Myspace's Lost Potential: A Hot Docs Documentary

0:00On April 27th, a new documentary called MySpace just premiered at the Hot Docs Festival, diving into the wild ride of the social site they kicked off. Back in 2003, founded by Tom Anderson, that first friend for everyone, and Krista Wolf, it exploded by letting folks customize profiles like their own dorm rooms, blasting music and ranking top 8 friends. Earlier this week, the Wolf opened up ahead of the film's drop, calling the early days pure serendipity where users stumbled on new bands through. Strangers pages, building real connections without algorithms shoving stuff your way. The platform skyrocketed careers for artists like Katie Perry and Taylor Swift, plus early influencers, turning it into the biggest site on the web, and drawing crazy fame overnight. DeWolf handled building a massive company, selling to Rupert Murdoch's newscorp in 2005 for $580 million, and navigating big corporate politics all in under a year.

1:00In hindsight, he regrets the sale, saying too much expansions spread them thin like peanut butter and aggressive revenue goals from newscorp like, hitting 1 billion in ads by 2008 stifled growth compared to Facebook and YouTube which waited years to monetize. These days, MySpace feels like a lost vibe of organic discovery, while today's feeds broadcast everything algorithm style, leaving us to wonder about. Those what ifs, like if MySpace had scooped up Facebook instead. Stay in the know with entertainment and celebrity news today, AI-powered updates, I'm Corey with the story.