The final nail in its coffin (though just to be clear, the site isn’t dead- it does still exist, though was down when we tried to visit) for many was hammered earlier this year, when on 18 March 2019, it was revealed that Myspace had lost all its user-uploaded content from 2015 and earlier thanks to a botched server migration. Despite various attempts over the years to reinvigorate the site-including bids to re-situate itself as a music platform rather than a social network (no doubt realizing the battle with Facebook would never be won) a logo and site redesign in November 2010 that boldly rebooted it in er… Helvetica, as Design Week reported and another redesign two years later following its purchase by, bafflingly, Justin Timberlake. It took off, fast, and Rupert Murdoch ‘s News Corporation purchased Myspace for $580 million in July 2005.īut in just three years, the site was overtaken by Facebook, which reported more users from 2008 onwards. Tom, that dude in the white t-shirt that we could all likely recognise in our sleep, is actually called Tom Anderson, and was Myspace’s starting president. The site was founded in 2003 by a number of employees of the American internet marketing company eUniverse, who, the story goes, saw the potential of the site Friendster as a social network, and felt they could do better. Though from 2005 to 2008, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world and, in June 2006, overtook Google as the most visited website in the United States. Where Facebook has managed to (just about) survive the capricious tides of favour when it comes to digital communities Myspace did not. Today, the word Myspace (and it’s always just the one word) has become shorthand for a number of things: angular emo haircuts selfies shot from vertiginously high angles Lily Allen that dorky dude named Tom who’s now the butt of so many memes and ultimately, failure.Īs such, it’s easy to forget that, when we first discovered it, the site was the leader in a new charge of platforms that have irrevocably changed the way we present ourselves and interact online.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |