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The Man Behind MySpace

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hungry-like-dewolfe dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian has an article looking at the life of Chris DeWolfe, a co-founder of the popular MySpace community site. The article details some of his previous work history, and the thought process that went into creating the site." From the article: "They pinched the best bits of everybody else's sites (Craigslist, Evite, MP3.com) and put them together in a manner that made sense. Unconcerned with technological bells and whistles and geeky one-upmanship, they instead set out to appeal to the people they knew and, beyond them, the youth tribes of middle America."

7 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. "Review Pictures" job would get old really fast by skitheboat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the article: 'Perhaps the biggest threat to MySpace is the PR fallout over safety ... Those "challenges" are being met "head on", he says, including hiring extra staff to monitor the 4-5m photos uploaded every day'

    That job has to be about as exciting as watching grass grow but let assume you can sustain a review rate of one picture/second. In an 8 hour day, this is just under 30,000 pictures a day per employee. And to handle the 4-5 million/day, you'd therefore need about 200 employees (counting vacation and holidays) doing nothing but looking at MySpace pictures - yikes!

    1. Re:"Review Pictures" job would get old really fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      you can fit several pictures on a page at once, just a cursory scan is needed, and a click on the bad ones.
      then, you can probably strip out all the ones that dont have any reports on them..which is most i guess..

      but I agree, it'll get old FAST, if I can do it part time from home, where do I sign? ;)

  2. Sounds like by drpimp · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They have alot planned. Now I wonder if they are going to change their website look. 3 years of the same plain, cluttered with tables, website. Yuck!. No wonder all the users sites look like Frontpage sites from the late 90's. Trying to style with

    table table table table tr td

    is always fun isn't it! And yes, who the F@#& is this DeWolfe guy, we want to hear about Tom!

    --
    -- Brought to you by Carl's JR
  3. myspace.com url by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The article says myspace was founded in September 2003, but the myspace.com url existed before then. Before it was converted to a social networking site, myspace.com was a free online storage site.

  4. Peer Review by therage96 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And that is where Peer Review comes into play. Obviously, the amount of images uploaded far outstrips their ability to monitor them. Thus, they most likely only focus on those pictures that have been reported to be inappropriate. They may also actively check the most popular profiles since an inappropriate picture on one of them would have the widest reaching impact.

  5. New features we could really use! by T_ConX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1) Pedo Probability Calculator
    PPC
    Tool which would calculate the chance of your new online friend being a Pedo! You would be able to mark real friends as ones you have met in Meatspace, and the PPC would calculate the odds on ones you haven't. Factors would include:
    -Few, or no people marking the profile as having been met in Meatspace. This one would be easy to get around by making multiple profiles, but improvements could be made.
    -How often their user photo turn up on other profiles, and other websites. (You know, how instead of using a real picture, Pedos will use a picture of some other girl they found online. Pedos aren't the only ones who do it. I don't know how many dating site profiles I've seen where the girl uses pictures of Keyra Agustina's butt and pretend's it's her own)

    2) Being able to view pages in Default layout, as opposed to the layouts choosen by the owner of the profile.
    Too many idiots think having using a picture of a car as their tile background is cool. Too many idiots pick fonts, sizes, and colors that make their pages unreadable without highlighting the text. Too many idiots have a thing for exclaimation mark strings so long that only a 3200 X 1800 resolution monitor could display them. Wouldn't it be great to just view thier pages without such silliness... who are we kidding... anyone who does do this probably has nothing useful to say anyway...

    3)Spelling and Grammar regulations.
    Internet Shorthand is acceptable in one place, and only one place. Online games. WHen you need to communicate fast, you can use as many commonly accepted acronyms as you want. When you have time to actually compose your thoughts, there is no excuse for typing like an idiot. If you've ever played Kingdom of Loathing, then you know they have people complete a simple english test before they let them into the chat-room. I say we do the same thing on mySpace!

  6. This story is PR bull by applextrent · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm getting really tired of this PR stories DeWolfe and Anderson keep spinning. It is complete and total b.s. A little taste of truth about DeWolfe. Once my next article hits the full truth will be known.