I can’t decide if this doesn’t matter at all, or if it matters a lot. A Wall Street Journal reporter named Julia Angwin has apparently been working on a tell all book about MySpace for some time, and she’s dug up a lot of sensationalist dirt on the company, its founders, and parent company News Corp.
Among the gems – Tom Anderson, the co-founder of MySpace and the first friend to anyone who creates a MySpace profile, isn’t really 32 like it says on his MySpace profile. His Wikipedia entry, which says he was born in 1975, is also incorrect.
How old is he really? We first heard 40. We dug a little online and came up with nothing. But then we got a senior person at MySpace to talk to us about it off record at the Web 2.0 Summit last week: this person confirmed that he’s really “36 or 37″ and that MySpace has been trying to keep this quiet for some time.
Is this important? Only in that perhaps the most famous person online has been lying about his age at least since starting the company. If it was anyone else, no problem. But Tom’s profile is added as a friend to every new MySpace user account, along with his fake age and other information. That makes it a bigger deal. And the fact that MySpace and News Corp. had knowledge of the lie, and did nothing to fix it, makes it worse. Every year on Tom’s birthday his age goes up a year on his profile, but it is still at least 4 or 5 years behind his true age.
Why would he do this? Maybe so that the company looked cooler, started by 20-somethings instead of 30-somethings when it first launched in 2003. Or maybe there’s another reason. Whatever it is, lying to your users, your tens of millions of users, can’t be a good thing in the long run. If you can’t trust the founders to be truthful in their profiles, how can you trust what anyone says on the site. The answer may simply be that you can’t.
MySpace PR isn’t touching this one with any kind of comment. But perhaps, quietly, we’ll see an update to Tom’s age on his MySpace profile sometime soon.
hahahahaha. Oh my god he must be pissed right now.
Cuban baseball players are always rumored to be older, Chinese Basketball players the same, and you know what? It works.
That’s an extra couple of years making a few million bucks. Tom in his late 30s is also not as marketable as Tom in his early 30s. And in internet years, 5 years is a lifetime of possible change and innovation.
It’s no big deal. Are you mad at people when they tell you they’re 6 feet and they’re not? I think most people out there didn’t sign up for Myspace just to get Tom as a friend. If so, they should know by now, he’s not a very good friend.
Right now, living in Santa Monica Ca, he probably has more important matters to worry about
But, no one knew at the time that MySpace would grow into a monster. It is perfectly reasonable that he would want to make the overall younger crowd feel comfortable with his friendship by modifying his age.
But it is sad that the so called ’senior official’ did not feel a strong enough loyalty and bond to adhere to Tom’s wishes. After all, he has a great job with a great company.
He has a lot to be grateful for.
Slow news day.
MU – – this is perfectly REASONABLE!?!?!?! To lie and keep lying!!! and the person who leaked it is in the wrong? We have no hope if this is what everyone thinks.
w00t! Score one for the old people! Seems like you guys still do have a chance to make a few hundred million before your good ideas run dry.
Is this a big deal? As Kevin pointed out a 5 years makes huge difference, that’s true. But hmm.. If he wants to be a little younger online, who cares?
who cares? even if it’s true, it’s not newsworthy.. wonder how old terry semel is?
With honesty . I had no clue who he was until you said he was a founder of myspace.
As above if I ask people who he was very few would know him from name or face.
Mike arrington can we have a few more british or european startups coming into the mainstream techcrunch coverage. Im sure we do have some good startups and it may stem the tide of random coverage of “the stealth search startup ” or “facecrap” stuff which is often minimgless.
Keep up the good work
——————
vsworxx.worpress.com
Another myspace is shit story. Yawn.
Wow. This is bigger than Watergate.
hmm so he lied about the age big deal.. most of those millions of kids on myspace dont ever care…
who? seriously who is this guy? I have never heard of him.
@10: I’m sure they’ll have more coverage once you speak English correctly and not blatantly spam the comments with links to your worthless shite; typo intended.
Tom and his MySpace crew need to start worrying about development and less about their PR image.
Facebook, Tribe and Friendster are all more stable and have better features and Facebook is slowly but surely taking MySpace’s users because MySpace fails to listen to its users needs.
Who tells the truth online (or on your resume)????
There was an article in WIRED last month titled: “Is it OK to fib a little on my social-network profile?”
See 2nd Sub-Heading:
http://www.wire...ne/15-10/st_kia
They make no mention of age in the article, but if Tom does it, it must be OK. Speaking of lying about your age on MySpace, I’ve noticed that there sure are a lot of 99 year olds buzzing about MySpace. I didn’t know that demographic was such an internet savvy bunch until recently. Ha!
That wikipedia entry states that he is being also criticized for its similarities to George Orwell’s Big Brother, there might be chances that his pics could be fake too.
You know, I’ve heard that Michael Arrington is really 64……..
Who really cares about his age? And why this is news?
C’mon people, we’re more about technology than someone personal life.
By the way, how old is the founder of TC?
Good question, and don’t lie like Tome! (LOL)
WHO CARES? Please Mike, stop stealing posts from perezhilton!
> wonder how old terry semel is?
A reporter in search of information wired Grant’s agent: “HOW OLD CARY GRANT?” Grant happened to read the message himself, and wired back “OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?”
http://www.imdb...e/nm0000026/bio
The only strange thing is that this story is considered TechCrunch-worthy.
Tom isn’t a politician – there’s no public trust at stake, so why is this news?
Even if he was the head of Intel or Apple wouldn’t it just make him look stupid rather than it being a crisis of morality ?
I think Michael you’re taking Facebook too seriously.
(though I still enjoy TC)
Everybody lies on the Internet, people. That will teach you not to trust MySpace profiles.
I have to admit, I didn’t know who he was until I read this blog post, but one thing for sure you can’t (or atleast shouldn’t) lie to your visitors.
