MySpace co-founder ‘choked’ when his social media dream was realised by Facebook
MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson has spoken about the downfall of MySpace following its sale last week.
Owner News Corporation sold the social media company to advertising company Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for $35 million. It had been originally bought from Anderson and co-founder Chris DeWolfe for $580 million.
Anderson spoke out about his old site on his profile of new social media network, Google+.
He said: “My original vision for [MySpace] was that everything got better when it was social — so I tried to build all the super popular things used on the web (blogs, music, classifieds, events, photos) on top of MySpace’s social layer… But quickly I saw that it’s really hard to layer in social to features after the fact. At MySpace we had the luxury of having social first, and building the products on top of that layer. Then I choked and Facebook realized that vision.”
Anderson also expressed praise for Google+ which is still in beta and therefore only available to a limited number of people. He said: “Google already has top-notch products in key categories-photos, videos, office productivity, blogs, Chrome, Android, maps and search. Can you start to see/imagine what Google+ does for Gmail? Picasa? YouTube? Not to mention search? The +1 system that Google now has control of (unlike Facebook Likes) can really influence and change the nature of their search.”