SPIEGEL Interview with the Co-Founders of MySpace "We Have Replaced MTV"
SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson and Mr. DeWolfe, how many friends do you have?
Anderson: I think there are about 140 million right now on my MySpace profile.
SPIEGEL: And in the real world?
Anderson: In person I dont have that many friends. Im a pretty tight-knit guy with the people that I know. Offline, I have no more than four or five friends.
SPIEGEL: That doesn't seem to bother your online acquaintances. They comment on your private pictures and leave public messages like "maybe we can hook up later" on your profile. How has becoming an online celebrity as the founder of such a successful company changed your life?
Anderson: When I'm on the net, someone always wants to chat with me. But outside of MySpace, it's a completely different world. I dont get recognized that much on the street.
SPIEGEL: How did you guys meet?
Anderson: I had a temporary job in a product testing company right after college. I only planned to be there for 3 weeks. I wanted to earn some money and then do some traveling. I met Chris, who was a manager there, and he moved me into a position right away that I really didn't deserve. We started our first company nine months later. So I went from not working or doing little side jobs here and there to helping to run a company and own a part of it. I dont think that a normal business guy would have given me this kind of chance.
SPIEGEL: How did you start MySpace?
DeWolfe: It began as a community of creative people we knew in Los Angeles. Tom designed the site originally to cater to creative folks whether it was actors, artists or musicians. The community here for that is so vibrant. It wasnt set up to appeal to tech geeks somewhere. It was set up for everyday people to express themselves creatively.
SPIEGEL: So you never intended to create something bigger than just a local Web site for Los Angeles?
DeWolfe: No, we wanted to make sure we had a huge US community right from the beginning. And it was always in our first business plans to expand it internationally.
SPIEGEL: Was it easy to find investors for a site that gave users almost total control over its content?
DeWolfe: For the most part everyone doubted we were a real company and a real site because we werent in the Silicon Valley. And we didnt do things like everyone else. We had ten different features on our site. They considered that to be unfocused. The user interface wasnt pretty. We werent using Linux operating system but off-the-shelf Microsoft products, which was unheard of.
SPIEGEL: So how does the MySpace generation tick?
Anderson: If you are 23 now, you probably started using the AOL Instant Messenger ten years ago. Its totally natural for you to talk to your friends that way. A few years after that you started text messaging. I think the MySpace generation is these people who just have this experience. Its perfectly natural. Its like a cell phone in that it is just another way you talk to people. I remember trying to get my dad to use one when I was a kid because I thought it was cool. My dad just said, Why would I do that?
SPIEGEL: Do you think we are undergoing a fundamental shift in the way people communicate with each other?
Anderson: Definitely. Whats culturally significant about MySpace is that it has become so pervasive that people of all ages are now using it. Even people who didnt grow up with it are getting used to it. People just get sucked in. A 35-year old person doesnt find it strange anymore to be on MySpace. Just two years ago, we would have had no chance attracting that person.
DeWolfe: Its like a platform to quickly show the whole world who you are. That didnt exist before. Its like snapshot, not just your picture, but everything youre interested in -- the look of your site, the sound file in the background. You get a visual and acoustic feeling of what a person is like by looking at it. This generation wants to be more expressive. Its probably a renaissance in wanting to be creative. Its pretty hard to show creativity in other ways, but its easy on MySpace.
SPIEGEL: MySpace first found success with youth culture. So let's say I'm a kid and I know that my parents and my teachers might be reading the stuff I post on MySpace. Will I still want to hang around here?
Anderson: We worried about that a year ago. We talked about it: What's going to happen when the parents arrive? But it hasn't hurt things. The kids can still make their private profiles if they want to be underground. They don't have to share with anyone if they don't want to.
SPIEGEL: How does MySpace change social behavior?
DeWolfe: It makes it more efficient. If I want to have my 50 friends meet up with me at at a particular place, I can send a bulletin out and meet them there at a certain time.
Anderson: It expands people's world in a lot of ways, it changes their social reality. If I meet you here and you leave the room, I might get your profile or I might know you are a friend of Chris. And I might go there later and check your profile and see that you're interested in things I'm interested in. And then we start talking. There has never been anything like this before.
SPIEGEL: In the past, your would just give someone your phone number, but now we share and reveal far more.
Anderson: Giving someone your MySpace URL is so much less threatening. When somebody asks for that, it doesn't mean a lot. It means I want to look at it, it means I can write you. But it doesn't mean you have to answer. While a phone call is ringing in your face and you'd say: I didn't want to give that guy my number. Think about this constant thing with women trying to decide whether or not to give their number out. They can give their MySpace profile out, and they don't have to worry.
SPIEGEL: MySpace also appears to have changed popular culture.
Anderson: I think we have replaced MTV. MySpace is more convenient. You can search for things, while MTV is just delivering things to you. On MySpace you can pick your own channel and go where you want. That's why TV viewership is dropping among the MySpace generation. I started using the Internet in 1999. That was pretty late. But as soon as I did I just stopped watching TV. The idea of sitting down and waiting for a TV show at a certain time, I couldn't do this anymore. The Internet is a better form of entertainment to me.
