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You always wonder if a re-creation or reemergence of MySpace would ever come along. I guess with the background being the hellscape of the COVID pandemic, I can find some joy this innocent early aughts social media precursor has "survived" on this zombie website known as SpaceHey.
The site we now celebrate in our memories that never had corrupt algorithms, analytics, or follower counts was the first online community site that allowed me to super-stalk that coworker from that work trip to Chicago back in 1999.
Aaaaanyway, the "hobby project" started by that German kid Anton Rohm and CEO'd by MySpace Tom, Tom Anderson, created an online sensation that I still treasure to this day. The concept of connecting to people anywhere, anytime had never been felt before. Google hadn't created such capabilities, Twitter wouldn't arrive for another couple years, and that sinister monolith to disinformation, Facebook, had just been created for horny college kids and was a good two to three years out from taking over the world.
It didn't take long, though, for the writing to start forming on the wall. By 2006, I remember hearing more and more about Facebook, this boring, non-stylish MySpace wanna-be I made the concerted effort to avoid. I have an online page I enjoy just fine, thank you.
But by 2007, more and more sites were starting to make their mark. Professional "social media" site LinkedIn impressed me enough to sign on and build my online community, so my opinions started to change enough to decide, on Thanksgiving 2007, I'd finally give this Facebook a try. Everyone else seemed to be getting on board, so why not?
What I realized that snowy, late November holiday, was the future of my career. Struggling to survive in public relations throughout the '00s , Facebook represented a new era of business that, as opposed to PR, didn't have to go through an editor, reporter, or traditional authority who could alter the narrative any way they wanted. I've been a social media manager ever since.
Unfortunately for MySpace, it didn't seem as though MySpace Tom was up to the task to innovate or stay at the top of this newfound social media heap of companies.
By May 2008, MySpace was hemmoraging users and daily activity while their biggest competitor, Facebook, passed them in unique visitors and never looked back. By June 2011, losses were starting to pile up for the social media pioneer, as its user base dropped to 60 million after a month-long exodus of millions of visitors. Mark Zuckerberg's platform, on the other hand, skyrocketed to 687 million users worldwide at or around that time.
Hey, remember when Timberlake took a crack at reviving the site in 2013? Gotta be honest, I thought they had a real shot. With Justin behind them, I was hoping (albeit, naively!) a comeback was possible. Focusing the platform on the music industry, they leaned into the trend that appeared to be the most successful on the site, anyway.
MySpace's user base only continued to fall off a cliff, pulling in merely 36 million. As it continued to death-dive into obscurity behind now-mature sites Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and even Pinterest, the Timberlake experiment was over and MySpace was then sold to Time Inc. and its parent company Viant in 2016, and then the Meredith Corporation in 2018. Don't think things could possibly get worse?
In March 2019, MySpace made headlines from the proverbial grave when they lost all of their user data from their initial launch to 2015. How, you might ask? A botched a server migration.
If that's not the perfect analogy to "kicking a dead horse," I don't know what is. Did it even matter anymore? Ask virtually anyone: NO. No, it does not.
Surprisingly, MySpace is still technically a thing, that is, if you ever still go on it. I admit, I log in every once in a blue moon. But really, all it is anymore is just syndicated content, pulled from any number of partner sites that, to me, just murders any credibility the site might have had left.
After buying back its shares from the Meredith Corporation at the end of 2019, it turned out Viant went public in February 2021. As for yet another MySpace revival? To say unrealistic is putting it mildly. Not a chance in hell? Much better.
The site you're on right now is the best you're going to get. But let me tell ya, I can't imagine a better recreation. Let's enjoy this jump back into the 2000s for as long as we can!
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ApollyonZK
That was a good read. As someone who once used the old social media sites (myspace, friendster, Hi5) it's sad to see how customization was thrown out the window. Even YouTube lost that too as every large website adopted the soulless aesthetic that Facebook introduced. This place serves as a replica of classic myspace, but YouTube also has a replica site too, it's called Vidlii. Check it out if you want more nostalgia.
Hey, thanks for reading! You write these things and never assume anyone will find it, much less read it. I totally agree with everything you wrote. I enjoyed the customization too, especially the music lists. One of the things I questoned about the customization features, however, was the various ways the functions themselves could be corrupted and affect pages that use them.
I don't know if that ever happend back in the day. I never worried about it at the time; wallpaper, music lists, whatever.
by Mike Barbre; ; Report