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Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated open box symbol) is a
social networking service A social networking service (SNS), or social networking site, is a type of online social media platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interest ...
based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it was the first social network to reach a global audience and had a significant influence on technology, pop culture and music. It also played a critical role in the early growth of companies like
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
and created a developer platform that launched companies such as
Zynga Zynga Inc. () is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher known for its social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile an ...
, RockYou, and
Photobucket Photobucket is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community based in Denver, Colorado, United States. Photobucket once hosted more than 10 billion images from 100 million registered members. Li ...
, among others, to success. From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world. In July 2005, Myspace was acquired by
News Corporation The original incarnation of News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp. and also variously known as News Corporation Limited) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media corporation founded and controlled by media mogul Ru ...
for $580 million; in June 2006, it surpassed
Yahoo Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, an ...
and
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
to become the most visited website in the United States. During the 2008 fiscal year, it generated $800 million in revenue. At its peak in April 2008, Myspace had 115 million monthly visitors; by that time, the recently emergent
Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
had about the same number of visitors, but somewhat more global users than MySpace. In May 2009, Facebook surpassed Myspace in its number of unique U.S. visitors. Since then, the number of Myspace users has declined steadily despite several redesigns. As of 2019, Myspace had seven million monthly visitors. In June 2009, Myspace employed approximately 1,600 people. In June 2010, Specific Media Group and
Justin Timberlake Justin Randall Timberlake (born January 31, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, actor, record producer, and dancer. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Prince of Pop", ''Billboard (magazine), Billboard'' honored him as the b ...
jointly purchased the company for approximately $35 million. On February 11, 2016, it was announced that Myspace and its parent company had been purchased by
Time Inc. Time Inc. (also referred to as Time & Life, Inc. later on, after their two onetime flagship magazine publications) was an American worldwide mass media corporation founded on November 28, 1922, by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden and based in New ...
for $87 million. On January 31, 2018, Time Inc. was in turn purchased by
Meredith Corporation Meredith Corporation was an American media conglomerate based in Des Moines, Iowa, that owned newspapers, magazines, television stations, and websites. Its publications had a readership of more than 120 million and paid circulation of more than ...
, and later that year, on November 4, 2019, Meredith spun off Myspace and its original holding company (Viant Technology Holding Inc.) and sold it to Viant Technology LLC.


