It turns out that four months ago the freelance journalist Trent Lapinski received the order, for an On-Line, of writing an article about MySpace.
After he fulfill the researches and done the interviews, the owner of the Online newspaper (names have not been revealed) received News Corp’s threats. (Current owner of MySpace, of property of Ruphert Murdoch) that inquire not to publish the investigation, for being totally groundless.
So the On-line, to avoid any problem, did not publish the article. A few days ago, having recovered his author’s copyright, Trent Lapinski decided to publish his research in Walleywag, becoming cover in Digg and which affirmations we finished with few big signs of interrogation:
1. MySpace is not a viral success: MySpace was created by the eUniverse company (the one who later changed their name to Intermix Media). EUniverse had more than 50 millions emails in their databases, as well as more than 18 million monthly users in their web.
2. MySpace.com is Spam 2.0: MySpace is a whole marketing tool and marketing control, where the users constant receive advertisement and messages from individuals who are added to their list of “friends” (these are more potential clients, consumers or witnesses of the MySpace success).
3. Tom Anderson is not the creator of MySpace: Most users of MySpace believe that Tom Anderson created it in a garage, this is false. Tom Andernson is a user who is added after they created an account and he was hired by the company. The department of public relations invented the history of his creator to be molded to the tastes of the objective public.
4. The CEO of MySpace, Chris DeWolfe, has a past related to spam.
5. MySpace was a direct assault to Friendster.com: The main figures in MySpace’s development have an account in Friendster. The CEO of MySpace, Chris DeWolfe has been a member of Friendster until June, 2003 (MySpace was conceived in August, 2003).
In my opinion, MySpace has more merits to base their voracious growth that spam, even when these affirmations left the doubt.