MySpace Exec to Teach at USC This Fall
Whitcomb, who will teach a class at the school this fall, said that once a company reaches a critical mass, it becomes harder to operate with the same agility of a small startup. Development and operations must be pared down into specialized work groups so that “all have a part of it but no one has total ownership.”
The executive also talked about some of the company’s plans for the future.
“We are continuing to reinvent ourselves as a social portal by allowing users to customize their entire experience on MySpace,” he said. “Everyone is going to be pulling data from around the web and syndicating data, and we will let them do that.”
Whitcomb, who oversees engineering and technological operations at MySpace, spoke on March 3 at an event sponsored by the USC Information Technology Program at the engineering school.
The event also was intended to introduce students to Whitcomb and Ashish Soni, director of the school’s Information Technology Program. The two will be co-teaching a class this fall that is open to students with backgrounds in engineering, business or the humanities. The class will be divided into teams and charged with developing a social application, such as a game or information feed. The applications will be launched on the MySpace site as part of the class project.
Whitcomb said that MySpace launched in January 2004 after 30 days with a simple architecture and a single database. Two years later, it was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Some of the tips Whitcomb shared for other aspiring technological entrepreneurs included: Be nimble and start out with a small team; don’t waste time solving problems that can be addressed with already-invented technology; and fail fast, if necessary.
One of the ways that MySpace early on distinguished itself from competitors was by identifying user needs that were not being met. As a result, MySpace members have the option to customize pages that reflect their personalities and interests rather than conform to more standardized templates.
“We noticed that people wanted to have their sites customized and so we enabled this,” he said.
Much of Whitcomb’s discussion focused on the more technical aspects of expanding server space and energy capacity in a short time due to fast popularity. Because of the site’s prompt growth, MySpace had to quickly find ways to partition the information so that it could be handled by different servers. The company also reduced server overload by separating static data from space-consuming dynamic data such as photos and videos.
Whitcomb said MySpace is doing its best to guarantee user safety by using different data-mining algorithms and technological tools to identify and track down people who set up fake profiles.
The average age of a MySpace user as of now is 29, and the most popular age range is 18-34. Whitcomb said that part of the company’s strategy is to encourage the use of the site by older users, including the many parents who have signed up to MySpace in recent months.
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The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
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