MySpace: 10 things we loved about the MySpace Era

MySpace Logo

MySpace was founded in 2003 by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, and was later acquired by News Corporation in July 2005 for $580 million. From 2005 until early 2008, MySpace was the most visited social networking site in the world, and in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States.

 In April 2008, MySpace was overtaken by Facebook in the number of unique worldwide visitors, and was surpassed in the number of unique U.S. visitors in May 2009. MySpace generated $800 million in revenue during the 2008 fiscal year. Since then, the number of MySpace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns.

Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson

A recent survey of 18-30 year olds has revealed that six percent STILL use MySpace, once the most popular social networking site in the world.

The music discovery site had 50 million users, and was relaunched by Justin Timberlake in the year 2013. Meanwhile, Bebo (where you can post blogs, photograph, music and videos), a 10-million strong website once loved by UK teens, has recently announced its own relaunch.

After years in the shadow Facebook, which now has a whopping 1.2 billion user base, is retro social networking on its way back into fashion?

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We open the antique treasure chest of the Internet, and take a look back at the sparkle-covered highs and lows of the MySpace era.

• Use all the sparkles!

Like it or not, it was seemingly impossible to spend time stalking MySpace, circa 2005, without a heav dose of blinding screen glare from all those sparkly stars and love hearts. The more blinding unicorns and rainbows, the better, it seemed. And who was going to prove s wrong?

• Chain mail had us genuinely worried

I <3 BEER

‘If u send this message to all ur contacts, then press F7 and your crush’s name will appear on the screen!! If you don’t you will have 7 years bad luck!’ the arrival of these chain messages in one’s hotmail inbox invariably sparked dilemma and mild panic. We couldn’t be entirely sure, though –so we sent them on anyway.

• Customize, customize, customize

Sites like MySpace and Bebo were gloriously customizable, be it glittery pink fairies or boy bands with more hair gel than a Hollister advert. Particularly memorable was my ‘I <3 BEER’ theme, which brought instant street cred –despite the fact that I’d never drunk in my life.

•  The birth of over sharing: all those questionnaires

Back in the 00s, we were happy, for some reason, to share everything and anything on the Internet. Whether it was allowing people you’d never met to find out your deepest fears and dreams with ’10 truths about me’, or finding new and inventive ways to waste time with silly band names, the Internet and procrastination went hand in hand before any of us could even spell the word.

• MySpace’s ‘current mood’

Current mood

For all those times when you were ‘pissed off’ or ‘moody’ and wanted everyone to know it and wonder why: because everyone liked being a little mysterious sometimes.

• The internet had its own language

For anyone who grew up with the web, words that are now ridiculed then seemed the height of kl. Lol’ing at a gr8 PJ with our bffes was, like, super jks bbz. So was iNserTing RandOM caps. ROFLMAO. The English Language was played, cracked and broken but we loved it.

• The internet could be stressful

Particularly when it came to deciding on your ‘top 8’ MySpace followers, or which of your 4,000 friends would be your ‘other half’ on Bebo.

• The all-important email username

Myspace Page

Nothing summed p existence quite like one’s email username, in an era when addresses like couch_potato118 or the_edster (joyfully, still in use) were de rigueur. Try applying for jobs with one of those.

• Share the luv

On Bebo the hardest daily decision was who to ‘Share the Luv’ with. Because nothing spells insecurity like the lack of Internet luv.

• That 400-photo sleepover album

Because nothing says ‘here are two best friends having a super awesome time’ like 400 near-identical shots that commit every crime against photography ever. Particular classics included: the beard stroke, the peace sign, the bathroom mirror selfie (with or without flash), and the overhead shot. Hours spent editing the brightness, writing captions, and uploading to MySpace was time well spent.

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At some point we were addicted to Myspace, then the most popular social networking site. But is now been overshadowed by Facbook and Twitter, just like Orkut and Bebo. This shows that no social network lasta forever. In this article we discussed the things we love when we were a fan of Myspace… which no social network can offer.

If you have any suggestions for this list or the blog , please feel free to drop comments.