History


2003–2005: Beginnings and rise

In August 2003, several
eUniverse Intermix Media, Inc. ( AMX symbol: MIX; formerly eUniverse) is an American Internet marketing company that owned the MySpace social network. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California and is a subsidiary of Fox Interactive Media, Inc ...
employees with
Friendster Friendster was a social networking service originally based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003.Eric Eldon, August 4, 2008.Friendster raises $20 million, nabs a Googler to be CEO" VentureBeat. ...
accounts saw potential in its social networking features. The group decided to mimic the more popular features of the website. Within 10 days, the first version of MySpace was ready for launch, implemented using
ColdFusion Adobe ColdFusion is a commercial rapid web-application development computing platform created by J. J. Allaire in 1995. (The programming language used with that platform is also commonly called ColdFusion, though is more accurately known as CF ...
.Alt URL
A complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise,
bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
, and server capacity was available for the site. The project was overseen by
Brad Greenspan Brad Greenspan is an internet entrepreneur best known for overseeing ''eUniverse''’s launch of Myspace.com in August 2003. Greenspan founded ''eUniverse, Inc''. an internet company which in 1999 acquired ''CDUniverse.com'' with approximately 3 ...
(eUniverse's founder, chairman and CEO), who managed
Chris DeWolfe Chris DeWolfe (born ) is an American technology entrepreneur. He co-founded Myspace in 2003 and was its chief executive officer (CEO) until 2009. DeWolfe has been the CEO of Jam City, a video game developer, since he co-founded it in 2010. E ...
(MySpace's starting CEO), Josh Berman,
Tom Anderson Thomas Anderson (born November 8, 1970) is an American technology entrepreneur and co-founder of the social networking website Myspace, which he founded in 2003 with Chris DeWolfe. He was later president of Myspace and a strategic adviser ...
(MySpace's starting president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse. It was during this early period in June 2003, just prior to the birth of MySpace, that Jeffrey Edell was brought on as chairman of parent company Intermix Media. The first MySpace users were eUniverse employees. The company held contests to see who could sign up the most users. eUniverse used its 20 million users and e-mail subscribers to breathe life into MySpace and move it to the head of the pack of social networking websites. A key architect was tech expert Toan Nguyen, who helped stabilize the platform when Greenspan asked him to join the team. Co-founder and CTO Aber Whitcomb played an integral role in software architecture, utilizing the then-superior development speed of ColdFusion over other dynamic database driven server-side languages of the time. Despite having over ten times the number of developers,
Friendster Friendster was a social networking service originally based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003.Eric Eldon, August 4, 2008.Friendster raises $20 million, nabs a Googler to be CEO" VentureBeat. ...
, which was developed in
JavaServer Pages Jakarta Server Pages (JSP; formerly JavaServer Pages) is a collection of technologies that helps software developers create dynamically generated web pages based on HTML, XML, SOAP, or other document types. Released in 1999 by Sun Microsystems, J ...
(jsp), could not keep up with the speed of development of MySpace and cfm. For example, users could customize the background, look and feel of pages on MySpace. MySpace originally gained users because of how easy it made to communicate with other users. Before MySpace debuted, many people communicated online through Instant Messaging or IM. However, MySpace got so popular that people started to use MySpace to message people even more than IM. This was especially true in bigger cities that had more people compared to suburbs that still used IM more. The MySpace.com domain was originally owned by YourZ.com, Inc., intended until 2002 for use as an online data storage and sharing site. By late 2003, it was transitioned from a file storage service to a social networking site. A friend who also worked in the data storage business reminded DeWolfe that he had earlier bought the MySpace.com domain. DeWolfe suggested they charge a fee for the basic MySpace service. However, Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping the site free was necessary to make it a successful community. MySpace quickly gained popularity among teenagers and young adults. In February 2005, DeWolfe held talks with
Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...
over acquiring
Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
, but rejected Zuckerberg's offer to sell Facebook to him for $75 million. Some employees of MySpace, including DeWolfe and Berman, were able to purchase equity in the property before MySpace and its parent company eUniverse (now renamed
Intermix Media Intermix Media, Inc. ( AMX symbol: MIX; formerly eUniverse) is an American Internet marketing company that owned the MySpace social network. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California and is a subsidiary of Fox Interactive Media, Inc ...
) were bought.


