Everyone knows Tom, right? He's your friend, he's everyone's friend. He's the first guy you see smiling back at you from an odd-trendy camera angle when you and 80 million other people sign up for a MySpace profile.
Now, like the beginning of a rich and wonderfully Byzantine novel, let me layer in the next part of the story. It's amazing how wrong traditional media and professional journalists can be in reporting on the technology and media industries. I had some level of personal involvement in a story that got some major play last year. It had to do with potential gaming at a major social news site, and while there were wild allegations and a few bits and pieces of the truth thrown in, the actual story – while pretty much in the public eye for a careful journalist to uncover – went virtually uncovered.
Back to MySpace. It's well known that MySpace is trying to figure out ways to block some third-party widgets and music/video players so that they can lock in exclusive deals for themselves or flat out force people to use their own products and tools. The trick of course is that one of the key reasons why MySpace became the superstar of the social networking space – and why they leapfrogged Friendster at a crucial juncture – is because they are largely hands off about what people do with their profile pages.
Developments in that storyline make for a good story, and The New York Times does a good job overall with today's "MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users." It runs down MySpace's new restrictions on a music e-commerce widget called the Hoooka, and how it personally affected musician Tila Tequila's profile.
But it rankled me to read that "the Hoooka disappeared on Sunday after a MySpace founder, Tom Anderson, personally contacted Ms. Tequila to object, according to someone with direct knowledge of the dispute."
Article comments
1 - nottila
"I have no personal knowledge of this story and I don't know Tom"
What amazing investigative reporting.
Apparently the author is completely unaware that Tila Tequila is famous for being the most popular person on MySpace. She's one of the main faces of MySpace to the press. That is precisely why Tom would contact her personally.
2 - Eric Berlin
Yes, I know who she is and that she has 1.7 million friends. Still, with 80 million users I doubt that Tom would personally contact her to request that she remove a widget. There was no direct attribution of this in the NYT piece, which deepened my opinion.
3 - nottila
There is nothing amazing about the most visible founder contacting the most visible user. They have talked before.
"But her big break came three years ago when MySpace founder Tom Anderson invited Nguyen over to his new site."
4 - Eric Berlin
MySpace in 2003, very different situation than 2007. I don't buy the story as written, that Tom would contact Tequila "to object."