Founders wanted something beyond Friendster

NEW YORK — It was the summer of 2003, and Friendster was the rage online.

Just months earlier, the site had opened its system for letting people create larger and larger social circles by tapping friends of friends of friends. Suddenly meeting people online didn't require chance encounters among complete strangers.

Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe were among the people getting requests from family, friends and acquaintances to join their Friendster networks. But the pair yearned for more.

In June that year, according to DeWolfe, Anderson suggested creating their own site, incorporating the "degree-of-separation" concept from Friendster, classified ads from Craigslist, Web journals from LiveJournal and other tools.

"We didn't really invent any new technology," DeWolfe said. "The idea on the MySpace side was really to create the next-generation portal ... around the best features that were out there that lend themselves to social interaction."

MySpace quietly opened in September 2003 and formally launched in January 2004.

By June 2004, it surpassed Friendster in monthly visitors. It now ranks 13th among all sites in the number of users, with 28.7 million in December, 20 times more than Friendster, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Research by comScore Media Metrix places it fourth by total page views — 17.6 billion in December, behind only sites from Yahoo!, Time Warner /AOL and Microsoft. Google was sixth, with 7 billion.

MySpace now has 54 million registered users, compared with 24 million for Friendster, and Anderson is friends with just about every one of them: He's automatically added when you sign up so you won't feel lonely.

DeWolfe, 40, is now MySpace's chief executive and Anderson, 30, its president. Although media conglomerate News Corp. bought MySpace's parent, Intermix Media, last year, the two still run the service from Los Angeles.

— Anick Jesdanun

The Associated Press