2005–2009: Purchase by News Corp. and peak years

In July 2005, in one of the company's first major Internet purchases,
News Corporation The original incarnation of News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp. and also variously known as News Corporation Limited) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media corporation founded and controlled by media mogul Ru ...
purchased MySpace for US$580 million. At the time of the acquisition, the company was seeing 16 million monthly users and was growing exponentially. News Corporation had beat out
Viacom Viacom, an abbreviation of Video and Audio Communications, may refer to: * Viacom (1952–2005), a former American media conglomerate * Viacom (2005–2019), a former company spun off from the original Viacom * Viacom18, a joint venture between Pa ...
by offering a higher price for the website, and the purchase was seen as a good investment at the time. Within a year, MySpace had tripled in value from its purchase price. News Corporation saw the purchase as a way to capitalize on Internet advertising and drive traffic to other News Corporation properties. After the acquisition, MySpace continued its exponential growth. In January 2006, the site was signing up 200,000 new users a day. A year later, it was registering 320,000 users a day, and had overtaken
Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...
to become the most visited website in the United States. ComScore said that a key driver of the site's success in the US was high "engagement levels", with the average MySpace user viewing over 660 pages a month. In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of MySpace. During 2006, MySpace launched localized versions in 11 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas, including MySpace China with Solstice. At the time, Travis Katz, senior vice-president for international operations, reported that 30 million of the site's 90 million users were coming from outside of the United States. The 100 millionth MySpace account was created on August 9, 2006, in the Netherlands. That same month, MySpace signed a landmark advertising deal with
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
that guaranteed MySpace $900 million over three years, over 55% more than the price News Corporation had paid to acquire the business. In exchange, Google received exclusive rights to provide Web search results and sponsored links on MySpace. When the deal was signed, Google chairman Eric Schmidt said, "When we looked at what was growing on the Web, all our internal metrics pointed to ySpace ..It's important to move Google to where users are, and that is where user-generated content is." By October 2006, MySpace had grown from generating $1 million in revenue per month to $30 million per month, half of which came from the Google deal. The remaining 50% came from display advertising sold by MySpace's in-house sales team. In November 2006, Myspace announced a 50-50 joint venture with
Softbank is a Japanese multinational Investment company, investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, that focuses on investment management. The group primarily invests in companies operating in technology that offer goods and services ...
to launch the site in Japan. In mid-2007, MySpace was the largest social-networking site in every European country where it had created a local presence. By July 2007, Nielsen//NetRatings reported the company's "active reach", or the percentage of the population that visited the site, was anywhere from 10 to 15 times higher in Spain, France and Germany than for runner-up Facebook; in the United Kingdom, MySpace led Facebook by two-to-one in terms of reach. MySpace would even land deals with major corporations like Sony. In 2007 MySpace partnered with Sony BMG, a Sony record label, to put music directly on the MySpace platform. Sony became interested in MySpace as they had 110 million users and had a lot of musical artists make their start on the platform. On November 1, 2007, MySpace and Bebo joined the Google-led OpenSocial alliance, which already included Friendster, Hi5,
LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...
,
Plaxo Plaxo was an online address book that launched in 2002. It was a subsidiary of cable television company Comcast from 2008 to 2017. At one point it offered a social networking service. History The company was founded by Sean Parker and two Stanfo ...
, Ning, and
Six Apart Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox (the blogging platform). The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is ...
. The alliance's goal was to promote a common set of standards for software developers to write programs for social networks. Google had been unsuccessful in building its own social networking site
Orkut Orkut was a social networking service owned and operated by Google. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website was named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkö ...
in the American market, and was using the alliance to present a counterweight to Facebook. By late 2007 and into 2008, MySpace was considered the leading social networking site, and consistently beat out its main competitor Facebook in traffic. Initially, the emergence of Facebook did little to diminish MySpace's popularity; at the time, Facebook was targeted only at college students. At its peak, when News Corporation attempted to merge it with Yahoo! in 2007, Myspace was valued at $12 billion and had more than 300 million registered users.


