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Stealing Myspace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America

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Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

Angwin, an award-winning journalist for the Wall Street Journal, recounts the history of MySpace.com in this well-written, entertaining and drama-filled chronicle. From its founding by Chris DeWolfe to its surprising purchase for nearly $600 million by Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp., Angwin takes the reader through the companys tumultuous journey to the top. Readers will learn how Eliot Spitzer's spyware lawsuit nearly devastated the company and how Richard Blumenthal's investigation into the sites lack of protection of minors resulted in a blindsiding public assault. An array of personalities populate the book, including Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, Bill OReilly and Tila Tequila, who was one of the earliest to use her popularity on the site to generate a successful business. Angwin also describes the massive defection of MySpace users to Facebook and leaves the reader to wrestle with the issue of digital identity. Attesting to the depth of her research, Angwin also includes a lengthy notes section. This engrossing look at how MySpace became a media powerhouse will find a solid audience of business history, technology and entrepreneurship readers. (Mar.)
Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Author Information

Bio of Julia Angwin

Julia Angwin is an award-winning journalist at The Wall Street Journal, where she writes about the convergence of technology and media.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Random House

Filesize

2.62 MB

Number of Pages

384

eBook ISBN

9781588367693

Excerpt from: Stealing Myspace by Julia Angwin

Chapter 1 Stealing MySpace Richard Rosenblatt’s heart was pounding with nervous anticipation as he climbed a private staircase on the Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles. It was the warm afternoon of July 12, 2005. On the Fox lot, the low buildings of the Fox TV and movie soundstages and offices were dwarfed by the high-rise jungle known as Century City. With his deep tan, athletic figure, and casual attire, Rosenblatt looked like he might be on the lot for an audition. But Rosenblatt was there to sell News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch on his version of the digital future. Rosenblatt had arrived early for his meeting. Murdoch’s office was in a modern glass-and-steel office building that, to many visitors, looked woefully out of place next to the graceful 1930s building that housed the historic 20th Century Fox movie production offices. As he waited in the ground-floor cafeteria, with sunlight streaming in through the sliding glass doors, Rosenblatt tapped out an e-mail on his BlackBerry to a friend: “At murdochs’ . . . going in soon. Friggen nervous.” Finally an aide came to usher him up the back stairs that led from the cafeteria to Murdoch’s office on the fifth floor. Ross Levinsohn, Murdoch’s genial head of Internet strategy, was waiting for Rosenblatt outside Murdoch’s office. Levinsohn put his hand on Rosenblatt’s arm. “If you want to sell your company to us, now is the time to do it,” Levinsohn said. As soon as Rosenblatt stepped into Murdoch’s spacious neutral-toned office suite, he wondered whether he should have worn a suit after all. Against the advice of his colleagues, Rosenblatt had decided to wear his usual business uniform of cargo pants, Vans sneakers, and a light blue short-sleeve button-down shirt. Murdoch, with his receding gray hair and rimless glasses, was waiting in a crisp suit. Rosenblatt took a seat offered to him on the beige leather couch, introduced himself, and, in his high-pitched voice, launched into a ten-minute recital of all the reasons why Murdoch should buy his Internet company, Intermix Media. On its own, Intermix was not much of a prize. It owned a bunch of websites offering games like bingo and animated fart jokes that users could e-mail to one another. It was barely profitable. It had been sued by New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer for distributing spyware inside screen savers, screen cursors, and games. But Intermix also owned a majority stake in a fast-growing website—MySpace.com—which had attracted an impressive 17.7 million visitors the prior month. A consummate salesman, Rosenblatt focused his comments on the potential of adding MySpace’s broad audience to complement Rupert Murdoch’s already enviable empire of top-flight media companies. “Mr. Murdoch, MySpace is the perfect media company,” Rosenblatt said. “Unlike traditional media companies, MySpace generates free content, through its users; generates free traffic, by its users inviting their friends; and all you have to do is sell the ads!” Gesturing at the four clocks on the wall showing the time in Los Angeles, London, Sydney, and Hong Kong, Rosenblatt said, “You have built the most incredible global media company. You have dominated in every area of media, from newspapers to television to film. But on the Internet, you are irrelevant. “This deal will not only make you relevant, it will immediately make you as big a player as AOL or Yahoo online,” Rosenblatt said. “If you do this deal, I predict you will be on the cover of Wired magazine twelve months from now.” Murdoch said softly in his thick Australian accent, “I heard you’ve been asking for twelve dollars a share. That&a