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Aber Whitcomb, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson could never have imagined where the social network would go when it first launched in 2003
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Aber Whitcomb, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson came together as the founding team behind Myspace, which launched in 2003
The evolution of the site and its impact on culture are the subject of Tommy Avallone’s latest documentary, Myspace
In the documentary, the founders reflect on where social media is today and if things have evolved as they imagined they would
People weren’t sure what to make of Myspace when it came on the scene.
When Aber Whitcomb, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson first introduced the platform in 2003, it was the first social media platform of its kind. Over time, however, competitors presented challenges from competitors, as Tommy Avallone examines in his new documentary, Myspace, produced by Gunpowder & Sky.
The company was experiencing growth beyond what it could handle, with servers crashing as nearly 250,000 new users were creating profiles each day. At the same time, Facebook was beginning to spread its reach from Ivy League students to college students everywhere.
The founders ultimately knew they would need a bigger media company to take them to the next level. As they made their 2005 deal for Myspace to be acquired by News Corp, some of the site’s users started to question its direction.
Today, Facebook’s algorithmic feed has been modeled by other platforms. When it comes to the team’s intentions with Myspace, Whitcomb said, “I don’t think we were trying to make something addictive explicitly, but what’s so unique about technology is you’ve got this real-time data feed of exactly what these users are doing, and you can use that data to make your product better.”
“So were we trying to make it addictive, or is it just a really good product that people love, but that’s probably addictive?” he continued.
DeWolfe shared his own feelings about “the addictive nature of social media” during a conversation with PEOPLE about the documentary.
“I do think the algorithms have a lot to do with the addictive nature of social media. And that everything’s programmed to you and what you’re going to like, with the complete and total notion of increasing the amount of minutes that you’re going to spend on a particular social media site,” he shares.
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“With Myspace, they may have spent that time on Myspace — they may have spent a couple of hours on there, but they were usually learning about music or actually socializing,” he points out.
“It wasn’t the whole FOMO aspect of life,” he continues. “And I think that that’s really the primary negative. And that’s what’s making people feel poorly and giving some people lower self-esteem on some of the current social media sites.”
That said, DeWolfe says he doesn’t believe social media should get too deeply regulated, noting, “I think people should be able to do what they want to do on social media for the most part, with the exception of teens and younger users.”
Using art and politics as examples from his own Myspace experience, he continues, “There were just a lot of things that you inherently learned that you wouldn’t have learned before, that weren’t programmed in your face. [It didn’t make you feel like] you should be somewhere in Greece right now on a big boat.”
The documentary also features current Myspace owners Tim and Chris Vanderhook of Viant Technologies, discussing the site’s trajectory and ideas for its future.
“We still own Myspace. We are stewards of the Myspace brand at this point, and we are going to relaunch Myspace,” Vanderhook said. “We’re just waiting for the right time to do it. And if that one doesn’t work, we’ll do it again.”
Read the original article on People
