I will save you the time of reading Stealing Myspace by Julia Angwin, which is a remedial primer on the history of Myspace and News Corp.’s acquisition of its parent company, Intermix. Ironically, in 2007 I worked on the acquisition of Intermix’s non-Myspace assets from News Corp. Myspace’s founding team, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, began working together at a sordid company called eUniverse which was later acquired by Intermix. While at Intermix, they started Myspace inside the parent company and struggled for attention with Intermix’s other product mix, which consisted of sell-by-night skin creams and spyware. They eventually won freedom, but at an extremely high cost: their upside was capped in the event Intermix could sell the whole company (Myspace, skin creams and all). By playing media titans Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch against each other, Intermix was able to sell the whole enchilada and DeWolfe and Anderson made a pittance of the $580 million purchase price (which the book informs us was actually closer to $750 million with earn outs and other payments). DeWolfe and Anderson then fought the Levinsohns (Ross and Peter, distant cousins and Murdoch favorites) for control of Myspace within News Corp., during which time Myspace made few improvements to stay relevant. DeWolfe and Anderson ultimately wrestled control, but in the process lost out to facebook. The end. Epilogue: DeWolfe and Anderson were recently canned. I am sure they have a non-compete, but it will be interesting to see what they do after their golden handcuffs are removed.
