MySpace History

MySpace was launched by the Internet marketing company eUniverse (now Intermix Media, inc.). More precisely, the people behind MySpace include Brad Greenspan (eUniverse’s founder and CEO), Chris DeWolfe (current MySpace CEO), and Tom Anderson (current MySpace president).

According to Martin H. Bosworth at ConsumerAffairs.com, Anderson and DeWolfe met in 1999 while working for Xdrive, a company that provided free online storage space. In 2001, they formed ResponseBase, “an e-mail list broker that sold lists of e-mail subscribers to other companies for marketing purposes” ¹ . In September 2002 ResponseBase, which by that time had 30 million e-mails in their database, was acquired by eUniverse ².

By 2003, eUniverse had developed Skilljam (a gaming site), Flowgo.com (entertainment) and CupidJunction (dating) ³.

The Unauthorized History of Myspace.com states that prior to launching MySpace, eUniverse had also released the spyware application KeenValue.PerfectNav in April 2003 ⁴. This application was bundled with Kazaa and is described on Symantec’s website:

The adware supplied by Euniverse acts like a hijacker, monitors Web sites visited, and generates pop-up ads. (…) Keenvalue tracks computer usage and surfing habits of users, and shows contextual advertisements and services. (…) PerfectNav is an error page hijacker that redirects the browser to go to perfectnav.com ⁵.

Bosworth also mentions the usage of spyware by eUniverse:

Greenspan excelled in utilizing online advertising — including what many critics called extensive adware and spyware programs — to get his content onto users’ computers ⁶.

According to The Unauthorized History of Myspace.com, in August 2003, Brad Greenspan accepted an invitation from Chris DeWolfe and became a member of Friendster. The eUniverse team then used Friendster as their inspiration to quickly create and launch MySpace on August 15 2003 ⁷.

Brad Greenspan himself confirms part of this claim in his article “Launching MySpace and Its History“:

Always on the lookout for new opportunities, my team noticed the success of the social networking site Friendster and decided we could do a better job ⁸.

According to Greenspan, however, the discovery of Friendster and the launch of MySpace weren’t as close in time as The Unauthorized History of Myspace.com claims:

We followed Friendster’s launch and growth for several months when I decided that eUniverse would be in the social networking business. In the summer of 2003, as the CEO of eUniverse (and largest shareholder), I made the decision to use our technology, resources, and capital to launch Myspace.com, which debuted to the public on August 15, 2003 ⁹.

He then goes on to explain how MySpace acquired such rapid growth:

The very first MySpace users were our employees (E-mail Exhibit E) and we held contests to see who could bring in more friends (E-mail Exhibit F). As this was happening, we began introducing MySpace to the rest of the world by promoting it to the tens of millions of people who were already part of the eUniverse family of communities (E-mail Exhibit N) ¹⁰.

Greenspan does not mention his departure from eUniverse in this article. Bosworth states that “on Oct. 31st, 2003, Greenspan suddenly resigned from eUniverse after the company was forced to restate its earnings for most of 2002 and 2003″ ¹¹.The Wikipedia article “Brad Greenspan” simply mentions the following:

After leaving his position as CEO at eUniverse towards the end of 2003, Greenspan retained a significant percentage of shares in the company and owned 10% of the company when it sold to News Corp in 2005. Greenspan opposed the acquisition, and has been fighting News Corp both legally and publicly ever since ¹².

In 2004, eUniverse changed its name to Intermix Media. In December 2004, MySpace surpassed Friendster as the most popular social network website ¹³. In July 2005, MySpace and eUniverse were bought for US$580 million by News Corporation, the parent company of Fox Broadcasting ¹⁴.

The Unauthorized History of Myspace.com and What’s Inside MySpace.com both state that in April 2005, the State of New York filed a lawsuit against Intermix Media Inc. regarding its past adware and spyware-related activities. The lawsuit was settled for 7.5 million.

MySpace has since launched English and non-English Web sites in countries such as Japan, France, China, Spain, Russia, Germany, and more.

REFERENCES

1. 1. Bosworth, Martin H., What’s Inside Myspace.com?, ConsumerAffairs.com, Retrieved on January 24, 2008.
2. 2. Euniverse Buys ResponseBase, Direct Magazine Online, Sep 9, 2002, Retrieved on January 24, 2008.
3. 3. Greenspan, Brad. Launching MySpace and Its History, bradgreenspan.com, June 16 2007, Retrieved on January 24, 2008.
4. 4. New Monaco Media, The Unauthorized History of Myspace.com, YouTube, Retrieved on January 24, 2008.
5. 5. Euniverse KeenValue Info Transfer, Symantec, Retrieved on January 24, 2008.
6. 6. Bosworth, op. cit.
7. 7. New Monaco Media, op. cit.
8. 8. Greenspan, Brad. Launching MySpace and Its History, bradgreenspan.com, June 16 2007, Retrieved on January 24, 2008.
9. 9. Ibid.
10. 10. Ibid.
11. 11. Bosworth, op. cit.
12. 12. Brad Greenspan, Wikipedia, Retrieved on January 23, 2008.
13. 13. New Monaco Media, op. cit.
14. 14. MySpace, Wikipedia, Retrieved on January 23, 2008.