2009–2016: Decline and sale by News Corporation

On April 19, 2008, Facebook overtook MySpace in
Alexa Alexa may refer to: Technology *Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by Amazon * Alexa Internet, a defunct website ranking and traffic analysis service * Alexa Fluor, a family of fluorescent dyes * Arri Alexa, a digital motion picture ca ...
rankings. In May 2009, Facebook surpassed MySpace in the number of unique U.S. visitors. From that point, Myspace saw a consistent loss of membership. There are several suggested explanations for its decline, including the fact that it stuck to a "portal strategy" of building an audience around entertainment and music, whereas Facebook and
Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
continually added new features to improve the social networking experience. A former MySpace executive suggested that the $900 million three-year advertisement deal with Google, while being a short-term cash windfall, was a handicap in the long run, as it required MySpace to place even more ads on its already heavily advertised space, which made the site slow, more difficult to use and less flexible. MySpace could not experiment with its own site without forfeiting revenue, while Facebook was rolling out a new, clean site design. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe reported that he had to fight Fox Interactive Media's sales team, who monetized the site without regard to user experience. In 2012, Katz described how News Corporation had put significant pressure on MySpace to "focus on near-term monetization, as opposed to thinking about long-term product strategy," while Facebook focused on user engagement over revenue.
Danah Boyd Danah boyd (stylized in all lowercase, born November 24, 1977 as Danah Michele Mattas) She noted her mother added lowercase 'h' in birth name "danah" for typographical balance, reflecting the lowercase first letter 'd' and later changed her l ...
, a senior researcher at
Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...
, noted of social networking websites that "companies might serially rise, fall, and disappear, as influential peers pull others in on the climb up—and signal to flee when it's time to get out." The volatility of social networks was exemplified in 2006, when Connecticut Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal Richard Blumenthal ( ; born February 13, 1946) is an American politician, lawyer, and United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps veteran serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from ...
launched an investigation into children's exposure to pornography on MySpace. The resulting media frenzy and the site's lack of an effective spam filter gave the site a reputation as a "vortex of perversion". Around that time, specialized social media companies such as Twitter formed and began targeting users on MySpace, while Facebook rolled out communication tools that were seen as safe in comparison to MySpace. In addition, MySpace had particular problems with vandalism, phishing, malware, and spam, which it failed to curtail, making the site seem inhospitable. These have been cited as factors why users, who as teenagers were MySpace's strongest audience in 2006 and 2007, had been migrating to Facebook, which started strongly with the 18-to-24 group (mostly college students) and has been much more successful than MySpace at attracting older users. News Corporation chairman and CEO
Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian - American retired business magnate, investor, and media mogul. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of List of assets owned by News Corp, local, national, a ...
was said to be frustrated that MySpace never met expectations as a distribution outlet for Fox studio content and missed the US$1 billion mark in total revenues. This resulted in DeWolfe and Anderson gradually losing their status within Murdoch's inner circle of executives, as well as DeWolfe's mentor
Peter Chernin Peter Chernin (born May 29, 1951) is an American film and television producer, businessman and investor. He is the chairman and CEO of The Chernin Group (TCG), which he founded in 2010. TCG manages, operates and invests in businesses in the media ...
, president and COO of News Corporation, departing the company in June 2009. Former
AOL AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online ...
executive Jonathan Miller, who joined News Corporation in charge of the digital media business, was in the job for three weeks when he shuffled MySpace's executive team in April 2009. MySpace president Tom Anderson stepped down while Chris DeWolfe was replaced as CEO by former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta. A meeting at News Corporation over the direction of MySpace in March 2009 was reportedly the catalyst for that management shakeup, with the Google search deal about to expire and the departure of key personnel (Myspace's COO, SVP of engineering, and SVP of strategy) to form a startup. Furthermore, the opening of extravagant new offices around the world was questioned, as Facebook did not have similarly expensive expansion plans but still attracted international users at a rapid rate. The changes to MySpace's executive ranks were followed in June 2009 by a layoff of 37.5% of its workforce (including 30% of its U.S. employees), reducing employees from 1,600 to 1,000. The downfall of MySpace can be attributed to different factors. One factor was the demographic of MySpace and how they reacted to the debut of Facebook. When MySpace was launched, many of its users were people who had limited experience using the internet. As time went on, these users became frustrated with the limited features of MySpace. Facebook launched with various quality of life features that MySpace did not have. As a result, a significant number of MySpace users gradually migrated from MySpace to Facebook. According to Tim Vanderhook, the CEO of MySpace when it was owned by Viant, MySpace was killed by a “calculated takedown by Google over music”. Vanderhook alleges that Google used their recent acquisition of YouTube to take away a lot of the music deals they otherwise would have gotten by getting artists to put music on YouTube instead of MySpace. This utterly crippled MySpace as they had come to rely on the content of musical artists. Vanderhook also alleges that Google used their search engine algorithm to steer users away from MySpace and towards YouTube. In 2009, MySpace implemented site redesigns as a way to get users back. However, this may have backfired, as users generally disliked tweaks and changes on Facebook. In March 2011, market research figures released by
Comscore Comscore, Inc. is an American-based global media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, advertising agencies, brand marketers, and publishers. History Comscore was founded in July 1999 in Resto ...
suggested that Myspace had lost 10 million users between January and February 2011, and had fallen from 95 million to 63 million unique users in the previous 12 months. Myspace registered its sharpest audience declines in February 2011, as traffic fell 44% from a year earlier to 37.7 million U.S. visitors. Advertisers were reported as unwilling to commit to long-term deals with the site. In late February 2011, News Corporation officially put the site up for sale for an estimated $50–200 million. Losses from the last quarter of 2010 were $156 million, over double the previous year, which dragged down the otherwise strong results of News Corporation. The deadline for bids, May 31, 2011, passed without any above the reserve price of $100 million being submitted. It has been said that the decline in users during the most recent quarter deterred several potential suitors. On June 29, 2011, Myspace announced in an email to label partners and press that it had been acquired by Specific Media for an undisclosed sum, which was rumored to be as low as $35 million.
CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...
reported that the site sold for $35 million, and noted that it was "far less than the $580 million News Corp. paid for Myspace in 2005." Murdoch went on to call the Myspace purchase a "huge mistake", and ''
Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' magazine compared it to
Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( doing business as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by AT&T. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City. It was established as Time Warne ...
's 2000 purchase of
AOL AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online ...
, which saw a conglomerate trying to stay ahead of the competition. Many former executives have gone on to further success after departing Myspace.


