News > Culture > Informal Poll: Do You Give a Shit about Tom Anderson's True Age?

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WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 24 2007 4:00 PM

Informal Poll: Do You Give a Shit about Tom Anderson's True Age?

Submitted by Rahodeb

Edited by Rahodeb

Yesterday, TechCrunch posted a story claiming that Tom Anderson - everybody's first friend on MySpace - is actually four or five years older than his profile and wikipedia page state.

How old is he really? We first heard 40. We dug a little online and came up with nothing. But then we got a senior person at MySpace to talk to us about it off record at the Web 2.0 Summit last week: this person confirmed that hes really 36 or 37? and that MySpace has been trying to keep this quiet for some time.

My first reaction was, "Seriously, who gives a shit?" I mean, really: No one would have decided against joining MySpace just because Tom was a few years older. Does anyone really care about whether their social networking site was "created" by a 26-year-old, versus a 31-year-old? Then I started to wonder...okay, what was Tom up to during those four or five missing years? See, now that becomes interesting. Why has his true age been covered up? Because the marketing team thought it'd be more appealing if the face of the company was younger, or because Tom was up to something naughty during the years that got erased?

Why would he do this? Maybe so that the company looked cooler, started by 20-somethings instead of 30-somethings when it first launched in 2003. Or maybe theres another reason. Whatever it is, lying to your users, your tens of millions of users, cant be a good thing in the long run. If you cant trust the founders to be truthful in their profiles, how can you trust what anyone says on the site. The answer may simply be that you cant.

Whatever. I still kind of can't bring myself to care. Hit me with a juicy story of Tom's wherabouts during those lost years, and I'll be all ears, but otherwise, I couldn't care less.

What about you? Do you give a rats ass about Tom's real age? Do you have a hunch as to why they lied? And best of all, where do you think Tom was during the years that were erased?

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Comments

CoyoteMike

Iowa City, IA

May 2006

OCT 24, 2007 04:04 PM

I never felt so free as I did the day I deleted my myspace page. Ahhhh, freedom!!!

I think he is actually a 72 year old lesbian prison inmate with a vast career of hot-dog stand heists.

But that's just me.

Cigarette

Cleveland, OH

April 2004

OCT 24, 2007 04:11 PM

Shit, if we can get used to our mothers doing it, I think we can get past's Tom's little indiscretion.

djtombino

Italy

October 2007

OCT 24, 2007 04:12 PM

I am still in myspace and I met some nice people there, well, non one is a suicide girl, but some has piercing and nice tatoos.
For me Tom....who cares?

CherryCoke

Derry, NH

May 2007

OCT 24, 2007 04:15 PM

He wouldn't be the first person to lie about their age on the internet.

Skywisdom

Portland, OR

December 2005

OCT 24, 2007 04:19 PM

CherryCoke said:
He wouldn't be the first person to lie about their age on the internet.

"He's" actually a 16 year old girls pretending to be a 37 year old man. She's trying to balance out the web a little.

erin_broadley

Los Angeles, CA

October 2006

OCT 24, 2007 04:33 PM

i think my profile says i'm 97-years-old. which, of course, i am. i have oil of olay to thank for my dewy visage. so damn you tom. time to own up. perhaps he's trying to score with younger babes on the site?

Spiffy

Calgary, AB

March 2007

OCT 24, 2007 04:35 PM

People still use MySpace?

Trahern

United Kingdom

March 2003

OCT 24, 2007 04:37 PM

...Who?