Tom Anderson
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Tom Anderson (born October 13, 1975) is the President of the social networking website MySpace. He founded the site along with CEO Chris DeWolfe. Since newly created MySpace accounts include Tom as a default "friend," he has become known as the face of MySpace.
Anderson attended University of California, Berkeley from 1994 to 1998, and graduated in 1998 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric and English. From 1999 to 2000, he attended University of California, Los Angeles and graduated with a master's degree in film - critical studies. In 2003, he and a few computer programmers set up the first pages of MySpace, and the site grew from there. It is currently the most popular social networking website on the Internet, consistently performing in United States web traffic rankings.[1]
Controversy
The corporate history of MySpace has been a matter of some public dispute. It has been claimed that Tom Anderson's role and image as MySpace founder and "first friend" is a public relations invention. See MySpace:Controversy over corporate history
MySpace parodies
Due to his notoriety on MySpace, Tom has become somewhat of a phenomenon in recent years. Being the most widely recognized face on MySpace has made him the subject of parody among its users, who set up real MySpace accounts oriented around a comical theme or a character stereotype using Tom as the basis, generally featuring a Photoshopped (or sometimes simply decorated using Paint) image from Tom's MySpace profile, with humorous or satirical comments entered in the "About Me" section.
Cultural references
- Comedian Lisa Lampanelli made reference to Tom during a recent Comedy Central roast of William Shatner, calling a fellow comic "so unlikeable, that on MySpace, Tom won't even be his friend."
- T-shirts reading "I have more friends than Tom!", or "Tom is NOT my friend!", as well as "Tom is my ONLY friend", lampoon the number of "friends" in Tom's myspace network.
- In the song New Friend Request by the popular rap/punk group Gym Class Heroes the lead singer Travis McCoy depicts how he met a girl off MySpace which is proven with lines like: "My man Tom introduced us but I was too shy to say hi" and "You made it clear you wasn't just another myspace mistress"
- In the "Weird Al" Yankovic song White and Nerdy, Yankovic's character mentions having a "totally pimped out" MySpace page. In the video, Tom can be seen in the friends section, among Napoleon Dynamite and Bill Gates, suggesting that Tom is a nerd icon.
- The character Frank on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia only has one friend on his Myspace page: Tom.