MySpace Co-Founder Misses "Serendipity" of Social Media as Documentary Premieres

L-R: Myspace's Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe Jeff Vespa/Getty MySpace, which launched 2003, ushered in a joyous time for social media, where users discovered their favorite new band and debuted their angular new haircut for their friends. The story of the site, which was subsequently bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2005, is told in MySpace, a documentary directed by Tommy Avallone and produced by Gunpowder & Sky, the company founded by former MTV boss Van Toffler. The film, which premieres today at the HotDocs festival, explores the rise of the site, which introduced Top 8 friendships, and how it helped launch the careers of the likes of Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Dane Cook, and influencers such as Jeffree Star and Tila Tequila. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-dsk-tab-mid-article1-uid0' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["mid-article1","mid","mid-articleX","mid-article","300x251"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-article") .addSize([[2,2],[300,250],[620,350],[300,251],[501,282],[3,3],[2,4],[4,2],[620,366]]) .exemptFromSleep() .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; }); Related Stories News After 28 Years At MTV, Van Toffler Returns To Produce The Video Music Awards Documentary Jessica Simpson Documentary In Works At Gunpowder & Sky It was launched by Tom Anderson, otherwise known as everybody’s first friend, and Chris DeWolfe. Watch on Deadline if ( !window.pmc.harmony?.isEventAdScheduledTime() ) { pmcCnx.cmd.push(function() { pmcCnx({ settings: { plugins: { pmcAtlasMG: { iabPlcmt: 2, } } }, playerId: '32fe25c4-79aa-406a-af44-69b41e969e71', playlistId: '0199e506-e642-7728-8264-463efe71337b', }).render("connatix_contextual_player_div"); }); } else { // This should only be get called when page cache is not cleared and it's event time. window.pmc.harmony?.switchToHarmonyPlayer(); } DeWolfe spoke with Deadline ahead of the documentary’s premiere. He said that the idea for MySpace was to be a place where users could “connect” and “express yourself.” “Your profile would be very much like your apartment or like your dorm room, that would have the music you like playing in the background and would have your top eight friends,” he said. “It really covered everything culturally from art to music to games.” MySpace broke through in a way that no other social media site had previously done. DeWolfe admitted that it was a “wild” period. “There’s a certain amount of fame and attention that you get for building the largest website in the world, that comes from out of nowhere that you have to deal with, along with building a very large company and expanding and selling the company and dealing with the political measures of a large company like News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch,” he added. “Most people settle into that over a 20-year time period and it all happened to me in probably less than six months to a year.” DeWolfe said that MySpace had a “serendipity” that he believes it “almost impossible to replicate today.” He highlighted people being able to discover new musicians through the pages of friends or strangers. “It was social, it was a community, and you felt comfortable even talking to people you didn’t know, because you truly had something in common. It wasn’t a machine telling you to visit someone’s profile. You actually discovered it and felt like you had something in common,” he said. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec',…

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