Co-founder and first president of MySpace
Appears in 1 documentary
Tom Anderson occupies a unique position in internet history as the man who was everyone’s first friend on MySpace—and witnessed its spectacular rise and fall from the inside. As co-founder and president of what briefly became the world’s largest social network, Anderson’s story illuminates both the possibilities and perils of the early social media era.
Born Thomas Anderson in 1970, the future MySpace co-founder took an unconventional path to internet fame. After studying at UC Berkeley and UCLA, Anderson worked as a copywriter and dabbled in various online ventures during the dot-com boom. His background in both technology and marketing would prove crucial when he partnered with Chris DeWolfe at the direct marketing company ResponseBase in the early 2000s.
The genesis of MySpace came from an unlikely source: watching Friendster’s technical failures. In 2003, Anderson and his colleagues were frustrated users of the pioneering social network, which suffered from chronic slowdowns and crashes. “We said, ‘We can do this better,’” Anderson later recalled. Working nights and weekends, the team built MySpace in just 10 days, launching in August 2003.
Anderson’s stroke of genius was making himself the default first friend for every new user. His smiling face—flanked by a whiteboard and wearing a white t-shirt—became one of the most recognized images on the early internet. By automatically friending millions of users, Anderson inadvertently became the most connected person in digital history, with over 200 million friends at MySpace’s peak.
Under Anderson’s leadership as president, MySpace exploded beyond anyone’s expectations. The platform’s customizable profiles, music focus, and anything-goes culture attracted everyone from teenagers to major bands. By 2005, MySpace was adding 230,000 users daily and had become the internet’s primary cultural hub.
The success attracted Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which acquired MySpace for $580 million in July 2005. Anderson initially remained enthusiastic about the corporate backing, believing it would provide resources for growth. However, the acquisition marked the beginning of the platform’s decline. News Corp’s demands for immediate profits led to aggressive advertising strategies that cluttered pages and slowed performance—the very problems that had driven users away from Friendster.
Anderson found himself caught between corporate pressure and user experience. As News Corp executives pushed for more ad revenue, the site became increasingly unusable. Meanwhile, a cleaner, faster competitor emerged from Harvard: Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s platform offered everything MySpace did, but without the spam, ads, and technical problems.
By 2009, Facebook had surpassed MySpace in users, and Anderson stepped down from active management. When News Corp sold MySpace in 2011 for just $35 million—a 94% loss—it represented one of the most dramatic corporate value destructions in internet history.
Anderson’s post-MySpace life has been notably different from other tech founders. Rather than launching new startups, he became a travel photographer, using his MySpace wealth to explore the world and document it through his lens. His Instagram account, filled with stunning landscape photography, suggests a man who found peace after the corporate battlefield.
Tom Anderson’s legacy extends beyond MySpace’s technical innovations. He represents the creative possibilities of early social media, when platforms were experimental playgrounds rather than corporate advertising machines. His experience also serves as a cautionary tale about how corporate short-term thinking can destroy long-term value in the digital age. In many ways, Anderson was the right founder at the right time who got bought by the wrong company—a reminder that in Silicon Valley, timing isn’t everything.
The definitive account of Anderson's creation and how News Corp's corporate mismanagement destroyed the world's first major social network.
Chronicles how Zuckerberg's Facebook displaced Anderson's MySpace by avoiding the corporate mistakes that killed the original social media king.
In 2006, MySpace was the most visited website in America — bigger than Google. Rupert Murdoch bought it for $580 million. He stuffed it with ads until users fled to Facebook. Five years later, he sold it for $35 million. A 94% loss. The man who killed MySpace was not Mark Zuckerberg. It was Rupert Murdoch.