2016–2019: Time Inc. and Meredith Corporation ownership

On February 11, 2016, it was announced that Myspace and its parent company had been bought by
Time Inc. Time Inc. (also referred to as Time & Life, Inc. later on, after their two onetime flagship magazine publications) was an American worldwide mass media corporation founded on November 28, 1922, by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden and based in New ...
On January 31, 2018, Time Inc. was in turn purchased by
Meredith Corporation Meredith Corporation was an American media conglomerate based in Des Moines, Iowa, that owned newspapers, magazines, television stations, and websites. Its publications had a readership of more than 120 million and paid circulation of more than ...
, who went on to sell a number of Time Inc.'s assets, including (as it announced on November 4, 2019) selling its equity in
Viant Viant Inc. was a multinational Internet consulting firm, founded in San Francisco in April 1996, that was one of the first web consulting firms during the early stages of the Internet era. History The company was founded by Eric Greenberg, Duc ...
, the parent company of Specific Media, back to Viant Technology Holding Inc. In May 2016, the data for almost 360 million Myspace accounts was offered on TheRealDeal dark market website, which included email addresses, usernames, and weakly encrypted passwords (
SHA1 In cryptography, SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) is a hash function which takes an input and produces a 160- bit (20-byte) hash value known as a message digest – typically rendered as 40 hexadecimal digits. It was designed by the United State ...
hashes of the first 10 characters of the password converted to lowercase and stored without a cryptographic
salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...
). The exact
data breach A data breach, also known as data leakage, is "the unauthorized exposure, disclosure, or loss of personal information". Attackers have a variety of motives, from financial gain to political activism, political repression, and espionage. There ...
date is unknown, but analysis of the data suggests it was exposed around eight years before being made public, around mid-2008 to early 2009.


Since 2019: Viant Technology Holding Inc. ownership

In March 2019, Myspace lost all content before 2016 after a faulty server migration. As of October 5, 2024, Myspace was placed in a read-only mode of sorts, and no new articles have been published since early 2022. Most images on the site are broken, and existing songs also could not be played. Media uploads are now working, and MySpace's official account has also started some new activity. The terms of service of MySpace have not been changed by Viant. The privacy policy was last revised on June 24, 2024.


Features

From
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
's founding in 2005, Myspace users could embed YouTube videos in their profiles. Considering this a competitive threat to its new Myspace Videos service, the site in late 2005 banned embedded YouTube videos from user profiles, which was widely protested by Myspace users, prompting the site to lift the ban shortly after. There were a variety of environments in which users could access Myspace content on their mobile phones. In early 2006, mobile phone provider Helio released a series of mobile phones utilizing a service known as Myspace Mobile to access and edit one's profile and communicate with and view the profiles of other members. Additionally, UIEvolution and Myspace developed a mobile version of Myspace for a wider range of carriers, including
AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...
,
Vodafone Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...
and
Rogers Wireless Rogers Wireless Inc. is a Canadian mobile network operator headquartered in Toronto, providing service nationally throughout Canada. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The company had revenues of just under $15.1 billion in ...
. In August 2006, Myspace began offering classified ads, a service which grew by 33 percent during the following year. It previously had an instant messaging tool called MySpace IM. Myspace used an implementation of Telligent Community for its forum system.


