Remember the rotten teeth ad?

Much to like in The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace. Chris DeWolfe, co-founder of Myspace,on having it in your blood:

“After we left, the guys that took over were never Myspace users,” says DeWolfe, who now runs a startup called MindJolt. “They didn’t have it in their DNA.”

And how many times have we heard similar stories about luck and the accidental genius of users?

For a time, Myspace was blessed with the improvisational luck that seems to grace all successful startups. One of the site’s first breakthroughs, for example, came by accident. Shortly after launching in August 2003, Myspace developers realized they had accidentally permitted users to insert Web markup code, allowing them to play around with the background colors and personalize their pages, leading to the site’s kaleidoscopic, techno-junkyard aesthetic, which became its trademark.

This is the bit that really got me, though. Advertising, instead of being attracted to a particular brand, ends up controlling it. Those rotten teeth ads really did (and do) kill every site they’re on. I don’t know how much they pay, but it simply can’t be enough:

Part of his challenge, DeWolfe says, was the pressure to monetize the site. While developers at Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter—startups backed by venture capital—were more free to design their products without the immediate pressure of advertising goals, Myspace managers had to hit quarterly revenue targets. That pressure increased dramatically in the summer of 2006, when Google paid $300 million a year for three years to be the exclusive search-engine provider on Myspace on the condition that the social network hit a series of escalating traffic numbers.

In retrospect, DeWolfe says, the imperative to monetize the site stunted its evolution: “When we did the Google deal, we basically doubled the ads on our site,” making it more cluttered. The size, quality, and placement of ads became another source of tension with News Corp., according to DeWolfe and another executive. “Remember the rotten teeth ad?” DeWolfe says. “And the weight-loss ads that would show a stomach bulging over a pair of pants?”

And it wasn’t just the advertisers who didn’t grok how social brands work. HR were involved too:

To dispel the gloom, Myspace employees bought a slushy machine and instituted Friday happy hours. One day the actor Pauly Shore was wandering through the Myspace offices and was cajoled by Raich into posing with the slushy machine. Pretty soon the photo of “The Weasel” bending down to suck some red brew out of the machine’s spigot was ricocheting around the offices and getting posted all over Myspace. It felt for a moment like old times.

When HR caught wind of the photo, however, happy hour was snuffed out, and the staff was forced to sell the slushy machine on EBay (EBAY). It was the final, unglamorous end to a once rollicking era.

Hindsight’s a wonderful thing. And I’m guessing there were all kinds of other factors involved. But, sheesh, you know.

It’ll be interesting to see how Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin manage to screw things up.

 

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