In 1995, we were all charmed by the upstart who helped kick-start the Internet craze: a brash Midwesterner who, while an undergrad at the University of Illinois, co-wrote the first big browser (Mosaic) and went on to cofound the first big Web company (Netscape). But while others were happy to assume the mantle of Internet poster child, Marc Andreessen himself has shunned the spotlight for some time now. He briefly served as chief technical officer of AOL after the online giant bought Netscape in 1999, then founded Loudcloud (now called Opsware), a company that helps businesses host and run their Internet assets. Now he's back with us as CTO and cofounder of Ning (it's the Chinese word for peace). Ning lets users set up their own social-networking sites—creating a mini MySpace is as easy as setting up a blog. Andreessen at 35 has evolved sartorially—no bare feet for this interview—but during our chat at the NEWSWEEK offices it's clear that he still retains a youth-fully vigorous enthusiasm for the democratizing powers of the Net.
LEVY: Ning is a way for people to build their own social-networking sites. Aren't there enough social networks already?
ANDREESSEN: Perish the thought! The first feedback that we got at Netscape around 1994 was, "Well, why would I do anything with a Web browser? Everybody's already on AOL." That is exactly analogous to where we are today. We've got MySpace, we've got Facebook, we've got YouTube—wonderful services, but they're walled gardens. It's their own world with their own functions and their own ideas about what you can do. If you want to change or expand or adapt or mutate or brand or do anything different than what they decide, you can't. But there is going to be this totally new phenomenon where there's going to be millions of social networks around every conceivable category and niche.
So your bet is that social networks aren't a fad.
Oh, this is mainstream.
How will you handle it when someone complains that something one of your users posted violates their copyright?
The takedown notice ought to go to the social-network owner. If it doesn't and it comes to us, we will observe the notice and take it down.
You're funding it by advertising, as are a lot of businesses on the Web. Will there be enough ads to go around?
There's a billion people online, and another billion people coming online in the next 10 years. Traditional media is in decline across the board. TV viewership, movie viewership, magazines, newspapers—in decline. Meanwhile, Internet media, all of it, is taking off. Where the audience goes, the advertising dollars go.
What are your ultimate plans for Ning as a company?
There are three possible endgames: doing an IPO, getting bought someday if there's a complementary fit—which is certainly not our goal—or becoming a successful, independent, profitable private company. As time goes on, Bloomberg looks like a better and better model.
Your former employer AOL has opened up its content to all, ending the walled garden. Good idea?
They needed to do that back in the '90s. I was surprised when [CEO] Jon Miller got fired, because from what I could tell, he was working really hard to do the best anybody could do in that circumstance.
When you were pioneering the Web in the early '90s, did you intuit that something like social network might emerge?
No, no, no. It was totally unclear. If you think of every form of network or media that's ever existed—television, radio, railroads, telegraph, newspapers, magazines, all the big networks or media—the function's been fixed in hardware for what they can be. So the telephone's made for making phone calls, the telegraph is for Morse code, and so on. The Internet's all about software. It can be a newspaper, a magazine, a movie theater or a TV network. The reality is, it's all those things. The big thing that people have done with it is that people have used it as a medium for self-expression, for finding like-minded people, and for connecting and doing all kinds of things with them.