Whatever Happened to Myspace Co-Founder Tom Anderson?

The Gist:

• Tom Anderson co-founded Myspace in 2003; it would go on to influence social media as we know it.
• He sold Myspace in 2005 for $580 million and became a globe-trotter with a passion for photography.
• Tom is now viewed as somewhat of a social media hero.

For many folks, one of their first forays into social media was Myspace, and the first friend they ever received on the platform was a swell-looking, smiling dude named Tom Anderson.

Todd invented Myspace, which became a phenomenon for you and all of your Sidekick- and Razr-rocking friends. It was virtually the end-all-be-all when it came to social media platforms — until Zuckerberg came along with Facebook.

So whatever happened to Tom from Myspace?

Tom sold Myspace in 2005 for a whopping $580 million. Not all of that money went to him, but he still helped broker the massive deal. The man who popularized social media and effectively started Facebook before Facebook has been enjoying a fantasy retirement ever since closing the sale.

He's known to be a total globe-trotter, traveling to different hot spots and music festivals (he became hooked on photography after attending Burning Man in 2011), and is generally enjoying the millions that he made. He resides in a $3.8 million home in West Hollywood that used to belong to Drew Taggart from the Chainsmokers.

In 2005, Tom brokered a deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to sell Myspace for a whopping $580 million, per Wikipedia. Tom and his co-founder Chris DeWolfe got some fat paychecks from the sale. While Myspace would go on to become utterly obsolete in just a few years, News Corp. would sell it to Viant for $35 million, who would then go on to sell it to Time for an amount that wasn't disclosed.

Yikes.

As of this writing, the man owns a sizable amount of wealth: $60 million, per Wealthy Gorilla. He is currently an investor in both SpaceX and CRISPR.

From the looks of his IG account, it appears that a lot of his time since selling MySpace has been spent on capturing utterly breathtaking images and videos while he surfs and travels the globe. However, he has not shared any travel posts since 2018.

In the summer of 2020, Tom went viral for showing gratitude for a viral tweet that praised his work, penned by Twitter user @JackDMurphy. They wrote, "Remember Tom? Remember how he just sold his $500m share in myspace and retired so he could have a nice life? He never sold our data, never tried to influence elections, never lobbied against privacy legislations... what a man. Myspace was just too pure for this world."

Tom, being a man of few words, simply replied with three emojis.

Years ago, when there was a ton of hate lobbied at Facebook for the way it handled user data, Tom had some laughs at Zuckerberg's platform's expense when Futurism tweeted a funny cartoon about the Myspace co-founder being "our only hope" when it came to a safe social media site. Tom had reportedly retweeted it.

Even though he doesn't have skin in the social media game anymore, Tom has always been there to remind us who did it first (and did it best).

Tom may have removed himself from the social media game some years ago, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't consider returning. Case in point: When users voted Elon Musk out of the role of Twitter's CEO via his own poll on the platform, Elon responded by saying, "I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams."

Tom responded by saying, "Depends who you get to run it!"

The former MySpace head responded to Elon's tweet once again after that with a screenshot of his MySpace profile, indicating he would take on the CEO job.

It appears as though his comment wasn't a dig toward Elon at all. In fact, Tom shared in 2021 that he is a proud investor in Elon's other company: SpaceX.

In October 2023, Deadline reported that Tom and Chris — along with "many of the original Myspace crew, as well as a slew of notable stars who got their start on the platform," per the outlet — would be featured in a documentary about Myspace that was in the works.

Director Tommy Avallone said, per Deadline: "I remember being on Myspace in the beginning. In fact, Myspace is where I first started talking to my now-wife."

"It was an amazing time — before our phones took over our lives, the internet was fun, not a responsibility," he added. "Myspace was a party you could only join by sitting at a computer and I’m very excited to tell the origin story of who we have become through social media. I’ve already put together my Myspace playlist of bangers.”