Tom Anderson is an American internet entrepreneur, who is best known as the co-founder of social networkng site Myspace was born on November 8, 1970. He founded the company in 2003,along with Chris DeWolf. He also known as ‘Myspace Tom’ because Tom would became a default contact in every new Myspace accounts. However, in 2009, he left the company.
Born and raised in California, he attended San Pasqual High in Escondido, California. There he hacked computers under the pseudonym ‘Lord Flathead’. In the course of his ‘hacking’ career, which got into trouble with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after he hacked the security of Chase Manhattan Bank but the charges against him were dropped because of his young age.
He became the lead singer of a band called ‘Swank’. He toured to Taiwan along with the band for a brief period of time from where he brought back fond memories of drums and guitars. After his return to the US, he studied for a degree in Critical Film Studies at the University of California, LA. There he met his current girlfriend Vanessa Mendieta.
In the year 2000, Anderson started out his career as a copywriter and product tester at a digital company called XDrive. There he first met Chris DeWolfe, the co-founder of Myspace. Chris is the former CEO of Myspace. Under his leadership, the company rose to a new height and became the world’s most popular website, with more than 130 million visitors a day. He also came up with the idea to introduce a free music section in the website. After the XDrive’s bankruptcy, the duo founded a direct marketing company called ResponseBase. In the late 2002, the company was sold to Brad Greenspan’s eUniverse.
In August 2003, Anderson started ‘MySpace’. eUniverse was succeeded by Intermix Media. It was then that ‘MySpace’ gained a level of popularity. It became a classic role model for other social networks. In 2005, Intermix Media and MySpace were sold to News Corp for and Anderson became the President of the company. The News Corp acquisition, according to Tom, robbed him of his liberty to make decisions and get things done. So, he left ‘MySpace’ in the year 2009 and his default contact profile was replaced by a profile called ‘Today On MySpace’ or ‘TOM’.
The announcement that Anderson would be joining RocketFrog Interactive as an adviser US-based company in Los Angeles. RocketFrog created a Facebook app. He has now retired. In a 2014 interview, he didn’t express any disappointments on his retirement. In fact, his tweet reads, ‘Enjoying being retired.’
He also made a cameo appearance in the American drama-comedy film Funny People starring Adam Sandler. However, he has never been on reality TV. The MySpace co-founder has a net worth of $60 milllion.
Tom has active profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and Google+.