Music

Shortly after Myspace was sold to News Corporation in 2005, the website launched a record label called MySpace Records, with JD Mangosing as CEO, in an effort to discover unknown talent on Myspace Music, a service onto which artists can upload songs, EPs and full-length albums. As of June 2014, over 53 million songs had been uploaded to the site by 14.2 million artists. Artists including
My Chemical Romance My Chemical Romance is an American Rock music, rock band from New Jersey. The band's current lineup consists of lead vocalist Gerard Way, lead guitarist Ray Toro, rhythm guitarist Frank Iero, and bassist Mikey Way. They are considered one of ...
,
Nicki Minaj Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty (born December 8, 1982), known professionally as Nicki Minaj ( ), is a Trinidadian rapper, singer, and songwriter. Regarded as the "Queen of Rap" and one of the most influential rappers of all time, she is noted for her ...
,
Lily Allen Lily Rose Beatrice Allen (born 2 May 1985) is an English singer, songwriter, and actress. List of awards and nominations received by Lily Allen, Her accolades include a Brit Award, alongside nominations for a Grammy Award and a Laurence Olivi ...
,
Taylor Swift Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Known for her autobiographical songwriting, artistic versatility, and Cultural impact of Taylor Swift, cultural impact, Swift is one of the Best selling artists, w ...
,
Lady Gaga Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known for her image reinventions and versatility across the entertainment industry, she is an influ ...
, and
Katy Perry Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson (born October 25, 1984), known professionally as Katy Perry, is an American singer, songwriter, and television personality. She is one of the List of best-selling music artists, best-selling music artists in hist ...
gained fame and recognition through Myspace. over eight million artists had been discovered by users through the site. In late 2007, the site launched ''The MySpace Transmissions'', a series of live-in-studio recordings by well-known artists. On March 18, 2019, it was revealed that Myspace had lost all of its user content from launch until 2015 in a botched server migration with no backup. Over 50 million songs and 12 years' worth of content were permanently lost. In April 2019, the
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
recovered 490,000 MP3s "using unknown means by an anonymous academic study conducted between 2008 and 2010". The songs, which were uploaded between 2008 and 2010, are collectively known as the "MySpace Dragon Hoard". Since early 2022, music upload and playback have been disabled on the website.


MySpaceTV

On May 16, 2007, Myspace partnered with news publications National Geographic, the New York Times and Reuters to provide professional visual contents on its social-networking Web site. On June 27, 2007, Myspace launched MySpaceTV. On August 8, 2007, Myspace partnered with satire publication ''
The Onion ''The Onion'' is an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satirical articles on international, national, and local news. The company is currently based in Chicago, but originated as a weekly print publication ...
'' to provide audio, video and print content to the site. On October 22, 2007, Myspace launched its first original web series, '' Roommates'', which intended to give its users a television-like experience with the interactive benefits of the Internet. On February 27, 2008,
TMZ ''TMZ'' is an American entertainment-focused tabloid news organization owned by Fox Corporation. It made its debut on November 8, 2005, as a collaboration between AOL and Telepictures, a division of Warner Bros., until Time Warner divested ...
launched its web channel on MySpaceTV. On April 21, 2008, Myspace signed a deal with
Byron Allen Byron Allen (born Byron Allen Folks on April 22, 1961) is an American businessman, film and television producer, and comedian. He is the founder of the American media company Allen Media Group (formerly Entertainment Studios), which has intere ...
's
Entertainment Studios Allen Media Group, alternately known by its former name of Entertainment Studios, Inc. is an American media and entertainment company based in Los Angeles. Owned and founded in 1993 by businessman Byron Allen, the company was initially involved ...
that brought programming such as the syndicated series '' Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen'', '' Entertainers with Byron Allen'', ''Beautiful Homes and Great Estates'', and ''Designer Fashions & Runways'' to MySpaceTV.


