MySpace Age-gate: Will Tom Come Clean?

Slice a billion dollars off MySpace's market cap: Tom Anderson, one of the site's two co-founders, has been caught lying about his age.

Anderson claimed he was 27 when MySpace started up five years ago, which would put him at 32 today. But Newsweek insists in its new issue that public documents show him to be turning 37 next week. (TechCrunch actually reported the age controversy almost a week earlier, but I don't credit them with the scoop because they were unable to find proof and put his age at "36 or 37.")

Does it matter? Newsweek says yes, noting that everyone who creates a MySpace profile automatically gets Anderson as a friend:

History might've unfolded differently if those first few users had known that the site's hipster co-architect was already well into his 30s. "Young people don't want someone their dad's age running a site they think is cool," says Pete Cashmore, the founder and editor of Mashable.com, a blog that covers social networking.

As of this afternoon, two days after the Newsweek story hit, Anderson is still keeping up the charade on his MySpace page. But on Wikipedia, at least, the jig is up.