Brad Greenspan
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Brad Greenspan is an internet entrepreneur who has been involved in the founding and proliferation of web properties including MySpace. Greenspan founded eUniverse Inc. in 1998, which went public in 1999.[1] The company survived the .com-bust of 2001 and was the incubator that launched MySpace.com in 2003. Greenspan left his position as CEO at eUniverse towards the end of 2003, after accounting problems which lead to three quarters of financial results having to be revised forced a four-month halt in trading of eUniverse stock.[2] Greenspan retained a significant percentage of shares in the company and owned 10% of the company when it sold to News Corp in 2005.[3] Greenspan opposed the acquisition, and has been fighting News Corp both legally and publicly ever since. Fox Interactive Media (FIM) Head Ross Levinsohn recently stated at the Web 2.0 conference that Greenspan was "...a loser" who was kicked out two years prior to News Corp.'s buying of MySpace.com.[citation needed]
Even with the loss of MySpace to News Corp, Greenspan has continued to innovate and has established BroadWebAsia (an Asian internet company), Borba (a health product-line), and LiveUniverse (a social network focused internet company).
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[edit] Dow Jones
In mid-2007, Brad Greenspan presented a takeover bid for Dow Jones' Wall Street Journal (WSJ) against News Corp.[4] Greenspan was unsuccessful in his bid against News Corp.[5] Greenspan is a fighting force against media consolidation.[6]
[edit] History
Brad Greenspan attended UCLA, where he launched his first company Palisades Capital from his dorm room.[citation needed]
[edit] MySpace
The MySpace service was founded in August 2003[7] as a new initiative and 100% owned division of publicly traded internet company eUniverse (which later in mid-2004 changed its name to Intermix). eUniverse created and marketed the Myspace website, providing the division with a complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise, bandwidth, and server capacity right out of the gate so the MySpace team wasn’t distracted with typical start-up issues. The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's current CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's current president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse.
[edit] Brad Greenspan / The MySpace Report
In October 2006, Brad Greenspan launched a website and published "The MySpace Report" that called for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to investigate News Corp's acquisition of MySpace as "one of the largest merger and acquisition scandals in U.S. history."[8] The report's main allegation is that News Corp. should have valued MySpace at US$20 billion rather than US$327 million, and had, in effect, defrauded Intermix shareholders through an unfair deal process.[9] The report received a mixed response from financial commentators in the press.[10] An initial lawsuit led by Greenspan challenging the acquisition was dismissed by a judge.[11]
Greenspan's report also states that the MySpace program code had originally been the brainchild of an Intermix/eUniverse programmer named Toan Nguyen who made the breakthrough technical contributions to the project.[12]
[edit] References
- ^ Brad Greenspan Live » About
- ^ Boy wonder at eUniverse quits as investor group raises profile. - Free Online Library
- ^ Founder: News Corp. Hijacked MySpace | WebProNews
- ^ Greenspan outlines alternate plan for Dow Jones - MarketWatch
- ^ Murdoch's Next Focus: Business-News Battle - WSJ.com
- ^ Media Biz A thirtysomething white knight for Dow Jones? «
- ^ MySpace History | FreeMySpace
- ^ "Myspace.com Founder Issues Report Finding News Corp.'s Myspace Acquisition Defrauded Shareholders of More Than $20 Billion", ecoustics.com, 2006-10-09. Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
- ^ "MySpace Founder Seeks Inquiry", Los Angeles Times, 2006-10-08. Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
- ^ "Was MySpace Sold on the Cheap?", Business Week, 2006-10-06. Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
- ^ "Suit over sale of MySpace dismissed", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2006-10-10. Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
- ^ "MySpace: The story of it's creation" (html). Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
[edit] links
www.bradgreenspan.com/