Dog Days Season 3 Episode 4
Love Hip Hop Hollywood Season 3 Episode 4 Mr. Part 2 Season 5, Episode 3 Gimlet Media. LISA CHOW From Gimlet Media, Im Lisa Chow. DogDays310.jpg' alt='Dog Days Season 3 Episode 4' title='Dog Days Season 3 Episode 4' />As the producers of The Walking Dead established before season 3 hit the air, the living would begin to pose a more immediate threat to Rick and those following him. It was originally scheduled for release on 24. Youre listening to Startup, the show about what its really like to start a business. Last week, we told you about the beginnings of Friendster, the company that essentially created online social networking. It had launched in 2. Myspace, before Facebook, and grew incredibly fast. Users were making all sorts of new connections on the site. But the site started crashing because of all the traffic. Pages were taking forever to load, and Friendsters board decided that the founder, Jonathan Abrams, had to go. So they fired him. But they told the staff not to worry. Thats where we ended last weeks episode, with the board telling Friendster employees the future was bright. KENT LINDSTROM It was the board of directors coming in and saying. This is going to be amazing. Were going to get you a professional CEO. May I add that she has great influence over his business decisions as well. If she says your gone, then youre good as fired. Dutches must be the best he has. Walt and Walter, Jr. The Artist October 7, 1962 Written by Frank Chase Directed by Don McDougall. Ben helps Matthew Raine, a famous painter who has gone. And all of a sudden it was stars and lights. Today on the show, what happened next. And then, 3 months after Jonathan was out the board announced that theyd found their impressive new CEO. His name was Scott Sassa. Scott was a TV wunderkind. Hed dropped out of college but went on to be the first employee at Fox, writing the TV networks original business plan. He then worked for Ted Turner, and at 2. After that, he ran Marvel, a division of NBC, and in 2. And Friendsters board saw advertising as the way the site was going to make money. They were focused on revenue because theyd been burned by the recent dot com crash when a lot of companies went public with no business model. When the Wall Street Journal reported on Scott Sassas appointment, they wrote that it was a move to turn Friendster from a quirky internet startup to a profitable online business. But other people at Friendster had their doubts. Why would you recruit a media guy to run a tech company, especially one thats facing serious technology challenges. The skepticism was so apparent that even Scott, the new CEO, was aware of it. SCOTT My favorite thing is the engineers used to say, hows our brain dead media executive doing today LISA But it wasnt Scotts job to fix the page load problems. Friendster had just hired a bunch of superstar engineers and the new head of engineering, who came from Netscape, had a radical plan to fix the site. He invested millions in a new server system, and rewrote the site from Java to an open source language, called PHP. People Ive interviewed debated whether these were the right decisions at that time. But one thing became clear pretty quickly. These moves did not solve the sites issues. Chip Benson, an early employee working in customer support, says this period was really frustrating. CHIP BENSON I can remember you know the board coming in to one of the all hands meetings. I didnt understand what was taking so long. You know the board should have the power to make this stuff happen. And you know I just remember them going, Thank you very much, Chip, for your feedback and insight. Were going to take this into consideration and then were going to work on it. You know, and I sat down and I thought, Ah, crap this isnt going to go anywhere. I just had that feeling. LISA We reached out to Friendsters board members from this time. None of them agreed to talk for this story. The technology problems at Friendster were difficult to solve, but there was something deeper happening at the company that was making it nearly impossible to make progresspower struggles and conflicts between teams. Chris Lunt, an early engineer at Friendster, says a highly political culture had emerged as its leadership changed. CHRIS LUNT People started to get into camps and form loyalties within the company. And there was a lot of politicking in order to see who was right about the vision for the company, who could best carry the company forward. And so there was a tremendous amount of gossip, rumor, innuendo that drove what people were doing day to day. LISA A big tension was between product and engineering. People on the product side wanted to release new products. Like blogging, chat, music sharing. But people on the engineering side thought we have to fix what we already have before we can even think about new features. Scott Sassa, the CEO, said the tensions showed up in all sorts of ways. SCOTT My favorite line was a product person from Yahoo told a 5 year MIT Ph. D, Youre a plumber and youll do as I say So that was a problem. LISA Friendster was already dealing with managerial, technical and cultural problems when Chip, the employee in customer support, started to see a completely different kind of problem on the horizon. And we noticed some of the people were saying, We dont want to join Myspace. We want to stay on Friendster, but you know you got to fix the performance. And around that time, we started seeing all these profiles being created and there was a picture of a really charming man and woman, you know, a really clean cut having fun skiing or something. And all there was on the profile with the names, what I like to do, about me, and stuff all in caps. Excuse my language, but all in caps it said, Fuck Friendster join My. Space. And there was thousands and thousands of those profiles being pushed out by, you know, My. Space obviously. LISA Chris Dewolfe who founded My. Space with Tom Anderson, told me the company wasnt behind those fake profiles. But he did say the whole idea to start My. Space came from watching Friendster. He and Tom were living in LA, working for an internet marketing company when they kept hearing about this new website. LISA Do you remember getting an invitation to join friendster CHRIS DEWOLFE Yes, it definitely piqued my interest. LISA This is Chris Dewolfe. CHRIS it was like the first time I think ever that Id gotten 5 or 6 invitations for any kind of service ever, from people that I actually knew. So I thought that was interesting and there must be something to it. LISA But when Chris started using Friendster, he noticed it could be super slow. And he thought the site was too restrictive about what it let people post. CHRIS There were bands on the site, that would set up profiles on Friendster. They would get taken down. Showtime Full If I Were You Online Free. You could set up a profile with your dog being your primary photo. They would take that down. And it seemed a little bit too dictatorial for where the web was going. LISA And some of Friendsters users agreed. Tila Tequila, who was a little known model when she joined Friendster, complained to Howard Stern about being kicked off for not following the rules. TILA TEQUILA They would always delete my profile so Id make another one, so they deleted me 5 times. So I said fuck you Friendster. LISA Tila says Tom Anderson from My. Space saw this happening and recruited her to join him at his new website. TILA So then I joined Myspace and I was like oh my gosh nobody is over here. I feel like a loser. Theres like the cool party over there and Im here by myself with all these dorks. And so I used my website, and said hey guys. Fuck Friendster. They kicked me off so why would you guys want to be on a lame site like that anyway, and. HOWARD STERN And you went to myspace. TILA Im on myspace now. Come join me here. She was booted from Twitter last year after a photo showed her doing a Nazi salute. But at the time she was a young pretty woman racking up friends on a brand new social media platform. And it wasnt just the Tila Tequilas of the world who started preferring Myspace. Tommy Nguyen was an early Friendster user. TOMMY NGUYEN my friend Amy Wang sent an e mail to our group of friends on an e mail and basically said, hey guys I got a new website called My. Space sort of like Friendster but a little souped up. Theres more bells and whistles to it. LISA Myspace gave people all kinds of options. You could make your page whatever colors you wanted, have whatever photos you wanted in the background, even have music playing on your page.