MySpace Gets Political

May 10, 2007 — -- Today MySpace.com, the hugely popular online community and networking site, announced its plan to host "Presidential Town Hall" sessions in the fall.

Taking a step into the political realm, these hour-long sessions will be an opportunity for the public to discuss issues with presidential candidates -- and many of the candidates have already signed on.

The Men Behind the Giant

If you have a page on MySpace, then you probably know Tom Anderson. He loves karaoke, Radiohead, Friedrich Nietzsche and "Lost." He's your first friend when you register an account on the site, and by the way -- he's also the president of the lucrative media giant.

But unlike most mega-rich tycoons, you can actually click on Tom Anderson's page and send him a message.

"I mean, I still spend a lot of time in the mailbox every day," said Anderson. "I can sort of jump in for an hour and just sort of take the temperature of the site and what's going wrong, or what needs to be fixed, or what users like or don't like."

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, who launched the site with Anderson, is the business brain, the man behind the scenes. But he doesn't have quite as many friends as Anderson does, boasting a mere 200.

"It's sad," said DeWolfe. "Tom and I have worked together for a long time and, you know, we by now have gotten to know each other's strengths and weaknesses. So he focused a lot more on the front-end user experience, and I focused on helping the organization and growing the business and making sure it becomes a global empire."

This two-man team is the driving force behind the most viewed Web site on the planet. MySpace has more than 175 million users and every day 250,000 new people sign up.

MySpace Gets Political

Even the candidates for president understand the power of the MySpace audience. Every one of them has a page, which means that in 2008, America will have its first president with a MySpace blog.

Today MySpace announced yet another step into politics with its plan to host the "Presidential Town Hall" sessions. The hour-long events will be held at college campuses this fall and will be an open forum for the public to talk about important issues with their candidates, many of whom have already signed on.

Candidates participating in the sessions include Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Barack Obama, D-Ill., and John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Viewers at home can submit questions through MySpace instant messenger and watch the MySpace webcast live.

DeWolfe believes getting through to young people could be the key to electing the next president.

"All of the major candidates are gonna be involved in a town hall series where there will be a live mic [in the] audience … and they can ask all the hard questions," he said. "Its really a unique way to get the word across to our audience. … But you know, I think all the candidates currently believe that the younger voters are actually gonna turn out this year, so its very important to them."

Anderson and DeWolfe are partnering with Norman Lear, the creator of the TV character Archie Bunker, who has now launched "Declare Yourself," an effort to get every 18-year-old registered to vote.

"The whole word of mouth thing that happens on MySpace is incredibly powerful," said DeWolfe, "much more powerful than campaign advertising on TV."

The Birth of MySpace

While MySpace has grown to become an enormous success, it wasn't a sure bet. Anderson, however, was always optimistic.

"It sounds crazy," he said, "but even in the first plan that I wrote up, I mentioned AOL, Yahoo and hotmail, knowing we would be big. And its crazy to think that it happened."

This explosion, however, almost never happened. When DeWolfe and Anderson met a few years ago, Anderson was just about to quit his job at a dot-com startup in Los Angeles. DeWolfe, a marketing executive at the same company, stepped in to stop him.

"We met about seven or eight years ago during the beginning of that Internet boom," said DeWolfe.

Anderson continued, "I think I quit 'cuz I didn't like the boss I had, and then Chris kind of rescued me and pulled me into his department, and said, 'Don't leave.' And that's sort of where we started out.'"

Their fast friendship in the workplace led to other creative collaborations. One of those ideas is now the No.1 lifestyle portal in the world.

"Tom has a million ideas, and some of them are pretty good," said DeWolfe. "Some of them are a little wacky. But oh, this one was just a phenomenal idea."

'We Thought We Could Do It Better'

When the site launched in January 2004, there were already several social networking sites in existence.

According to Anderson, "We thought we could do it better. I was a user of those sites. You know, it felt like something that was really natural to me. I was a customer before I was a creator."

He continued, "So I thought: I know that we can do this -- and it just seemed to make a lot of sense and we got -- We were successful very quickly. I mean, within a month the thing had taken off. So it was pretty clear that it was gonna be a winner."

MySpace's success may be in part due to the "pro-user" philosophy of its co-founders. Unlike other sites, MySpace gives users full creative control of their individual profiles.

In July 2005, Intermix Media, which partially owned MySpace, was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., giving the site a corporate edge.

But the site's basic principles didn't change. Bands and musicians soon followed, attracted by MySpace's user freedom and its ability to have a creative [and free] Web site.

"All the bands tried to come into MySpace," DeWolfe said. "And they began to write in and say, 'Hey, this is really cool. You know, we wanna [make this] our default Web page. And it'd be great if you guys could provide all these extra tools for us to allow us to upload our music, our tour dates.'"

While bands were the beginning, soon after, other artists followed. Comedians, celebrities, authors, even filmmakers all wanted the instantaneous access to over a hundred million potential fans that MySpace provided.

175 Million Friends … 'That's a Lot of Power'

With more than 175 million friends, Anderson can instantly communicate with people around the world with just the push of a button. That's a lot of power.

"It can be a little scary," admitted Anderson. "Like one time I posted a link to NPR because I thought it was interesting, and it took down their Web site.

"I guess you'd say we feel a certain responsibility, you know, with the reach we have to 170 million people -- and you know again that was one of the major drivers toward us starting the impact channel."

The impact channel is the conscience of this uninhibited and unedited Web site that houses everything from bikini-clad women to profiles of Obama, Romney and even Greenpeace.

"And like everything on MySpace, the users did it first," said Anderson. "They're making these profiles. We need to make a section for it, make it better for them. That's why we created the Impact Channel."

This "word of mouth" now spans the globe. MySpace is up and running in 14 countries. DeWolfe and Anderson have no plans to change the free-flowing, user-driven model that has served them so well.

"It's a free flow of communication," said DeWolfe. "And again, if you think that about in a world wide with the atrocities that are going on in different countries and even the intolerance in this country, the more people can communicate and get to know people from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different religious backgrounds, the more tolerant they'll be."

"At a basic level, its just like e-mail on steroids or something," said Anderson. "You can find everybody, and it's got pictures, and you can talk to a bunch of people at once. It's cool."