- Fortune, Friday, August 25, 2006 11:15 AM
Here's how things get done at MySpace: Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, the original founders of the social networking phenomenon, play around on MySpace, find something cool, and then ask Rupert
Murdoch to buy it. That's exactly what happened with the company's latest acquisition, kSolo, a service that lets you record karaoke online and post it to your Web site. Anderson, a karaoke fan, found
it, tried it and showed it to his partner DeWolfe. The pair decided to fly the founder of the service out for a meeting, telling Murdoch about it. Within a week, a deal was struck. "It's nice to have
a billionaire sugar daddy," says
Fortune magazine editor Patricia Sellers. "It's even nicer to earn a really great living doing what most guys do for fun." OK, everyone take a second to be
jealous. Just in case you forgot: MySpace is just about the biggest thing on the Web. One billion page views daily. That's 82 percent of the traffic in the social-networking category, according to
traffic measurement firm Hitwise. 100 million members, all just hanging out, because nothing much is sold on MySpace. Over 230,000 new members sign up on a typical day--that's the equivalent of the
population of Scottsdale, Arizona. Murdoch understands the massive opportunity he has before him: There are some 20 new projects in the pipeline for MySpace, including a MySpace Record Label, the
integration of Google's search technology, and overseas expansion. However, expansion is a problem. MySpace is supposed to be a user-controlled, authentic, grassroots phenomenon. "Users govern the
site," as DeWolfe says. But what about the need to make MySpace a friendly place for advertisers? What about the need for News Corp. to make actual money from its continued investment? Already there's
a backlash among members. Some sell "Tom is Not My Friend" T-shirts, and others make posts on fake profile pages headlined FUQ RUPERT. Here's the billion-dollar question for MySpace execs: How do you
sell out without selling out?
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