Redesigns

On March 10, 2010, Myspace added new features including a recommendation engine for new users that suggests games, music and videos based on their previous search habits. The security on Myspace was also enhanced, with the
criticism of Facebook Facebook (and parent company Meta Platforms) has been the subject of criticism and legal action since it was founded in 2004. Criticisms include the outsize influence Facebook has on the lives and health of its users and employees, as well as Fa ...
, to make it a safer site. The security of Myspace enables users to choose if the content could be viewed for "friends only", "18 and older" or "everyone". In October 2010, Myspace introduced a beta version of a new site design on a limited scale, with plans to switch all interested users to the new site in late November. Chief executive Mike Jones said the site was no longer competing with Facebook as a general social networking site; instead, it would be music-oriented and would target younger people. Jones believed most younger users would continue to use the site after the redesign, though older users might not. The goal of the redesign was to increase the number of Myspace users and the time they spent on the site. BTIG (.com) analyst Richard Greenfield said, "Most investors have written off MySpace now," and was unsure whether the changes would help the company recover. In November 2010, Myspace changed its logo to coincide with the new site design. The word "my" appears in the
Helvetica Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely-used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the f ...
font, followed by a symbol representing a space. The logo change was announced on October 8, 2010, and appeared on the site on November 11. In the same month, Myspace integrated with
Facebook Connect The Facebook Platform is the set of services, tools, and products provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook. The current Facebook Pla ...
– calling it "Mash Up with Facebook" in an announcement widely seen as the final act of acknowledging Facebook's domination of social networking. In January 2011, it was announced that the Myspace staff would be reduced by 47%. User adoption continued to decrease. In September 2012, a new redesign was announced, with no date given, making Myspace more visual and apparently optimized for tablets. The redesign was publicly released on January 15, 2013; by April 2013 (and presumably before), users were able to transfer to the new Myspace redesign. In June 2013, the redesign deleted all previous blogs, angering many users, and destroying information that would have been useful history in later years.


Key executives


Corporate information


Foreign versions

Since early 2006, Myspace has offered the option to access the service in different regional versions. The alternative regional versions present automated content according to locality (e.g., UK users see other UK users as "Cool New People", and UK-oriented events and adverts, etc.), offer local languages other than English, or accommodate the regional differences in spelling and conventions in the English-speaking world (e.g., United States: "favorites", mm/dd/yyyy; the rest of the world: "favourites", dd/mm/yyyy).


MySpace Developer Platform (MDP)

On February 5, 2008, MySpace set up a developer platform allowing developers to share their ideas and write their own Myspace applications. The opening was inaugurated with a workshop at the MySpace offices in San Francisco two weeks before the official launch. The MDP is based on the OpenSocial API, which was presented by Google in November 2007 to support social networks to develop social and interacting widgets, and can be seen as an answer to Facebook's developer platform. The first public beta of the MySpace Apps was released on March 5, 2008, with around 1,000 applications available.


Myspace server infrastructure

At QCon London 2008, MySpace Chief Systems Architect Dan Farino indicated that the site was sending 100 gigabits of data per second out to the Internet; 10 gigabits of which was
HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
content and the remainder was media such as videos and pictures. The server infrastructure consists of over 4,500 web servers (running
Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the sixth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft and the first server version to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is part of the Windows NT ...
, IIS 6.0,
ASP.NET ASP.NET is a server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name stands for Ac ...
and .NET Framework 3.5), over 1,200 cache servers (running 64-bit Windows Server 2003), and over 500 database servers (running 64-bit Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005), as well as a custom distributed file system which runs on
Gentoo Linux Gentoo Linux (pronounced ) is a Linux distribution built using the Portage package management system. Unlike a binary software distribution, the source code is compiled locally according to the user's preferences and is often optimized for ...
. In 2009, MySpace began migrating from HDD to
SSD A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses Integrated circuit, integrated circuits to store data persistence (computer science), persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-stat ...
technology in some of their servers, resulting in space and power usage savings.


