Stealing MySpace The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America

Posted by admin | July 16, 2009 .

Stealing MySpace The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America

Book Description

A few years ago, MySpace.com was just an idea kicking around a Southern California spam mill. Scroll down to the present day and MySpace is one of the most visited Internet destinations in America, displaying more than 40 billion webpage views per month and generating nearly $1 billion annually for Rupert Murdoch’s online empire. Even by the standards of the Internet age, the MySpace saga is an astounding growth story, which climaxed with the site’s acquisition by Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2005 for a sum approaching one billion dollars. But more than that, it may be the defining drama of the digital era.

In Stealing MySpace, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Angwin chronicles the rise of this Internet powerhouse. With an unerring eye, Angwin details how MySpace took the Internet by storm by grabbing the best ideas from around the Web, encouraging pinup stars such as Tila Tequila to make their home on its pages and giving everyone freedom to experiment with online identities–including using somebody else’s identity.

Stealing MySpace introduces us to the site’s founders, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, who dabbled in computer hacking, online pornography, spam, and spyware before starting MySpace. Although their street savvy, doggedness, and clubbing skills far eclipsed their tech prowess, they stumbled their way to success and soon found themselves at ground zero of a high-stakes war that pitted Rupert Murdoch against his frequent nemesis, the combative Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone. Angwin sheds light on the dizzying backroom deals that allowed Murdoch to snatch MySpace from Viacom’s grasp even as the MySpace founders remained in the dark about their own fate. Then she takes us inside the Murdoch empire as DeWolfe and Anderson lobby furiously to regain control of their creation.

Venturing beyond the business aspects of the story, Angwin also explores the Internet culture, a voyeuristic world in which MySpace must stay one step ahead of amateur pornographers, sexual predators, and “spoofers” who set up fake profiles (Rupert Murdoch himself tolerates dozens of phony “Ruperts” on the site) and cope with the general excesses and sometimes illegal acts of a community of account holders equal in number to the population of Japan.

In Stealing MySpace, Julia Angwin dishes on the epic real-world battle for control of a virtual empire. In a savvy, smart, fast-paced narrative reminiscent of Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s Barbarians at the Gate and Michael Lewis’s The New New Thing, Stealing MySpace tells is the whole gripping story behind a breakout cultural phenomenon.

Julia Angwin on Stealing MySpace

Porn. Hacking. Spyware. Spam. Spy cameras you can hide in your shoe.

Prior to launching MySpace, the founders dabbled in all of the above. Relentless marketers and knockoff artists, their story also included a boardroom coup, broken friendships, betrayals, litigation and a pair of feuding media moguls–Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch.

When I stumbled on the history of MySpace, I quickly realized it was not your typical Silicon Valley saga. There were no computer geniuses dropping out of prestigious universities, no fancy algorithms, no computers in garages. In short: The MySpace tale was manna from journalistic heaven–I had to write it.

It was also a serious lesson about the evolution of the Internet. The success of these ragtag marketers from Los Angeles demonstrated an important change in our culture: Technology had finally become relatively easy to use. Innovation was no longer confined to the digital elites. MySpace’s success was largely due to the fact that it put its customers first, and technology second.

Still, as it grew, MySpace’s lack of tech savvy has been its Achilles Heel. Today, MySpace is being forced to play technological catch-up to rival social networking site, Facebook, and it’s not clear if it will succeed.

The final chapter of the MySpace story has not yet been written. But the unlikely tale of how MySpace was born is one that begged to be told. –Julia Angwin

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars More interesting than I thought it would be
If Variety had a threesome with Wired Magazine and a ColdFusion manual, it would look a lot like this book. It captures a great story of an unlikely internet company (from LA no less) overachieving and does what I think is a great job of walking through the nuances that separate myspace from friendster and a lot of other companies nobody remembers.

I think this would make a fantastic movie as it highlights some over-sized personalities/egos, covers the torn friendships that often happen when startups and $$ are involved and shows how a company can capitalize on a shift in technology (digital pictures/mp3.s + broadband) before most people understand what has happened.

5 Stars Money, Greed, Hollywood, Spam, Spyware and Porn – Oh My
In Stealing MySapce Julia Angwin turns a complicated story of “theft”, greed, and luck into a comprehensible page-turner. It’s straight forward enough for the Social Networking novice, has enough detail and dirt to interest the technorati, and has plenty of facts and figures for the business crowd. Like Barbarians at the Gate it offers a fly on the wall look at boardroom maneuvering and backstabbing. And, Angwin has the good fortune of working with a varied cast of larger than life characters – Rupert Murdoch (the media titan), the pretty but talentless Tila Tequila, and every MySpace user’s first friend Tom Anderson to name just a few.

In addition to a business history of MySpace Angwin gives us a glimpse at the way internet companies cannibalize one another and lose ground by failing to innovate – MySpace copies and eclipses Friendster, Facebook copies and outshines MySpace… Twitter anyone? In the end Stealing MySpace is both a how-to and a cautionary tale about making it in the digital age. So, whether you’re interested in business, social networking, the tech world, or are just looking for a good read, this book will explain how we got to the point were congressmen are tweeting during congressional hearings and mothers surf the web to expose real-life and cyber bullies. Social networks are here to stay, you might as well know where they came from.

5 Stars Excellent, rarely heard perspective on social media history
The book occasionally lapses into excruciating detail on financial and biographical detail, but it’s a minor annoyance.

It is the best book on the emergence of social networks that I have read to date and contains perspective and first-person details that you cannot get elsewhere.

It’s good to read this book and be reminded that MySpace was initially no more than a “me to” copycat social network, that was underfunded, managed poorly and had to use second-rate used technology and used network equipment for nearly all of its early history. However, the slightly-insane founders worked like crazy 24/7, made some lucky mistakes such as a programming error that allowed users to customize their profiles (turned out to be a big hit!) and used…are you listening? – NON-internet means to help achieve critical mass – parties, networking and road tours.

If you are developing a social network read this book.

5 Stars The best book I’ve read all year!
Well written and engaging. Stealing Myspace chronicles Myspace from its ambitious and rocky beginning to its almost unrivaled internet prominence. Julia Angwin also provides insight into the various personalities and key players involved in Myspace’s ascension. Few things are left unexposed. This is a must read for anyone who has ever used Myspace or is simply wondering what’s behind the “hype”.

4 Stars “Great- Behind-the-scene BOOK!
This book offers an amazing behind-the scene, and insight to the makers of myspace. It takes you from myspace’s begining to the concequences it has had with the law, and all the other issues with organization and within the same people in the company. It has all the secrets myspace has been hiding and why it’s been hidden. The overall book was impressive. The issue is the author was way to wordy at times and used too much bussiness terms that the average reader might find hard to understand. Overall great story… inspiring as well…

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