-
Tom – The First Personal Brand
- The Concierge of the Internet
- The Iconic Portrait: The Anatomy of the Whiteboard
- The DNA of the Brand: Hacker, Rhetorician, Musician
- The Path to MySpace
- The “Nice CEO” and the Promise of Friendship
- The Decline and the Tension with News Corp
- The Dehumanization: From Friend to Acronym
- The Great Escape: The Perfect End of a Brand
- The Legacy: The Anti-Zuckerberg
- Fun Facts
- How MySpace Invented Embedding
-
The Band Milestones
- The Numbers That Changed Music
- The First Followers: Building the Foundation
- The Million Play Milestone
- The Rise of Colbie Caillat
- The British Invasion 2.0
- The American Underground
- Sean Kingston and the Hip-Hop Revolution
- The Ten Million Mark
- Calvin Harris: The DJ Who Broke Through
- From First to Last: The Skrillex Origin Story
- The Breakthrough Artists Hall of Fame
- The Labels Respond
- The Fan Connection Revolution
- The Play Count Controversy
- The Legacy Numbers
- The Changing of the Guard
- The Enduring Impact
- Fun Facts
-
The Tech Stack Evolution
- Chapter Zero: The First Ten Days
- The Starting Architecture
- The First Crisis: 500,000 Users
- The Second Crisis: 3 Million Users
- The Third Crisis: 9 Million Users
- The 26 Million User Milestone
- The Architecture at Peak
- The Operations Challenge
- The Samy Worm: A Security Wake-Up Call
- The November 2006 Breakdown
- Data Integrity Nightmares
- The Hundreds of Hacks
- The LAMP Advantage
- What Could Have Been Done Differently?
- The Legacy
- Fun Facts:
-
Lord Flathead
- The Knock at the Door
- The FBI Comes Calling
- The Cracker Connection
- Growing Up in Southern California
- The Berkeley Years
- The Musician
- Film School and Storytelling
- The Dot-Com Boom
- Chris DeWolfe: The Business Mind
- The Partnership
- The Crash
- ResponseBase and the eUniverse Connection
- Brad Greenspan: The Controversial Founder
- The Friendster Opportunity
- The Birth of MySpace
- Ten Days to Launch
- Fun Facts: Chapter 1
-
The Business Mind
- Portland, Oregon
- University of Washington
- The Banking Years
- USC Marshall School of Business
- Sitegeist: The Idea That Earned an A
- First Bank of Beverly Hills
- XDrive and the Dot-Com Dream
- The Meeting
- The Crash Hits
- Survival Mode: ResponseBase
- The eUniverse Acquisition
- Watching Friendster
- The Pitch
- Building for Speed
- Launch
- Fun Facts: Chapter 2
-
MySpace Was the First Dropbox
- Cloud Storage 1.0: The Forgotten Pioneers
- YourZ.com and the Domain myspace.com
- XDrive: The Right Tool at the Wrong Time
- The XDrive Connection: Where Two Fates Crossed
- ResponseBase: The Bridge Between Two Worlds
- The $5,000 Bet
- The Friendster Moment
- From Storage to Social: The Great Pivot
- The Road Not Taken
- The Dropbox Epilogue
- The Lessons of Timing
- Fun Facts: The Domain That Changed Everything
-
The Hustler
- Los Angeles Native
- Palisades Capital
- eUniverse: February 1999
- The Dark Side: Adware and Spyware
- The Eliot Spitzer Problem
- Greenlighting MySpace
- The Power Struggle
- Watching From the Sidelines
- The Fight Against the Sale
- The Lawsuit
- The Copyright Judgment
- LiveUniverse and Later Ventures
- The Forgotten Founder
- What Brad Got Right
- The Spyware Legacy
- Where Is Brad Now?
