What is Myspace, why is it going viral again?

MySpace, the site that introduced a generation to profile songs and the Top 8 friends list, is teasing a comeback, and it's got people talking for the first time in years.

The buzz starts with a new documentary called "Myspace", wherein the creators Tim and Chris Vanderhook admit that they have plans for a relaunch, some 20 years since its creation.

What is Myspace?

Co-founded by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe in 2003, Myspace became the largest social networking site by 2008, having reached an estimated 115 million users per month.

MySpace had glittery, customisable profile pages, music embedded on them, and "Tom", the first friend for everybody. It was overtaken by Facebook in less than two years and is considered a relic of Y2K times.

The Vanderhook brothers, who purchased Myspace for $35 million through their company called Specific Media (now known as Viant Technology), feature in the film as "stewards of the Myspace brand" that are "just waiting for the right moment".

An earlier relaunch attempt in 2013 lost the company more than $150 million, something Tim Vanderhook attributes to the platform having already cycled through several management teams before they took over.

According to Forrester principal analyst Kate Winick, the excitement is part of a larger trend toward favouring smaller platforms not dominated by algorithms, which includes sites such as Substack and Discord. However, she pointed out that Myspace's target audience, which consists of millennials, who are now "busy midlife adults", will probably not revisit the platform.

The secret to success will lie in winning the favour of Generation Z and Generation Alpha rather than trying to attract millennials who did not support Myspace when they were young.

There have been many examples of disappointment in recent times. Bluesky saw about 40% of its daily active users leave the platform just one year after the 2024 spike, and BeReal had 20 million monthly active users fall to about 16 million after reaching its height during the pandemic era.