySpace to put out fires or add new features to the site though lately he s been getting pulled into meetings about partnerships and ad ideas He sees his role as the guardian of the user Most evenings he s at home alone surfing the web Since his band Swank broke up in 2000 he clashed with a fellow band member Anderson has had little time to play his guitars or go to L A clubs Still Anderson has racked up 100 million online friends DeWolfe meanwhile has 177 Married to a former record executive with his first baby on the way the businessman with the vision is a lot more polished than Anderson and a lot more guarded In person with his laconic charm shaggy gray hair and string bean frame the 6 foot 3 DeWolfe comes across as uncompromisingly cool Though he paints himself as a workaholic at the office from 9 30 A M to 9 P M most nights he allows that he spends weekends at a beach a little north of here a downmarket rental in Malibu He begs me not to name the chic Colorado town where he skis in the winter it begins with an A Asked why he s so guarded he replies anxiously I m by nature I m not a flashy person It s just not who I am A laid back anti authority vibeUnlike Anderson and most MySpace members DeWolfe prefers not to express himself He keeps his MySpace page private though he agrees to friend me so I can see it Under Chris s Interests he lists Work trying to figure out new people I meet going out to bars clubs once in a while Hogan s Heroes and Lost in Translation about a washed up actor searching for meaning in Tokyo are first on his list of favorite TV shows and movies In the About Me section he writes Usually friendly but sometimes prickly I like being around creative people funny people crazy people MySpace s laid back anti authority vibe has everything to do with where its founders came from DeWolfe who was raised by two teachers in Portland Ore bucked the family tradition by studying business at the University of Washington and then going to USC s Marshall School of Business while Anderson whose entrepreneurial father had one crazy idea after another rebelled by majoring in English and rhetoric at Berkeley bouncing from band to band and eventually going to film school The two met in 2000 when Anderson deep in student debt answered an ad to earn $20 testing a product for Xdrive a data storage company He hated the Xdrive product But DeWolfe who had landed a gig as the company s head of sales and marketing liked Anderson s candor and offered him a job Chris rescued me from a lifetime of unemployment says Anderson who immediately took to DeWolfe s hands off style I remember I asked Chris What do I do He said Go figure out how to make money That s why I always liked working with Chris It was never Here s the job I want you to do While Xdrive ended up in bankruptcy a casualty of the dot com boom the pair s second venture an Internet marketing firm called Response Base took off Within a year they sold it to an outfit called eUniverse for several million dollars and joined the company Around this time in late 2002 Tom decided that social networking should be their next big bet I had looked at dating sites and niche communities like BlackPlanet AsianAvenue and

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