Somewhere, Myspace Tom is looking over his shoulder, frowning. Everyone’s first friend on the once-leading and iconic social and blogging platform, Tom Anderson’s smiling face is the sole reminder of what Myspace once was. While so many loved its messy, GIF-filled countenance in 2004, it’s unlikely he’s cheering its potential comeback.
MySpace didn’t survive the rise of Facebook (then “The Facebook”), let alone Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. Teens left in droves when NewsCorp bought it for $850M in 2005, and adults, who never understood it in the first place, stayed away by the millions. By 2011, it was sold for a measly $35M to a consortium that included Justin Timberlake. The shift to a more purely music-focused platform did little to distinguish or revive it. The domain survives, but according to Similarweb, it has just over 1.7M monthly uniques. That might sound like a lot, but it is a far cry from the 76M monthly visitors it enjoyed 20 years ago.
Now, Chris and Tim Vanderhook, who bought the platform with Timberlake in 2011, confirmed they plan to “relaunch Myspace.”
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Myspace version 3?
That, though, my friends, is not the surprising part. Companies relaunch valuable IP all the time in the quixotic belief that they can squeeze just a little more value or revenue out of it. It rarely goes their way.
No, what’s truly astounding is that the Vanderhooks did not quickly follow that statement with, “It’ll be built on an AI foundation.”
I mean, seriously, what is the point of relaunching Myspace if not to house some new LLM, presumably one that connects in some fashion to music. Maybe a big partnership with — gag — Suno.
Myspace has, for the last 15 years, been all about music. The first menu item on the current site is “Featured,” which is all about trending musicians, and the second menu item is “Music.” “Videos”, which is all clips of either “Getting Nailed” or “The Pedicab interviews,” comes next, and “People,” once the foundation of Myspace, comes last.
If you happen to click on “People,” Myspace encourages you to sign up with your Facebook account, which is the deepest cut of all when you consider how Facebook ate Myspace’s lunch.
Profile types leave little room for the normies that once populated the platform: Your profile options include “Artists,” “Writer”. “DJ/producer,” “Comedian,” “Filmmaker,” “Models,” and similar extra types. It’s like an Influencer reality show casting call. It’s unclear how or if you can join as just a person.
If AI were a part of this promised next phase of MySpace, I assume it might help these influencer industry archetypes connect with their audiences and produce exactly the kind of content each wants and would consume at scale.
No way you’ll recognize the next Myspace
I find it hard to imagine that the old-school Myspace, in all its chaotic luster, is somehow rising from the ashes. No online audience is still interested in that, right? Though, I guess a sort of anti-social media could work.
No algorithms, no filters, no cool interface, maybe even no AI, just point-to-point encrypted messages, space to say your piece, an occasional meme-worthy GIF, and that’s all. It could be ever more bare-bones than the old Tumblr. I see no reason for that to exist, but at least it would stand out from the current selection of overwhelming communication and social media platforms.
Even so, in our current space, no technology is more energizing for investment and emergence than AI. So I fully expect the Vanderhooks, who are “just waiting for the right time to do it,” to lean fully into the space and produce a Myspace-awkward blend of earnestness and AI.
They might even get Tom Anderson’s permission to use his likeness in AI figures that show him looking over his shoulder, smiling and offering custom greetings on your Myspace page. Tom could be the platform’s AI chatbot. It’ll be creepy as heck and the polar opposite of what new Myspace should be, but I also see no other realistic path forward for this thing.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
