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71st out of 105 books
—
36 voters
My rating:
add to my books
Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America
by
Julia Angwin
A few years ago, MySpace.com was just an idea kicking around a Southern California spam mill. Scroll down to the present day and MySpace is one of the most visited Internet destinations in America, displaying more than 40 billion webpage views per month and generating nearly $1 billion annually for Rupert Murdoch’s online empire. Even by the standards of the Internet age, ...more
Hardcover, 384 pages
Published
March 17th 2009
by Random House
(first published 2009)
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We all know how interested I am in social networking sites. This book says it has the publish date of April 2009 yet it is already out of date. The story seems to end in mid-2008 and on the inside flap it totes MySpace as the biggest website in the world. This book is a good example of why people don't read books anymore as the turn around time for it being finished to publication puts it out of date before it was even on sale. But it's a good book in terms of history and numbers as there is so ...more
STEALING MYSPACE: The battle to control the most popular website in America, (2009) is an amazing story. It’s an inside look at the business of social networking, avarice, and greed. It is well documented. A few things stand out: The amount of money involved— millions and millions of dollars are thrown around and some people have gotten very rich. Where does all the money come from? The consumer. The things people will spend money on are shocking. Someone, often a high school dropout, schemes an...more
For a brief period in time, myspace was THE social networking site. This is the story of it's start and rise. It's interesting for a number of reasons - unlike most internet companies that were started by someone with a great idea and a passion, myspace was intentionally started as a me-too knockoff site by a company that sold wrinkle cream and crappy toy helicopters via spam email by a group of people that included a guy whose side business was running an Asian porn site.
The book ...more
The book ...more
Knowing the founders and seeing this story unfold from the 'inside,' it was interesting to read the story from a reporter's perspective. Though it's not too detailed, she got a lot right. The book unfolds, however, like dozens of other books like it. A peek into a soon-to-be millionaire's background, the drama and intrigue of growing a business on a super rapid scale, and the fruition of all that unfolding on the public stage. So unless you're interested in MySpace in particular, the book do...more
I've never been on Myspace (it's obviously too hip for me), but this history by Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin makes for an interesting lesson in both web development and web business. It's giving me some insight in to why we make some of the choices we do with our games, and also illustrates some of the pitfalls we can fall into.
Most of all, it's a cautionary tale. When this book was written -- only a year ago -- Myspace was riding high at the top of the Internet. Since ...more
Most of all, it's a cautionary tale. When this book was written -- only a year ago -- Myspace was riding high at the top of the Internet. Since ...more
It was interesting, though it was hard for me to tell all the wannabe hipsters and boring executives apart. I would recommend keeping a list for more in-depth reading. I didn't find any of the founders particularly likable, and so many people were making so many millions that it was hard for me to feel sorry for the people who got screwed in the various deal making. That was one advantage of reading the book now that Myspace is experiencing a rapid decline, all the people fighting over control a...more
This is about the history of Myspace, the popular social networking website. It was developed by a group of entrepreneurs in Los Angeles (as opposed to Silicon Valley). The people who created it were some pretty sleazy hucksters. The company it sprang from made much of its money selling spyware and wrinkle cream. The website itself was copied off a number of competitors, but somehow managed to win out.
The book was a little more detailed than I was interested in, so I did some skimming. In g...more
The book was a little more detailed than I was interested in, so I did some skimming. In g...more
Roy
rated it
Recommends it for:
Anyone who lives online or has an idea for a website
Recommended to Roy by:
NPR
I’ve read a bunch of corporate biographies, most are informative and surprising, and all have given me a greater understanding of how the modern business world works. Corporations have a life cycle (an origination story, development, maturity, etc) which gives them a narrative similar to a person. The best corporate biographies almost always end with a great, hedonistic explosion. Hubris and a fall are essential to this genre (see Enron) – there’s really no good reason to tell the story withou...more
A good book, slightly dated. Published two years ago just as Facebook was starting to massively grow. Myspace in the beginning was a very feature driven site allowing people a lot of freedom in how their site looked and giving musicians a ready made Geocities replacement. Facebook was (and is) always driven more by social interaction, ease of use, and constant activity updates. Most people that spent hours on their Myspace page did so because they had to constantly find new HTML codes for th...more
current biz books should not print epilogues at the end of titles, instead they should just have a link to a blog where the epilogue can be continually kept up to date...even though this books just came out last year, it is already out of date as the major players have been fired/moved on and the herd has shifted from MySpace to FB among others.
