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Monday, December 23, 2013

Mario Armstrong: "'Blacks In Tech' Series....Let's Keep Talking" #BlacksinTech @MarioArmstrong

I'd like to tell you a story.

In 1999, three years before Friendster, four years before Myspace, and five years before Mark Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook" from his Harvard dorm room, Omar Wasow founded BlackPlanet. It was one of the first sites on the Internet in a new wave that came to be called "social networks."

As Omar told Complex magazine: "The guys who started Myspace were quoted in Businessweek magazine saying that they looked at BlackPlanet as a model for Myspace and thought there was an opportunity to do a general market version of what BlackPlanet was."

 In the years since BlackPlanet launched, Tom Anderson sold Myspace to News Corp. for hundreds of millions. Zuckerberg's Facebook has become a household name, is one of the most heavily visited destinations on the Internet and raised billions during the company's IPO.

But nobody seems to even remember Omar Wasow's name.

How can that be?

Read more at NPR.org

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