Chris DeWolfe
Chris DeWolfe (born 1966) is an American entrepreneur, and one of the creators of Myspace (along with Tom Anderson), of which he is also the former CEO. He has the sixth account ever made on the site. During DeWolfe's tenure, MySpace became the top social network, with over 135 million worldwide unique visitors a month. Under DeWolfe, music became a defining feature of MySpace, which was credited with challenging and reinventing the music label industry with the MySpace Music section, which allowed unsigned artists to post their music for free and launched the careers of several famous musicians, among them Lily Allen and Sean Kingston. Currently, DeWolfe is the CEO of Social Gaming Network (SGN). DeWolfe got his vision for MySpace while taking a course titled, "The Impact of Tech on Media and Entertainment," during the final year of his college. In the final project for his class, DeWolfe created "Sitegeist" which had elements of CitySearch, Match.com mixed with the function of IM. DeWolfe got an "A" on his project and used it as inspiration in creating MySpace. DeWolfe was integral to the sale of MySpace to News Corporation in 2005 for $580 million and remained as its CEO until March 2009, at which point, MySpace was larger than its competitor, Facebook. On April 22, 2009, News Corp. announced DeWolfe would step down as CEO and will be a strategic adviser to Myspace and serve on the board of MySpace China. The former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta replaced him. In 2010, DeWolfe won backing from Austin Ventures to purchase MindJolt, a social gaming platform, with former MySpace colleagues Aber Whitcomb and Colin Digiaro. In 2011, MindJolt became one of the few multi platform game developers when it acquired two additional companies—SGN, a mobile games company, and Hallpass Media, a free online gaming network. In February 2012, Mindjolt officially changed its name to Social Gaming Network. SGN went on to acquire video game developer Mob Science in June of 2013. DeWolfe went to Lincoln High School, then graduated from the University of Washington in 1988, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity. DeWolfe also has an MBA from the University of Southern California. He was honored by the school as Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year in 2006. He has been profiled in many major publications such as The New York Times, USA Today, Fortune, and BusinessWeek, and also is an investor in the travel site, GoGoBot. In 2006, DeWolfe was named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in the world. In 2007, he was chosen by Barbara Walters as one of her 10 most fascinating people. DeWolfe also served on the board of directors of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and is currently on the board of directors for Talenthouse.