How two twerps rise against the ruling geeks in web industry
As we all know, geeks have ruled the IT industry for decades, now we have witnessed the rise of another force: twerps. Although they’re less intelligent and less mind-blowing, their success seems like something you and I can also achieve.
Julia Angwin, the author of a new book “Stealing MySpace” mentioned to us, “MySpace rose because the time was ripe for a new kind of Internet giant to emerge – one where human creativity was at the center of the experience, not technology.” The truth is that MySpace has made it against all odds. It allow users to input HTML/CSS code, use custom MySpace layouts. As we look back at its early life, it’s simply a bunch of ‘useless stuff’ if you will.
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson were two irresponsible and immature young men before the establishment of MySpace. At that time, nobody believed it will be a success, but just in case, DeWolfe made a clause which later let Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp find a really nice bargain. MySpace’s $580 million deal was dwarfed compared with YouTube’s $1.65 billion and Facebook’s multi billion deals.
DeWolfe at that time was running a small company called ResponseBase whose shut down will not be missed by anyone. On the other hand, Anderson was trying to make a living in Asia. You wouldn’t imagine that Anderson, as one of the co-founders of the social networking site actually had few friends in real life.
Many of us may think that internet companies are a joke, people who work in this industry are not hard-working people who make an honest living out of their hands. However, you can’t resist enjoying the story of a couple of geeks or twerps becoming millionaires. There is no way we would understand the reason behind it.
DeWolfe and Anderson are nowhere near being technical geniuses. Good timing played the single most important role in their success. When these two joined the social network party, many families have for the first time installed broadband internet access at their homes. DeWolfe and Anderson didn’t specialize in cutting-edge application technologies. Their specialty was finding people’s needs. In this case, people use social network site to express themselves. The freedom you could find on MySpace is more than that you could find anywhere else. The pair also has an acute sense for what’s popular and what’s not.
It is quite safe to say that DeWolfe and Anderson were hot at that time. MySpace suddenly found itself surrounded by Viacom and News Corp. Murdoch chased it like a rhino chasing a mate. Nothing would get in the way of Murdoch sealing the deal.
DeWolfe and Anderson would wish that their story stop here because it’s not long before they found MySpace has almost been squeezed out of market by it’s archenemy Facebook. Although geeks have crawled their way back to the market, “Stealing MySpace” represents a new era where technical geniuses will not be the only ones in the scene.
