If you were alive and online in 2005, you had a friend named Tom. He was everyone’s first friend. He wore a plain white t-shirt, sat in front of a pixelated whiteboard, and looked back at you with a smirk that defined an entire era of the internet. But if you’re asking who was the founder of Myspace, the answer is actually a bit more crowded than just that one guy in the profile picture. It wasn't a solo genius in a garage. It was a group of marketing guys in a windowless office in Santa Monica trying to figure out how to beat Friendster at its own game.
The internet moves fast.
We forget that before Facebook became a global utility, Myspace was the sun that the entire digital world orbited around. It was messy. It was loud. It was full of glittering GIFs and "Top 8" drama that could end friendships in real life. Behind that chaos were two primary architects: Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson.
The Men Behind the Screen: DeWolfe and Anderson
Most people only remember Tom. Tom Anderson was the face. He was the "Founding President," but Chris DeWolfe was the CEO and the guy driving the business engine. They weren't teenagers. When they started Myspace in 2003, they were already experienced internet marketers working at a company called eUniverse, which was led by a man named Brad Greenspan.
Honestly, the origin story is kind of corporate. It wasn't a lightning bolt of inspiration. It was a pivot. eUniverse had a huge email list and a lot of infrastructure for moving traffic around the web. When Friendster started getting popular and then immediately started breaking under the weight of its own users, DeWolfe and Anderson saw a massive opening. They built the first version of Myspace in about ten days. Think about that. The site that defined a generation was basically a weekend project built on top of existing code because they wanted to see if they could capture the social media lightning that Friendster was dropping.
Why Tom Anderson became "Tom"
It’s funny how accidents become iconic. Tom Anderson became everyone's first friend because the system was designed to automatically add the "Founding President" to every new user's friend list. This wasn't necessarily a brilliant branding move at first; it was a way to make sure the site didn't look empty when you signed up.
But it worked.
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It gave the site a soul. Unlike the corporate feel of later platforms, Myspace felt like it was run by a guy you could grab a beer with. Tom was approachable. He was the digital version of a welcoming committee. While Chris DeWolfe was in the back rooms negotiating $580 million deals with News Corp, Tom was the guy everyone felt they knew.
The eUniverse Connection
You can't talk about who was the founder of Myspace without mentioning eUniverse (which later became Intermix Media). This is where the story gets a little muddy and where legal battles eventually erupted. Brad Greenspan, the founder of eUniverse, has often claimed he was the one who provided the resources, the funding, and the initial spark.
In the tech world, "founder" is a heavy word.
If you provide the money and the staff, are you the founder? Or is it the guys who stayed up all night coding and designing the UI? Generally, history credits DeWolfe and Anderson as the creators, but the legal reality was that Myspace was a subsidiary of Intermix. This distinction became incredibly important when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp came knocking with a giant checkbook in 2005.
The $580 Million Moment
When News Corp bought Myspace for $580 million, it was the "shot heard 'round the world" for the social media age. People thought Murdoch was a genius. Then, they thought he was a dinosaur.
The acquisition changed everything.
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Suddenly, the scrappy site from Santa Monica had to answer to corporate overlords who cared more about ad impressions than "scene queens" and garage bands. Chris DeWolfe stayed on as CEO for several years after the sale, trying to navigate the shift from a cultural phenomenon to a corporate asset. Tom Anderson stayed too, though he eventually drifted away to pursue his real passion: travel photography.
If you look at Tom’s Instagram today, he’s living the dream. He’s traveling the world, taking stunning photos of landscapes, and looking remarkably like he hasn't aged a day since 2003. He won the internet. He got out at the peak, made his millions, and never looked back at the wreckage of the platform he helped build.
Why Myspace Actually Collapsed
It wasn't just Facebook. That’s the easy answer, but it's not the whole truth.
Myspace died because it stopped being for the users and started being for the advertisers. While Mark Zuckerberg was keeping Facebook clean and exclusive (at first), Myspace was becoming a cluttered mess of auto-playing music and "blingee" graphics that took five minutes to load on a DSL connection.
- Technical Debt: The site was built on ColdFusion. It was buggy. It was slow.
- Safety Issues: They struggled with spam and predators, which led to a lot of negative press that scared off parents.
- The "Open" Problem: Myspace allowed users to use HTML/CSS to customize profiles. It was great for creativity, but it was a nightmare for security and site stability.
When Justin Timberlake and Specific Media bought the site for a measly $35 million in 2011, the "founder" era was long gone. It was a ghost town.
The Legacy of the Founders
So, who was the founder of Myspace in the eyes of history?
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It’s DeWolfe and Anderson. Period.
They proved that social media could be a massive business. They paved the way for the creator economy by making it easy for musicians (like Lily Allen and Arctic Monkeys) to find an audience without a record label. They gave us the "Status Update" and the "Top 8," features that evolved into the feeds and stories we use today.
DeWolfe eventually went on to found Jam City, a massive mobile gaming company. He's still a heavyweight in the tech world. Tom? Tom is retired. He’s the patron saint of "getting the bag" and disappearing into a beautiful sunset.
How to use this knowledge today
Understanding the Myspace story isn't just a trip down memory lane. It's a lesson in digital Darwinism. If you're building a brand or a platform today, take these notes from the DeWolfe and Anderson playbook:
- Personality matters: Tom being "everyone's friend" created a level of brand loyalty that Facebook has never been able to replicate. People liked Tom; nobody "likes" Mark Zuckerberg in the same way.
- Speed is a weapon: They built the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in ten days. Don't over-engineer your first version. Launch it and see if it sticks.
- The pivot is real: They weren't trying to change the world; they were trying to capitalize on a competitor's technical failures. Look for where the current giants are dropping the ball.
The era of Myspace is over, but the blueprint it left behind is still being used by every app on your phone right now. We're all just living in the world that Tom and Chris built in a rushed two-week sprint in 2003.
To really dig into the specifics of that era, you should look into the early 2000s "Silicon Beach" scene in Los Angeles. It was a different vibe than Silicon Valley—more focused on entertainment and marketing than pure engineering. That DNA is why Myspace felt so different from the Google-era products coming out of the North.
Next time you see a blurry photo of a guy in a white t-shirt, remember that he wasn't just a meme. He was one-half of a duo that fundamentally redirected the course of human communication. And then, he had the good sense to walk away.
Your next steps for exploring the history of social media:
- Research the "Intermix Media" lawsuit: If you want to see the gritty business side, look up the legal battles between Brad Greenspan and News Corp. It reveals a lot about how the $580 million price tag was actually reached.
- Check out Tom Anderson's current photography: Search for "stopworking" on social media. It’s a masterclass in how to live a post-tech life.
- Archive Dive: Use the Wayback Machine to look at Myspace profiles from 2004 and 2006. Notice the shift in layout and ad density; it’s a visual timeline of a platform's decline.