Myspace and its $580 Million Mistake with Erika Ishii and Brennan Lee Mulligan | 87

The Big Flop

Wondery

Society & Culture, Comedy, Business

4.6 • 884 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Before there was Facebook, there was MySpace – and Tom Anderson was everyone's first friend. With his iconic profile pic and revolutionary platform, Tom turned social media into a cultural phenomenon. But when corporate suits came calling with fat checks and even bigger expectations, Tom went from being everyone’s first friend to the internet’s first cautionary tale.

Erika Ishii and Brennan Lee Mulligan (Dimension 20, Dropout.tv) join Misha to get the lowdown on how Tom from Myspace fell out of everyone’s top 8.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Picture this. You're lounging on your couch, ready to indulge in another hilariously disastrous
0:05.8	episode of The Big Flop, but then, bam, an ad. Don't let that be you. With Wondery Plus,
0:14.6	you can enjoy The Big Flop a whole week early and completely ad-free. It's like having a fast pass to the front row of the VIP section.
0:24.4	Upgrade your listening experience and join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts.
0:30.7	Your uninterrupted flop fix awaits. Can you all remember who your first friend on MySpace was?
0:46.1	For a second, I thought it was this frenemy I had when I was in middle school, but weirdly, they might have just been on my top eight choices.
0:53.5	It was actually Tom, the creator of MySpace.
0:57.8	Still not ringing a bell?
0:59.5	Well, my guest describes him as the default guy on the posters of your community college.
1:04.9	Cute.
1:06.1	In Tom's heyday, he truly could have had it all.
1:08.4	Could have been a household name like Rupert Murdoch or Mark Zuckerberg,
1:12.5	the execs who once vied for his attention. So what went wrong? Why is he only somewhat remembered
1:19.9	as the guy who friended me on MySpace when I was 14? Let's get into it, Besties.
1:26.5	MySpace.com, with over 120 million members, it is the largest social network in the United States,
1:33.6	and it is the fastest growing website in the world.
1:37.0	He sold the little company called Myspace to News Corp for $580 million.
1:41.8	Along came Facebook and Twitter, and MySpace fell out of favor.
1:45.4	That's led News Corp to sell off the struggling site for $35 million.
1:50.2	Facebook had no chance to win.
1:52.4	The only reason we won was because of the gross competence of MySpace systematically over a period of many years.
2:00.0	Did I just say that publicly?
	...

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