Farewell MySpace…
I began at MySpace almost a year ago today as a product manager on the Platform team. While MySpace had launched the Data Availability project just before I joined, I was there to help formulate our plan and define its evolution. To me, the key was to offer a standards-based identity platform. MySpaceID is the realization of that goal.
I’m very proud of what our team accomplished over the past year. We deployed a distributed identity platform that not only provides an open ecosystem for developers that want to integrate their sites or services with MySpace, but did it in a way that maintains our commitment to open standards. MySpaceID successfully launched support for OAuth, became an OpenID provider, offered the OpenID/OAuth Hybrid experience in a pop-up, and built our API offerings on top of Portable Contacts, OpenSocial, and Activity Streams. Not only did our team successfully implement these protocols, but helped contribute back to the community.
People often don’t fully appreciate how much cooperation takes places between companies, because we are painted as being in opposition and in an arms race to own the social web. However, the past year was an unprecedented time of collaboration. It demonstrated that we can collectively contribute to helping make the web a better and easier to use experience for all of our users. We made great progress at the Internet Identity Workshop, both OpenID Usability Summits, countless meet-ups, and more.
But now the time has come for me to move on. While MySpace presented opportunities through their scale and reach, I’ve spent the past 3 years at large companies, and now I’m ready to go small and give the startup life a try. There is certainly a lot of uncertainty with this transition, but I’m looking forward to a break from e-mailing, conference calls, and all the rest. I’m trading all that in for the chance to help build something from the ground up. I can’t say much now about what’s next, but I promise to say more about what I’m up to as soon as I can. Thanks to all of the many fantastic people I’ve had the chance to work with inside of our company and out, and I look forward to continuing to collaborate with everyone as we strive to make the web a more open and social place.
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Max! You are living at hyperspeed. Well, congrats on getting er done.
It’s been great working on the Facebook/Myspace open stack alliance team. Shame to see you leave, but I’m sure it’s on to bigger and better things! Good luck!
You’re going to be great, man. Can I buy shares?
Best of look for the new project – let me know what you are working on!
Max, you rocked it at MySpace. It was a blast working with you on opening up the Social Web. Eager to keep the collaboration going, man!
John
Max,
It was great working with you at MySpace, thanks for all your hard work and help. You were always the most optimistic person in the room or on the phone. Where ever you end up, I hope it intersects with what we are doing here.
larry-
Max: all the best in your new adventure! It’s awesome what you’ve contributed to myspace and open standards. We’ve had our differences but I’ve always respected you as a voice of reason.
Larry and Chao, thanks so much for you kind words. I’m definitely looking forwards to getting to continue to work together on making the web an easier place to exchange data and social identity.
thanks man! i’m pretty excited for what lies ahead. let’s get together soon and catch up.
thanks luke. i have really enjoyed getting to work with you as well, and i’m looking forward to having more fun in the future!
haha, i hope so :-)
I’ve never seen a grown man have to pack up so many toys and video games from his desk at work when leaving a job, but I’m totally proud of you for that!
Best of luck in your future endeavors! It’s been a blast working with you over the last year or so and I hope we get to work together again in the future.
thanks john! when are you guys going to take the show on the road and we can film a socialweb.tv in la?
Max-you’ve had an incredible impact on both MySpace and the Social Web industry overall. You should be proud of the work you’ve done, and best of luck on your next adventure! :) js
thanks so much! it definitely was a blast getting to work with you over the past year, and i’m looking forward to getting to continue to collaborate to make the web work better for our users.
Congrats Max. Maybe we can grab lunch some time and talk about the new startup :) Hopefully without an incredibly awkward embargo fiasco just as we begin to eat (though you have to admit it was pretty funny).
Good luck in the startup world!
Max, you rocked da space. You still rock now. You will rock whatever it is you’re working on next!
Thanks for helping us open things up!
It was a pleasure to work with you, you had a big impact on the social media space as a whole. Good luck with the new startup, but don’t wait too long to let us know what it is :)
haha, definitely love to grab a lunch that didn’t involve an equally awkward interruption :-)