DeWolfe: As a TV manager, the best thing to happen is your show gets really hot. But you always know that it's going to lose popularity and become uncool at some point when you run out of ideas or people just get tired. We don't have to deal with that because we are not creating the program -- our users are. They can continually reinvent what's new and what's cool, based on changing their profiles, or new bands coming in. So we are not tasked with that difficult challenge like somebody like MTV. There are 140 million different channels to watch on our site.
SPIEGEL: MySpace is famous for more than pop culture: Its known as a huge hook-up place.
Anderson: MySpace is a social Web site. It's not a dating Web site, but you can use it that way. That's an important part of it. But it's a lot more casual here.
SPIEGEL: Do people behave differently online and offline?
DeWolfe: It's definitely less daunting to socialize on MySpace than it may be in the offline world. In the real world people often don't say what they want to say.
SPIEGEL: Child safety is a big issue. Parents fear predators might pose as teenage boys and eventually molest their kids.
DeWolfe: We have a whole team devoted to this, to make the site safer. We provide safety tips and we are talking directly to law enforcement officials and legislators. We hired a chief safety officer who is a former prosecutor and worked for Microsoft for 10 years. We are leading the industry on the safety front.
SPIEGEL: How does MySpace make money?
DeWolfe: It's not only the banner ads. We allow advertisers to set up their own profiles and build a community around their brand. You can become a friend of Toyota or a new movie exactly the same way you become a friend of a real person on MySpace. That's incredibly successful. We work with all the top brands in the world. In addition to that we closed a huge search deal with Google. They paid us $900 million for being on our site. We will be introducing an e-commerce section. And our mobile business will create a worldwide revenue stream.
SPIEGEL: You think 140 million people will use their mobile phones for social networking?
DeWolfe: Its going to be a big trend. People know each other online, and then they are getting ported to mobile communities. We just announced a huge deal with Cingular, Americas largest wireless provider. We will announce a deal with a major carrier in Europe soon. You can get messages, send messages, take a picture and upload it to your site, send a bulletin to your friends. Its maybe hard to internalize, but in the US MySpace has become a way of life. People use it to plan their social lives, to put their lives online. Its a huge value proposition to be able to carry MySpace with you wherever you go.
SPIEGEL: Despite all these efforts, you have so far failed to become the big cash cow that Google and Yahoo have proven to be.
DeWolfe: Not yet. But we have only been in business for three years. And we are profitable. We are going to earn a couple of hundred million dollars next year. The growth is phenomenal.
SPIEGEL: Be it Google or AOL, everybody is offering some type of social networking today; everybody is running a video section and a photo site. What makes you think yours will prevail?
DeWolfe: The big portals tried to come after us after they saw our success: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL. We don't believe they will get a lot of traction in our business. Smaller social networks like Facebook for college students will provide value in their niches, but they will never be what MySpace is. Someone will watch a video on YouTube, but chances are that they have a profile on MySpace, and that's where they are socializing. By the way, we have one of the largest video sites of the world.
SPIEGEL: Your new owner Rupert Murdoch is 75 and runs a conservative media empire. MySpace had its beginnings as a site for teenagers and subcultures. Many felt you had sold out their values.
Anderson: It sounded strange on the surface. A lot of people predicted that this would be the demise of MySpace. How could this possibly work? But here's the reality: There are a lot of stereotypes out there about who Rupert is and what NewsCorp is. We both like Rupert a lot, he likes us, and it's a great partnership. We've also become friends.
SPIEGEL: Why then are there so many fake profiles mocking Rupert Murdoch on MySpace? Teenagers are protesting against you and the commercialization of MySpace.
Anderson: I know, you're talking about these "Tom is not my friend" t-shirts. But thats not because of NewsCorp or Rupert. Any time you get as big as we have become, there are going to be detractors. But I have never seen a serious outcry from users about it. The real answer is to look where we are a year later after the sale -- bigger than ever.
DeWolfe: It's also a misrepresentation to say Murdochs TV channels are all about conservative content. They do have very diverse programming in the US. It's more about finding market segments and making money.
SPIEGEL: How is your German business doing?
DeWolfe: Its great. We just started two and half months ago, and we already have 2.5 million unique users. The number of registrations has tripled since we have translated the site. The advertising market is exploding. The creative scene in Berlin is unbelievable. We are positioned in the right place at the right time. Germany is going to be big part of our future.
SPIEGEL: You have a long way to go in Germany. So far, you are only ranked No. 16 of the top-visited Web sites here.
DeWolfe: Usually in new markets, our staff is figuring out what the local popular culture is. From there they figure out where they can do secret shows with great bands in great venues and start sending the word out. Its been extremely successful here in Los Angeles and the US. We do exclusive album releases, work with local comedians, artists. All of this helps building the site. But the primary growth comes from getting scale. Once you get 4,000 members a day, as is the case right now in Germany, things will start growing faster and faster. Its growing by word of mouth.
SPIEGEL: Your contracts with Rupert Murdoch expire next October. Will you leave the company you founded?
Anderson: As long as it's still fun to be here we are going to continue our work. For me it feels like the opportunity has just begun, it's definitely not ending.
SPIEGEL: Google recently bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. Do you think you sold too early?
DeWolfe: We try to look forward and not back.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, Mr. DeWolfe, thank you for this interview.
Interview conducted by Frank Hornig.
