MySpace

What is Myspace?

A once-leading social-networking site, the music-themed MySpace allows more freedom for users to personalize their profiles than other social-networking sites, such as Facebook, which are more structured. Though its membership has shrunk significantly from its peak, the community is still popular among musicians as a platform for sharing music and interacting with fans.

History

MySpace was founded in 2003 by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson. It began as social-networking site along the lines of Friendster. That same year, industry leader Friendster had a major technology setback — it couldn’t keep up with its increased traffic. During peak hours, the site slowed to a crawl, or users got DNS errors and couldn’t access the site at all. Tons of Friendster users got fed up and ended up migrating to MySpace through word of mouth, which began with the founders’ own friends and MySpace employees, along with some media promotion through Intermix, the company that owned a controlling share in MySpace at the time. When Anderson and DeWolfe noticed that musicians and music fans were utilizing MySpace more than any other single group, they created MySpace Music, and the site’s traffic skyrocketed.

Originally founded as a venue for aspiring musicians and bands to share music and concert dates, MySpace has grown into a complex site where users can create profiles, including photographs, blog s, music or movie preferences. Other features of the site include rooms, forums, classified ads, newsgroup s and a venue for sharing videos or music.

Each user can choose to invite friends to create profiles or link to existing ones, creating a social network that can be exponentially expanded as users with similar tastes, interests or shared friends are discovered and added.

Extremely popular with teenagers and young adults, MySpace.com has seen explosive growth in recent years, with a current base of over 59 million users, reflecting both broader cultural trends offline and a unique culture online. Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp purchased the site in 2005 for $580 million dollars.

The Current State of Myspace

In 2012, Justin Timberlake tweeted a link to a video featuring a completely new Myspace platform redesign and a new focus on bringing music and social together. Four years later in 2016, Time Inc. acquired Myspace and other platforms owned by parent company Viant for the purpose of gaining access to valuable data for better targeted ads to audiences.

On Myspace’s front page, you’ll find a variety of entertainment news stories not just about music, but also movies, sports, food and other cultural topics. Profiles are still a central feature of the social network, but users are encouraged to share their own music, videos, photos and even concert events.

Myspace certainly isn’t what it once was, nor does it have the active user base it did when it peaked in 2008, but it’s still alive. If you love music and entertainment, it might be worth using—even in 2018 and beyond

Conclusion

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