For the web is dark and full of terrors

When Myspace exploded onto the scene back in the early 2000’s not really many people knew what to do with it. In order to understand the time period, you must understand the mindset of the people back in those days. Many of us were growing up with technology as it was evolving, and the generation before us didn’t really have a grasp of how to use it. Remember having to explain to mom and dad how this thing called a computer worked, yeah, I do to. It was a total nightmare that only fueled the “kids these days” mentality. I recall having fights with my family about how I was spending too much time on the computer. Those who were apart of Generation X had a rough understanding of how technology worked (as they had grown up with the first computers) and had a better understanding.

Yet Myspace wasn’t the first social media website people could relate to, it was the first social media website that marketed itself correctly. Previous version of social media websites, prominently the now defunct Friendster. Friendster more or less was a prototype that never really got off the ground. Imagine a dating website that wasn’t really a dating website. Whilst Friendster was the ancestor, delving into it’s failures can be better described by Saqib Shah in his The History of Social Media. Saqib takes the time to map out the history of social media (up until 2016 when the article was written.)

Myspace single handedly destroyed its prototype rival by offering what Friendster didn’t: options. When I look back on my first Myspace page, I remember what I was able to do with it. I could post photos that I had taken, I could change my moods, I could change my top 8 friends’ around (and cause massive amounts of drama). I could blog to my heart’s content without using another platform. I could find the music from my favorite bands relatively easy. Myspace to me could do everything I wanted at the time. Yet most importantly: I had a page on the internet that was mine, and that my friends could interact with.

Myspace thrived for a solid 5 to 6 years in my opinion before the next generation platforms started to nibble away at it. It’s primary rival, and undisputed king of social platforms, Facebook, started to pop up around 2006 when it went live to the general public. I recall being in high school when I first heard about Facebook. It was being marketed towards young professionals, and those trying to escape the multicolored hell that Myspace had turned into.

Facebook took Myspace and made it simpler. Gone was the ability to change your profile into whatever color you wanted to. You were given a simple interface to do basic customizations. It was a toned-down Myspace that your friends from school were connected on. What was the major game changer, the ability to blog in real time…IE the Facebook post. You could add content in real time, and your friends could instantly judge it with “likes.” I think Bryan Rice’s article The Progression Of Social Media and How Myspace Fits in really captured why Myspace fell to Facebook.

Myspace has sadly gone the way of the Dodo. Dwindling membership with constantly reboots and technical failures…I doubt it’ll be long before they throw in the towel.