Best TC ever! I had to read this twice to believe it was written here:
“how can you trust what anyone says on the site. The answer may simply be that you can’t.”
Perhaps a Rails-based polygraph is my ticket.
Come on, is there anyone one myspace that is not improving his or her profile in comparison to real life? that’s what it is all about isn’t it? MySpace and another social network sites help you look just a bit cooler than you really are.
That is why advertisement won’t work well there, the profiles aren’t nearly as good to match ads with as the advertiser would want to.
http://vanelsas...tch-for-google/
MySpace claims to offer its users the ability to block by age and warns users on site and through links to several other online safety resources that sometimes online ‘friends’ arent who they appear to be.
MySpace also warns its users not to post anything they may be embarassed by later so maybe Tom should grow up and start taking his own advice.
Good blog Mike.
ps
A cautionary tale about ‘age hacking’
http://www.wire...ff_internetlies
This is actually a big deal. Only last night on the radio here in the UK there was some big thing about a new organisation that is going after Myspace to get them to make things more secure and have verification checks in place to stop sexual preds fibbing about their age and grooming children.
I don’t care how old Tom is, but the fact that he is not telling the truth about his age is a big problem when put in the context of the issue that is “people not being truthful about their age online” etc.
Anywho, I don’t think this should have been ANYWHERE near the techcrunch homepage, but Mikes job is to get traffic and discussion to make his $240k+ per month, so I guess in that context it counts.
My one and only friend… TOM
Guy lies about age on online profile, news at 11.
This blog post sounds like it was written by The Onion.
and this is relevant to ANYTHING how?
The first thing most myspace users do is remove him from their ‘top 10′
I have a work related myspam page and I’ve wondered all along if Tom was even a real person or just the cover for the group of people running the site.
And wearing a Nike t-shirt will give you a 10% lift in your game.
I think you will find it is called ‘marketing’.
I can’t believe I wasted 2 minutes of my life reading this article. Really, who gives a crap? I only wish I could go back in time and ignore this article.
So we have a new section on techcrunch now WHAT IS YOUR AGE?
Now common guys this is childish as compare to your blog.
O-M-G !!!! I knew I felt a disturbance in the space-time continuum for the last 4 years.
Michael, you are a lazy son of a bitch.
http://freemysp...e.com/?q=node/2
I just spoke to Brad Greenspan through email, he could tell you Tom’s age in 5 seconds. Tom was his employee.
I just used this contact form to email him last time. So ANYONE could find out the answer to this question in 24 hours. I had talked to Brad previously 2 years ago via email though, so I dunno if he’s going to respond to you or not. You could try though. I could ask him, but I don’t care how old Tom is. Screw Tom, Tim, whatever. He’s NOT EVEN A PROGRAMMER. He faked it.
bradgreenspan.com/?page_id=22
I am unsubscribing from the rss feed. I actually felt myself getting stupider reading this.
I will use Brad’s private email and link him to this thread and ask him to respond. I dunno how long it will take or if he will want to though. He’s like uber rich, and I don’t think he cares about the concerns of the little people.
Hey, at least I will try.
Duc Chau may know his age too. I will notify him as well as to the presence of this thread. One of them may respond.
Don’t know who Tom is? RTFA! It’s stated quite clearly that he’s co-founder of MySpace and the first friend to anyone who creates a MySpace profile. TFA even has a picture of him.
It’s news-worthy, not because it matters (this ain’t /.), but because it’s a curiousity. Why would he lie about his age? I just don’t get it.
@Tom of vsworxx: How about you create a British or European start-up to report on British and European start-ups? You could be the British or European Techcrunch!
Materiality?
I have more of a problem with the tale told about him being a founder then about his age. From what I can tell — and in knowing some of the principals quite well — Tom was a fairly low-level employee when MySpace was launched. He sort of was in the right place at the right time.
His age: it’s a sophmoric marketing trick and not really all that relevant. MySpace has real-life predators and pedophiles on their site. A former low-level employee lying about his age isn’t major by comparison.
is this written by a facebook employee or something?
For 5 years I said I was 26. I was in a rock band and everyone knows what happens to rockstars at 27. |-(
“Why would he lie about his age?”
It would let people know what his birthday is, and some people are paranoid about revealing that information to the public. Once you have a birthday you have a small piece of what you need to destroy somebody’s credit.
I bet Greenspan knows, and he could tell us, if he can get something out of it like press. I dunno if he will, I contacted both him and Duc.
http://profile....&friendid=2
Duc is the real guy that programmed Myspace, and he is now the programmer for RubiconProject.com
Greenspan was the real founder of Myspace, not Tom and Chris Dewolfe.
What a terrible post. Geek infested TechCrunch.com….does this really matter?
@beercosw, you are ruining your company’s rep. please don’t make comment after comment on the same post. you seem like an intelligent programmer, but also an incessant and desperate developer w/o any original ideas. maybe you can implement technology better than everyone, but your marketing skills are crap.
Did you know lot older people discriminate young people?
This is why Google, facebook, other startups fought back.
When you tried to get mortgage loans; you will see older people making excuses. You can’t do this and that. They are over experience. They get too much power. You can’t do anything right.
Another example, older professor make up grades and failing young students.
Another example, CEO makes higher salary than young people.
Another example, Companies make you graduate college, waste time re-polish your resume, and give you less opportunity offer.
Another example, school making harder standardize tests. They want stop young people from graduating college.
Another example, same apartment rent… Older people $300 monthly rent.
Younger people $1,000 monthly rent.
I might be old-fashioned but I think it’s important for someone in his position to tell the truth ie not be a lier!
If he’s any sense he will ‘fess up and gain some respect in the process.
Whatever…… Who Cares about a stranger…..