6 Questions: One-On-One with Tom Anderson, president and co-founder, MySpace

In 2007, MySpace decided to pursue a risky path. Already one of the world’s most popular social networking sites, it decided to reinvent itself with the aim of further enhancing its experience but at the risk of alienating its loyal user base. With information attained through a series of studies, focus groups and user feedback, Tom Anderson and his team developed a plan to overhaul the News Corp.-owned site (purchased for US$580 million in 2005) via a series of mini launches that began in September 2007 and will complete in the fall of 2008. MySpace users will now have access to improved customization and search, new navigation and a new homepage, as well as interactive tools like karaoke and messaging. The 37-year-old Anderson is a Berkeley graduate who put his B.A. in Rhetoric and English to use answering six questions about change, innovation and the next stage of web evolution.

What is the greatest challenge currently facing MySpace and what are you doing about it?

Our biggest challenge is to change a product that is used by 120 million people every month. We want to make changes to get to 200 million users every month, but to do that I think we need to change things in a very fundamental way. Those changes will undoubtedly cause some concern for the installed user base. They like MySpace the way it is and people don't welcome change — they want things to work the way they always have worked. So we have to keep our core happy while we modify to attract new users. Our approach has been gradual and cautious. We've been changing things every few weeks since September, rather than launch everything new at once. We listen to user feedback and make sure we correct our mistakes.

Read the full interview here.

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