Before TikTok. Before Instagram. Before Twitter. Before Facebook… Yes, there was MySpace, back in 2003. It was the first social network in history, and also the first to disappear almost immediately, even though from 2005 to 2009 it became the number 1 in the world. However, everything changed rapidly, influencers took off, and so did video content, and everything MySpace wanted to be went to hell… Or maybe it’d be better to say it lay dormant.
The return of the king
Nobody saw it coming, but MySpace, 23 years after it began, is coming back in a big way (well, more or less) with a revolutionary idea: winning over all of us who are bored of the rest. Even though in 2013 they already tried to come back and failed, now they believe the time is right for it to become a real alternative. “We still have the rights. We are the heirs to the MySpace brand, and we’re going to launch it again. We’re waiting for the right moment. And if it doesn’t work that time, we’ll do it again”.
Unlike the billionaire-owned platforms, MySpace presents itself as a simple social network, one that has something the rest don’t: plain and simple nostalgia. After all, those of us who are older already miss the days when algorithms didn’t dominate us and we could, simply, see what our friends were doing. The problem? Convincing people to join yet another social network after so, so many.
Besides plain, hardcore old-school nostalgia, there’s also the fact that many of today’s kids have, simply, decided to leave social media and try a simpler online life. Is MySpace their new best bet? You never know. By trying it, they have literally nothing to lose.
