by Julia Angwin
First published 2014
Julia Angwin chronicles the meteoric rise of MySpace from a spam company side project to America's most visited website. The story centers on founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, former hackers who dabbled in pornography and spyware before stumbling into social media gold. Their creation exploded to 40 billion monthly page views by copying the web's best features and attracting stars like Tila Tequila. Behind the scenes, media titans Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone waged a billion dollar battle for control. Angwin reveals how Murdoch's News Corporation outmaneuvered Viacom in backroom deals while the MySpace founders remained unaware of their fate. The author explores the wild online culture that emerged, where sexual predators lurked alongside amateur pornographers and fake profiles flourished. DeWolfe and Anderson fought desperately to reclaim their creation from Murdoch's empire. Angwin delivers a fast paced account of corporate warfare in the digital age, showing how street smart entrepreneurs built a virtual community the size of Japan's population before losing control to traditional media moguls.
Genres: history, business, computers, non-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: corporate-takeover, rise-and-fall
Setting: America, Japan
Period: 21st Century
ebook · Random House