- Fun Facts: Chapter 3
- Ten Days to Launch
-
The First Million
- September 2003
- The Friendster Exodus
- The Music Scene
- The Customization Explosion
- The Default Friend
- Growth Accelerates
- Facebook Launches
- The First Million
- Tom Gets Recognized
- The Culture Develops
- The Music Revolution Continues
- Growing Pains
- The Competitive Landscape
- The Users
- Looking Toward the Future
- Fun Facts: Chapter 5
-
The Music Revolution
- The Old Way
- The New Way
- The Profile as Promotional Tool
- Chamillionaire: First to 100,000
- Arctic Monkeys: The British Invasion
- Lily Allen: The Demo That Escaped
- Kate Nash: Discovered by Lily Allen
- Colbie Caillat: The Tanning Salon Success
- Calvin Harris: “I Was Signed Due to MySpace”
- The A&R Revolution
- The Genre Explosion
- The Labels Respond
- The Fan Experience
- The Peak of MySpace Music
- The Seeds of Decline
- The Legacy
- Fun Facts: Chapter 6
-
The Deal
- The Suitors Arrive
- Rupert Murdoch’s Vision
- The Negotiation
- July 19, 2005
- What Tom Got
- What Chris Got
- What Brad Got
- The News Corporation Integration
- The User Reaction
- The Industry Response
- The Advertising Gold Rush
- The Peak
- The Cracks Appear
- The Strategic Tension
- Facebook Catches Up
- The View From the Top
- The Legacy of the Deal
- Fun Facts: Chapter 7
-
The Dark Side
- The Spyware Origins
- The Eliot Spitzer Investigation
- The Settlement
- A Different Kind of Danger
- Dateline NBC: “To Catch a Predator”
- The Platform’s Response
- The Attorney General Coalition
- The Connecticut Investigation
- The Sex Offender Controversy
- The Schools React
- The Legislative Response
- The Media Narrative
- The Reality of Risk
- The Cultural Moment
- The Lasting Damage
- Legacy for the Industry
- The Human Cost
- Conclusion
- Fun Facts: Chapter 8
-
The Worm
- The Hacker
- The Vulnerability
- The Concept
- October 4, 2005
- The Spread
- MySpace’s Response
- The Shutdown
- The Investigation
- The Legal Consequences
- The Debate
- The Technical Legacy
- Samy Kamkar’s Later Career
- The Context of 2005
- The Cultural Impact
- Lessons for the Platform
- The Irony of Security Through Obscurity
- The Worm’s Place in MySpace History
- Nineteen Years Old
- Conclusion
- Fun Facts: Chapter 9
-
One Hundred Million
- June 2006
- The Most Visited Website in America
- The Revenue Machine
- Chris DeWolfe: One of the Most Influential
- The Cultural Moment
- The Competition Stirs
- The Technology Gap
- The Corporate Reality
- The International Expansion
- The Music Platform Evolution
- The User Experience Debates
- The Privacy Questions
- Signs of Trouble
- The Valuation Question
- One Hundred Million People
- Fun Facts: Chapter 10
-
Corporate Clash
- Two Cultures
- The Bureaucracy Problem
- The Revenue Pressure
- The Strategic Confusion
- The Facebook Shadow
- The Engineering Challenges
- The Personnel Changes
- The Product Stagnation
- Tom’s Diminishing Role
- The 2008 Redesign
- The Advertising Backlash
- The Exodus Begins
- April 2008: The Crossover
- The Corporate Response
- Chris DeWolfe Under Pressure
- The End of an Era
- Fun Facts: Chapter 11
-
The Microsoft Problem
- The Foundation
- The Scaling Crisis
- The Decision to Migrate
- The Migration Challenge
- The .NET Controversy
- Dan Farino and the Engineering Perspective
- The Facebook Comparison
- The Talent Drain
- The Architecture Problems
- The Feature Gap
- The Speed Penalty
- The Vicious Cycle
- Lessons for the Industry
- The Counterfactual
- The End of the Technical Story
- Fun Facts: Chapter 12
-
Chapter 13: The Redesign Disasters
- The Worst Website on Earth
- The Customization Paradox
- The Technical Reality
- Profile 2.0: The First Betrayal
- MySpace 2.0: Chasing Facebook’s Shadow
- The Identity Crisis Deepens
- Profile 3.0: The Final Insult
- The October 2010 Surrender
- The 2013 Redesign: Scorched Earth
- The TIME Magazine Verdict
- The Lesson Nobody Learned
- Fun Facts: Chapter 13
- April 2008 – The Tipping Point
- The Founders Exit
-
Chapter 16: Brad’s War
- The Man Who Wouldn’t Let Go
- The Founding and the Fall
- The Boardroom Betrayal
- Watching From the Outside
- The News Corp Deal
- FreeMySpace: The Rebellion
- The $20 Billion Website
- The Courtroom Crusade
- LiveUniverse and the Lyrics Disaster
- The Crusade Continues
- The Fall of a Fortune
- The Psychology of Grievance
- What Might Have Been
- The Legacy of the Forgotten Founder
- Fun Facts: Chapter 16
- Chris’s Redemption
-
Tom’s Great Escape
- The Quiet Exit
- Lord Flathead
- The Wandering Years
- ResponseBase and eUniverse
- Everyone’s First Friend
- The $580 Million Exit
- The Decline
- Stepping Down
- The Camera
- The World Traveler
- The Architecture Obsession
- The Disappearance That Wasn’t
- The SpaceX Tweet
- Costa Mesa, 2025
- The Philosophy
- The Contrast
- The Legacy of the First Friend
- Still Your Friend
- Fun Facts: 2010-2025
-
The Timberlake Deal
- For Sale: One Social Network, Slightly Used
- The Vanderhook Brothers
- Enter Timberlake
- June 29, 2011
- The Press Conference
- The State of MySpace
- The Layoff Aftermath
- The Music Strategy
- A Brief Spike
- Rupert Murdoch’s Admission
- The $12 Billion Question
- What Specific Media Bought
- The Social Network Irony
- The Road Ahead
- The Valuation in Perspective
- News Corp Moves On
- A New Beginning or an Extended Ending?
