The Original Social Media: The Rise and Fall of Myspace
While it wasn’t technically the “first” social media site to hit the market, Myspace was certainly the first widely accepted favorite among today’s Millennial generation. From learning rudimentary internet coding while creating a personalized profile layout, to building a carefully crafted “top 8,” Myspace paved the way for arguably most every social media network in modern day.
The company and its recognizable brand was founded in 2003 in the place where most tech start-ups are born: California (Mashable). Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson began the company, and if the words “Tom” and “Myspace” don’t ring a bell, then you weren’t born in the 90’s.
This blurry, familiar image of a man sitting in front of a white board, riddled with Myspace code, (who actually knows what was on that board), was the face of the social networking site and could be recognized all over the platform. By the mid 2000’s, Anderson and DeWolfe’s website became the largest social networking site worldwide (Mashable). Myspace was seeing 16 million monthly users and that number kept growing. By July of 2005, Myspace sold for nearly $600 million (TIME, Sapporito).
At the same time, its targeted user, a misunderstood adolescent sitting in their room hunched over a computer, was spending hours tinkering with their profile layout. They were making absolute life-altering decisions like deciding between a My Chemical Romance or Fall Out Boy track for the song that automatically played when another user visited their profile. They’re mulling over their top 8 and whether Sophie Jackson deserved to keep her place in line after she shared a pinky promised secret. They’re checking their inbox constantly in case their crush happened to read the bulletin they posted which was inconspicuously directed at them. Spoiler alert: it was never inconspicuous.
As the millennials got older, so did Myspace. Every high eventually meets its low. A new, more nuanced and organized social media site had come online and was quickly gaining traction among the college-aged. Myspace was no longer the largest social network. Enter Facebook. In 2008, after a grueling four year battle, Facebook, who had widened its reach, finally caught up to Myspace’s unique visitor count (Tech Crunch, Arrington).
Eventually, users couldn’t access their profiles on Myspace without being inundated with advertisements. Facebook’s website design was cleaner, less buggy and in turn, easier to navigate. This is just one of several theories as to Myspace’s fall to Facebook. Other theories suggest Myspace never invested in updates and the network was focused more so on the younger audience while missing the boat on the older generations (Johnson, The Guardian).
Myspace.com is still around these days. The site got a much-needed facelift and changed its approach by tailoring its content towards the entertainment music industry rather than the angsty teen. Regardless of its current use, Myspace laid the groundwork for today’s household social media networks. Think about it. Before newsfeeds, there were bulletins. Before followers, there were friends and before tweets, there were status updates. Without Myspace’s social media contributions and historic internet entrance, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok would certainly look a lot different today.
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Sapporito, B. (2011, January 12). Remember News Corp.’s Brilliant MySpace Buy? TIME. Business.Time.com. https://business.time.com/2011/01/12/remember-news-corp-s-brilliant-myspace-buy/.
Myspace. Mashable. https://mashable.com/category/myspace/
Arrington, M. (2008, June 13). Facebook No Longer The Second Largest Social Network. Tech Crunch. Techcrunch.com. https://techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/facebook-no-longer-the-second-largest-social-network/.
Johnson, B. (2007, June 26). Facebook v MySpace — a class divide. Theguardian.com. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/26/usa.news?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487