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It's without question that MySpace was the most popular of all, but can you remember other places that you frequented, that shaped and formed your identity, your expression, your musical and cultural taste, and were engaging, interactive, social?
To me the following come to mind - most of them are gone, or changed their content, and reduced the community aspect:
- AbsolutePunk - it was probably the largest forum for everything punk, hardcore, post-hardcore, metalcore, emo, and all the adjacent genres, often with album release specials and other exclusive
- VampireFreaks - more on the gothic and industrial side of things, it sure gained users from the scene as well, they also followed the pimp my profile aspect, and featured album release specials and other exclusives
- PureVolume - intended to be a competitor to MySpace with features of last.fm, thus a stronger focus on, well, music, but it didn't catch that much attention than the two inspirations, nevertheless it had an active userbase
- last.fm - the classic last.fm had a much stronger community aspect, a place where music nerds could really shine, editing everything and the kitchen sink about their bands, and it's still around
- Bebo - the MySpace of the Brits - even if made in the US -, its user activity was comparable to the big players, had album release specials and other exclusives as well, but I don't remember if they had the profile customization options
- local (non-US) community forums - the international and US subcultures largely overlapped online, but if you wanted to go local, you had your local forums, I was a member on a site that was geared towards the gothic and industrial subculture, but we also had one that was about the punk&core genre, I even contributed a few reviews and band pages
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geekout
I feel old: BBSs, Usenet newsgroups, and AOL chats.
I also did some online dating through Yahoo's profiles and Messenger. I didn't realize that's what I was doing, but that's what I was doing.
Arc
Orkut was nice too
Ms. LC Webs
This is incredibly dorky, but... Livejournal and Fark.com
Dennis
Ultimate-Guitar in 2010 was a great place to be. Unlike now where it's just a guitar tab website, you could actually upload your own music and MP3's of your guitar skills. It was a proper social media site for musicians. Some social media stuff is still kinda there, but not like it once was.
Early Facebook from that same time was kinda fun, as people would just talk about themselves and their daily activities rather than just politics and memes.
Early YouTube was great, too. Had all sorts of fine, original, and unpolished content. It's what inspired me to pick up a guitar, and later it's what inspired me to build a guitar.
BrandonBurnsRed
I used Xanga for a very short time before my sister made me a Myspace page. I liked it a lot but I never really messed with it as much as I could have.
Dipole Repeller
The BME webzine was a big one for me. I submitted pictures, so I had a subscription to their pay site which was essentially myspace for people with body mods.
BME was such a big influence on me back in the day, other body mod forums don't come close!
Other than that, I was SUPER into shockwave.com, weeblstuff.com, and albinoblacksheep.com. Me and my sis used to watch the same looping 20 sec videos every night and crack up.
Xanga was great too, still my favorite blog site.
Just Another Geriatric Millennial Elder Emo
So, you've mentioned a few others, but none of them ring a bell. But hey, it's nice to see that we had a blast on so many platforms, and suddenly those we have now are just overloading us.
Jinnicide
Does anyone else remember Bolt.com? omg
clive
Not so much a "site", but I remember obsessively clicking through webrings -- they were a fascinating organizational tactic for early websites, before search was a more-solved problem and the big social networks emerged.
K3/!И
For me it was Knuddels, Spin and Emopunk. Emopunk doesn't exist anymore.
I used to love MySpace, because you had such an influence on how your page looked like. Youtube made this possible at that time.
Today everything is standardized and creativity is lost. A pity.
Nole
Oh how I feel the cringe thinking back to the age of Maya,
I once left veiled messages on the Boards of Gaia.
My coz showed me way before I knew a weare or worry,
I thank Glob himself I never role played as a furry
And before I go,
That's an ebic meme bro.
Just Another Geriatric Millennial Elder Emo
Soundtrack to this post.