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LIFE AFTER INTERNET FAME: Where Are They Now ?

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Tom from MySpace never actually logged off — he just traded server rooms for sunsets over Oahu.

Long before “going viral” was a marketing strategy, a handful of ordinary people got swept into internet fame without asking for it. TheThings Celebrity’s retrospective “LIFE AFTER INTERNET FAME: Where Are They Now?” tracks down two of the era’s most recognizable faces — the man who was everyone’s automatic first friend online, and the pageant contestant whose answer about maps became a punchline for years. Both stories end far from the spotlight that made them famous.

• Tom Anderson co-founded MySpace in 2003 with Chris DeWolfe, and the company sold to News Corp in 2005 for $580 million.
• Anderson stepped down as president and retired from the platform in 2009, and was phased out as the default “first friend” for new users by 2010.
• Caitlin Upton, the 2007 Miss Teen USA contestant, became an overnight sensation after fumbling a geography question on live television, then moved into modeling, TV appearances, and eventually real estate.

The Rise and Sale of a Social Network

Before Facebook dominated, MySpace was the address book of the internet, and Tom Anderson was the face everyone saw first. Every new profile automatically listed him as its owner’s initial friend, a design quirk that turned an ordinary guy into arguably the most recognizable username on the web. Anderson and DeWolfe built that network into a cultural force fast enough that News Corp paid $580 million for it in 2005 — real money for a site that had only existed for two years.

That kind of sale usually locks a founder into years of earnouts and board obligations. Anderson stuck around through the News Corp years but stepped down as president in 2009, and by 2010 the company had quietly removed him as the default friend for new sign-ups — a small technical change that symbolically ended his run as the internet’s most famous acquaintance.

From MySpace President to Full-Time Photographer

Anderson didn’t chase a second act in tech. Instead, he split his time to Oahu, Hawaii, and leaned into travel and landscape photography, a hobby that took hold after he attended Burning Man in 2011 and was mentored by photographer Trey Ratcliff. He kept a toe in the startup world — advising RocketFrog Interactive in 2012 — but that was closer to a favor than a comeback.

Anderson confirmed in a 2014 ABC News interview that he had no interest in returning to his previous vocation.

These days his public footprint is an Instagram account, @myspacetom, filled with the kind of images you’d expect from someone chasing light on a beach rather than chasing users on a platform — a quiet second life for a guy whose face once auto-populated millions of profiles, not unlike other internet-famous names covered in stories about public figures who turned out nothing like their online persona.

Caitlin Upton’s Viral Detour

Caitlin Upton’s brush with fame came from a single televised answer during the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant, when a stumbled response to a geography question turned her into an instant punchline across late-night TV and early viral video sites. The ridicule was intense and immediate, the kind of pile-on that today would spawn a thousand memes within hours.

Rather than disappear, Upton rebuilt on her own terms — modeling gigs, television appearances, and later a career in real estate, a path that echoes the reinventions chronicled in pieces like America’s Next Top Model contestants who actually made it after their own moments in the spotlight.

Between Anderson’s photography and Upton’s real estate license, the throughline is the same: neither one tried to out-run the joke or the fame, they just found something else to get good at once the cameras moved on.