Shawn Fanning

Shawn Fanning
Born	(1980-11-22) November 22, 1980 Brockton, Massachusetts
Residence	San Francisco
Nationality	American
Citizenship	United States of America
Alma mater	Northeastern University (Dropped out in 1999)
Known for	Co-founder and lead software engineer of Napster
Notable work(s)	Napster, Snocap, Rupture, Path
Net worth	US$7.5 million (2009).[1]
Website
Shawn Fanning on Facebook

Shawn Fanning (born November 22, 1980) is an American computer programmer, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer ("P2P") file sharing platforms, in 1998. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine.^[2]

The site in its initial free P2P incarnation was shut down in 2001 after the company's unsuccessful appeal of court orders arising from its encouraging the illegal sharing of copyrighted material. A paid subscription version of the site followed, and was purchased by Rhapsody on December 1, 2011. Following his involvement with Napster, he joined, and invested in, a number of early-stage technology startup companies.

Early life

Fanning grew up in Brockton, Massachusetts before moving to Harwich, Massachusetts on Cape Cod and graduated from Harwich High School in 1998. During his time in high school and after he graduated, he spent most of his time at his uncle's oceanside Internet business called Chess.net, overlooking Nantasket Beach in Hull, Massachusetts. He spent summers with his uncle in Hull, sleeping on his couch, and spent much of his time experimenting and programming computers in his free time, which eventually led to his development of Napster. During his childhood and adolescence, Shawn had lived in tough, blue-collar, urban towns like Rockland, Massachusetts and Brockton, Massachusetts before moving to the more quiet & small oceanside town of Harwich.^{[citation needed]}

After graduation, Fanning attended Northeastern University on scholarship. Fanning quickly learned that he already knew all of the material being taught to him in classes and was even placed in higher classes he was not qualified to be in. Even then, Fanning became frustrated because he had already learned all the material being taught to him by professors and tutors and eventually dropped out of Northeastern in 1999. During this time at Northeastern, Shawn had begun the developmental stages of Napster and word had spread fast at Northeastern of his invention. Fanning dropped out of college to dedicate his full-time to the Napster program.^{[citation needed]}

Computer career

Napster

On June 1, 1999, Fanning released a preliminary beta program of Napster and soon, hundreds of college students at Northeastern were up and trading music furiously. Soon after he uploaded the beta program of Napster, Shawn moved his company from his headquarters in Hull, Massachusetts to a more spacious location in San Mateo, California and hired additional workers to improve on the Napster Program.^{[citation needed]}

Snocap

In 2002, Fanning was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.^[3] In 2003, he opened a new company, Snocap, along with Jordan Mendelson (Napster's Chief Architect), and Ron Conway. The company aspired to be a legitimate marketplace for digital media. However, their partners and the public did not respond well. Customer support was poor, and technical issues were numerous. One of their primary partners, CD Baby, wrote a scathing account of their relationship.^[4][5] In late 2007, Snocap laid off 60% of its workforce. ValleyWag wrote an article that Fanning had long left Snocap and began to work on another venture, Rupture. The ValleyWag article stated that the failure was largely due to Snocap's CEO Rusty Rueff and that of former CTO Dave Rowley, who "made a mess of engineering before he was fired".^[6] Snocap was looking to sell itself and fast.^[7] In 2008, they found a buyer; imeem acquired Snocap in a fire sale.^[8][9]

Rupture

The Rupture project was announced in late 2006 with seed funding, and CrunchBase notes the date Shawn officially became CEO of Rupture was October 2, 2007.

In December 2006, Fanning developed Rupture, a social networking tool designed to handle the task of publishing gamers' individual profiles to a communal space and facilitating communication between World of Warcraft players. Rupture was later acquired by Electronic Arts for $15 million.^[10] Fanning's career at Electronic Arts was short-lived as a round of layoffs in November 2009 included him and his team at Rupture.^[11]

Path

A few months after: Fanning was laid off from Electronic Arts, he started a new company called Path.com. In January 2010, Dave Morin announced he was leaving Facebook, where he was a Senior Platform Manager, to join Fanning and become CEO at Path.^[12][13]

In popular culture

In 2000, Fanning appeared as a presenter at the MTV Video Music Awards. He appeared wearing a Metallica T-shirt with For Whom the Bell Tolls playing in the background, and when asked where he got it, stated, "a friend of mine shared it with me." Lars Ulrich's reaction was shown as feigned boredom.^[14]

In October 2000, Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine.^[15]

In 2003, Fanning had a cameo appearance, playing himself, in the 2003 film The Italian Job. In the film, Seth Green's character accused Fanning of stealing Napster from him while he was taking a nap in their Northeastern University dorm room. Although other characters see this as mere bragging, a scene shows Fanning in fact creeping over Green's sleeping body.

In early 2008, Fanning appeared in a Volkswagen commercial directed by Roman Coppola, in which he poked fun at his file-sharing past.^[16]

Fanning and his site Napster were the subject of Alex Winter's documentary Downloaded in 2013.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shawn Fanning.

• Shawn Fanning on Facebook
• Shawn Fanning at the Internet Movie Database
• Rupture
• Path