julia angwin

I recently finished “Stealing MySpace” by Julia Angwin. The book is an incredible accounting of the history of MySpace. Anyone who reads it should be amazed at a how a group of founders and dealmakers that were perpetually underfunded built one of the best known internet sites and had the largest financial exit of its time.

They did this because they had Hustle and Chutzpa, and it’s the same DNA that Rupert Murdock has. But somewhere in-between it got muddled.

MySpace surpassed Friendster in large part because they were quicker to iterate, they took more risks, and they turned their mistakes into opportunities. They built a fundamentally revolutionary user experience enabling friends to connect online.

But that risk-taking mentality seems long gone. I hope that MySpace is a place I want to start visiting again every day instead of once a month out of morbid curiosity. I want Facebook to legitimately have competition, so we all benefit as consumers. Most of all I want MySpace to take their 1000 plus employees & 100 million plus users and take big risks.

MySpace is a giant, and giants don’t quietly fade into ambiguity. They should be killed in glorious battle making a mosterous roar as they fall to a more worthy opponent; or they take their place as an endangered warrior that albeit bloodied and wounded, outlasted all their counterparts and will remain immortalized for generations to come.