Who is Tom Anderson and what happened to Myspace?
TOM Anderson, known as Myspace Tom is the founder of the social networking website Myspace.
As Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were down for a total of seven hours on October 4, 2021, Twitter users reminisced of the older platform MySpace.
It was Facebook's biggest-ever outage that took the apps offline for hours.
Meanwhile, Twitter users posted nostalgically about MySpace, the former leading social media platform, and insisted its founder would never have allowed for it to be offline for so long.
Here's what we know about MySpace's founder.
Who is Tom Anderson?
Entrepreneur Tom Anderson co-founded MySpace back in 2003 with Chris DeWolfe.
The 51-year-old is known as "Myspace Tom" as he was everyone's first "friend" on the social network site.
He was later president of Myspace and a strategic adviser for the company.
He attended the San Pasqual High in Escondido, California.
As a teenager, he was a computer hacker under the pseudonym "Lord Flathead."
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He even prompted an FBI raid after he hacked the security of Chase Manhattan Bank.
He was a University of California, Berkeley graduate, majoring in English and rhetoric.
He was also the lead vocalist of the band called Swank.
Anderson briefly lived in Taiwan before returning to the US to study film at the University of California, Los Angeles.
What is Tom Anderson's net worth?
The former businessman has an estimated net worth of $60 million.
The social network he founded netted him an enormous payout after he sold his share in the site for £372 million back in 2005.
What happened to Myspace?
Between 2005 and 2008, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world.
However, in April 2008, it was taken over by Facebook that saw its popularity growing.
In June 2009, the company laid off 30 percent of the workforce and reduced it to 1,000 employees.
By June 2011, My Space was left with 400 employees.
Its popularity continued to drop and by 2019 the number of monthly visitors had dropped to 7 million.
In 2018 it was bought by the Meredith Corporation.
Where is Tom Anderson now?
According to Hello Magazine Anderson currently lives in Hawai and has turned into a travel photographer and explorer.
He has shared stunning shots of his travels Thailand, Bhutan and the Maldives with his 643,000 Instagram followers, where he keeps the same username myspacetom.
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His bio reads: "Former 1st friend, enjoying being retired. Photo taking has been my hobby for 4 years. New mission 2 help others & engage!"
In 2019, he bought a home in West Hollywood for $3.8 million that belonged to The Chainsmokers star Drew Taggart, Cheetsheet.com reported.
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