Well researched read that keeps your attention throughout as the continuous drama, greed, and scheming unfolds. Funny how there are so many simil...more
Well researched read that keeps your attention throughout as the continuous drama, greed, and scheming unfolds. Funny how there are so many simil...more
Very good history and overview of MySpace. Particularly strong on the pre-history, when the MySpace founders were busy scrapping a living from email and pop-up spam and porn. The founders almost accidentally stumbled on a winner with social networking, which was eventually acquired by News Corp. The book fell away a bit near the end, where I was counting pages till the finish. But definitely worth reading if you're interested in Internet culture.
Amblingbooks.com
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
available-on-audio,
business
"[A] well-written, entertaining, and drama-filled chronicle....This engrossing look at how MySpace became a media powerhouse will find a solid audience of business history, technology, and entrepreneurship readers." - Publishers Weekly
Listen to Stealing MySpace on your smartphone.
Listen to Stealing MySpace on your smartphone.
Angwin extensively researched the topic (even quoting teenage Usenet postings of one of the founders) but failed to construct a compelling narrative. I have a friend who used to work there--I've heard how insane it was, office culture-wise, and that fails to get communicated in the book. Instead, it is a long litany of corporate deal making and stock options.
a bit too much on the boardroom drama but a great portrait of the rise of myspace. i'd love to read the sequel on the fall of myspace as well but that's yet to be written. what's most fascinating is that myspace "won" (for a brief time) being everything friendster was not. and ironically, facebook is for all intents and purposes essentially a better friendster.
A detailed account of the origins of myspace as a low-budget friendster knock-off and its journey to become the most-visited web site. It's dry but relevant to anyone interested in how new products/services are created and can grow to be so immensely successful despite the mistakes of their owners.
It is good but frightening. The finances, behind the scenes dealing, level of duplicity was amazing and depressing.
I won't look at the internet the same way ever again.
I won't look at the internet the same way ever again.
This book looked interesting at the library so I picked it up. It's pretty good, considering I'm 15 pages into it. Further review will come after the finishing of this novel. :)
Full of details, though MySpace wants you to know this is not an authorized corporate biography. It bogs down in numbers in the middle, as Fox orchestrates a purchase, but starts and ends with the kind of "you can't make this up" turns that nearly explains the famous-for-being-famous culture of contemporary America.
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a fantastic history of myspace and the LA tech scene
This book needed a better editor. Lots of interesting information about the rise and fortune made from MySpace, but a lot of that info didn't flow together. Some anecdotes should have been put into footnotes or omitted altogether. The chapter on Tila Tequilla was interesting and I think tried to be a tie-in with the chapter on security issues, but that wasn't done real well. Overall - good information, but could have been better organized & edited.
Gave up halfway through....the sections about the evolution of social networking were interesting, but I really could not care less about the personalities of all the internet start-up executives, which were described in excruciating detail.
I got a little lost with all the various characters, but I suppose that tells you a lot about the story of MySpace.
Helped me understand the origins of MySpace, and especially how it evolved so differently from Facebook. I can better appreciate news reports I hear today about MySpace
Not too far into it, but it makes one wonder about the value of "social networking" online...and the calibre of the people who control it.
Kevin L.
marked it as wishlist
enjoyed the book and a very fast read. Would like to see an updated edition to talk about the current state of MySpace
Stevec
is currently reading it
Dauty
marked it as to-read
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