MySpace is a social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, USA, where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media; which is owned by News Corporation, which has its headquarters in New York City. In June 2006, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the United States. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken internationally by main competitor Facebook in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors. The company employs 300 staff and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 6, 2006 in the Netherlands and the site counted approximately 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006 .

History

The very first MySpace users were eUniverse employees. The company held contests to see who could sign-up the most users. The company then used its resources to push MySpace to the masses. eUniverse used its 20 million users and e-mail subscribers to quickly breathe life into MySpace, and move it to the head of the pack of social networking websites. A key architect was tech expert Toan Nguyen who helped stabilize the MySpace platform when Brad Greenspan asked him to join the team.

The origin of the MySpace.com domain was a site owned by YourZ.com, Inc. It was intended to be a leading online data storage and sharing site up until 2002. By 2004, MySpace and MySpace.com, which existed as a brand associated with YourZ.com, had made the transition from a virtual storage site to a social networking site. This is the natural connection to Chris DeWolfe and a friend, who reminded him he had earlier bought the URL domain, MySpace.com, intending it to be used as a web hosting site,money.cnn.com since both worked at one time in the virtual data storage business, which itself was a casualty of the "dot bomb" era.

Shortly after launching the site, team member Chris DeWolfe suggested that they start charging a fee for the basic MySpace service. Brad Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping MySpace free and open was necessary to make it a large and successful community.

Some employees of MySpace including DeWolfe and Berman were later able to purchase equity in the property before MySpace, and its parent company eUniverse (now renamed Intermix Media) was bought in July 2005 for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises). Of this amount, approximately US$327 million has been attributed to the value of MySpace according to the financial adviser fairness opinion.