Revenue model

Myspace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising, as its revenue model possesses no user-paid features. Through its site and affiliated advertising networks, the site collects data about its users and utilizes
behavioral targeting Targeted advertising or data-driven marketing is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either ...
to select the ads each visitor sees. On August 8, 2006, search engine
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
signed a $900 million deal to provide a search facility and advertising on MySpace.


Third-party content

Companies such as Slide.com and RockYou were all launched on Myspace as widgets providing additional functionality to the site. Other sites created layouts to personalize the site and made hundreds of thousands of dollars for its owners, most of whom were in their late teens and early twenties. In November 2008, MySpace announced that user-uploaded content infringing on copyrights held by
MTV MTV (an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on ...
and its subsidiary networks would be redistributed with advertisements to generate revenue for the companies.


Acquisition of Imeem

On November 18, 2009, MySpace Music acquired
Imeem The online service imeem was a social media website where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos. It operated from 2003 until 2009 when it was shut down after being acquired by MySpace. The co ...
for less than $1 million. MySpace stated that they would be transitioning Imeem's users and migrating their playlists over to MySpace Music. On January 15, 2010, MySpace began restoring Imeem playlists.


Mobile application

Along with its website redesign in June 2013, Myspace also completely redesigned their mobile application on the
App Store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...
. The app featured a tool for users to create and edit
gif The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...
images and post them to their Myspace stream. The app also allowed users to stream available "live streams" of concerts. New users were able to join Myspace from the app by signing in with
Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
or
Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
or by signing up with email.


Availability

The Myspace mobile app is no longer available on the
Google Play Store Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store, Play Store, or sometimes the Android Store (and was formerly Android Market), is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certifie ...
or the
Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
App Store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...
. The mobile web app can be accessed by visiting Myspace.com from a mobile device. However, the mobile web version is limited compared to the PC, for example, it is not yet possible to display a person's bio.


Radio

The app once allowed users to play Myspace radio channels from the device. Users could select from genre stations, featured stations and user or artist stations. A user could build their own station by connecting and listening to songs on Myspace's desktop website. The user was given six skips per station. As of early 2022, the radio player no longer functions on Myspace.com.


See also

* '' Christou v. Beatport, LLC'', a US federal district court case which held that Myspace profiles could be held as trade secrets * Criticism of Myspace * '' Doe v. MySpace Inc.'', a court case that held that Myspace was immune from liability resulting from a sexual assault of a minor. * gOS 2.9 "Space" –
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
distribution geared toward Myspace users, see gOS (operating system) *
List of Internet phenomena Internet phenomena are social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet, such as Internet memes, which include popular catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly ...
*
List of social networking websites A social networking service is an online platform that people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. This is a li ...
*
MySpace angle A high-angle shot is a Cinematic techniques, cinematic technique where the camera looks down on the subject from a high angle and the point of focus often gets "swallowed up". High-angle shots can make the subject seem vulnerable or powerless w ...
, a photographic style associated to MySpace profile pictures * Myspace IM * '' The MySpace Movie'' * MySpace Records *
Social software Social software, also known as social apps or social platform includes communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle capturing, storing and presenting communication, usually writt ...
* SodaHead.com * SpaceHey, a Myspace revival *
Vine (service) Vine was an American short-form video hosting service where users could share up to 6-second-long looping video clips. Founded in June 2012 by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll, the company was bought by Twitter, Inc., four months la ...
* Web 2.0 Suicide Machine


References


Further reading

* Angwin, Julia. 2009.
Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America
', New York: Random House. * * Dodero, Camille
"You and your tech-chic: As of 2006, new media isn't just for geeks anymore"
''Boston Phoenix'', December 20, 2006. * Tapscott, Don and Anthony D. Williams. 2007. ''Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything''. New York: Penguin.


External links

* {{Authority control 2003 establishments in California 2011 mergers and acquisitions 2016 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 2003 American social networking websites Android (operating system) software Blog hosting services Companies based in Beverly Hills, California Former News Corporation subsidiaries Internet properties established in 2003 2019 mergers and acquisitions IOS software Meredith Corporation Nerd culture Youth culture