- Fun Facts: 2011
-
Chapter 20: The Final Wipe
- The Relaunch
- “Where Is All My Stuff?”
- The Scope of the Loss
- The Penn Station Comparison
- The Technical Excuse
- Specific Media’s Gamble
- The User Response
- The Second Purge: June 2013
- What the Critics Said
- The Worst Website Legacy
- The Traffic Collapse
- A Warning Unheeded
- The Human Cost
- The Question of Intent
- The Cultural Erasure
- The Aftermath
- Three Data Losses
- The Final Lesson
- Fun Facts: Chapter 20
-
Chapter 21: The Ghost Town
- The Corporate Carousel
- “No Plans for MySpace”
- The Meredith Shuffle
- The Music Vanishes
- “There Is No Way to Recover the Lost Data”
- The Human Stories
- The Dragon Hoard
- The Digital Graveyard
- SpaceHey and the Nostalgia Economy
- The Data Remains
- What Remains
- The Lessons Unlearned
- The Ghost Town Stands
- Fun Facts: Chapter 21
-
The MySpace Mafia: Architects Between Chaos and Order
- The Control Room of a Digital Megacity
- The Diaspora: Where They Went
- The MySpace Mafia vs. The PayPal Mafia: Two Theories of Innovation
- The Technical Debt Generation: Learning from Controlled Collapse
- From Barbarian-Taming to Template Enforcement
- The Comprehensive Diaspora
- The Longing They Left Behind
-
The Return of the Chaotic Web: SpaceHey and the Retro-Web Movement
- The Spark: A Pandemic Project Becomes a Movement
- SpaceHey as Emulator: The New Tom from Germany
- Why Now? The Flight from the Corporate Web
- The Web Revival: A Movement Beyond MySpace
- The Philosophy of Ugliness: Why Chaos Feels Like Freedom
- The Return of Cruel Features: Why Gen Z Wants the Top 8 Back
- Digital Amnesia and the Longing for Permanence
- Conclusion: Radical Self-Determination in the Attention Economy
- 7 Fun Facts from the Era
-
The Vernacular Web: Digital Folk Art and the Language of the People
- A Theory of the Ugly: Olia Lialina and the Vernacular Web
- The Elements of Digital Folk Art
- The GIF as Folk Language
- Comic Sans: The People’s Font
- MySpace as Vernacular Platform
- The Vernacular Web Today: From Nostalgia to Strategy
- The Crypto Telegram: Vernacular Culture in the Meme Coin Era
- The Philosophy of Imperfection
- The Immune System of the Internet
- 7 Fun Facts from the Era
- Tom’s Comeback: The Steve Jobs Moment
-
Back to the Blue: A Blueprint for Revival
- The Ghost in the Machine
- The Hunger for Something Different
- What People Actually Miss
- The Problem MySpace Could Solve
- The Viral Playbook: Lessons from Dropbox and the Early Web
- MySpace 2.0: The Platform That Could Still Be
- The Economics
- The Technical Foundation
- The Moderation Challenge
- Who Would Use It?
- The Path Forward
- The Alternative Futures
- The Closing Argument
- Fun Facts: The Revival Blueprint
-
Operation Homecoming: The $10 Revolution
- The Audacious Math
- The Packers Precedent
- The Platform Cooperative Movement
- The Campaign Structure
- The International Dimension
- The Role of Musicians
- The Membership Model
- The Governance Question
- The Technical Requirements
- The Risks and Challenges
- The Campaign Playbook
- The Call to Action
- Why This Matters Beyond MySpace
- Fun Facts: The Community Ownership Chapter
The MySpace Story
About
About the Book
Feedback
Author
About the Author
Atilla Boz
Inhaber der Shopware Agentur great2gether aus Köln | Founder at the Shopware Agency great2gether
Contents
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