Millennials assemble: Myspace could be making a comeback

Myspace was the online equivalent of a teenager’s bedroom (Picture: Metro/Myles Goode)

Myspace, once one of the world’s most popular websites, isn’t a name you hear that much these days.

Founded in 2003, a year before Facebook, the platform boasted more than 10,000,000 users in the UK in its heyday before plummeting in relevance.

Teenagers with rather angular fringes rammed their profiles with garish GIFs, sparkly bubble text, playlists and ranking their top eight friends.

Now Chris and Tim Vanderhook, who bought the flailing website in 2011, hinted in a documentary that they’re planning to relaunch Myspace.

According to People, Chris said in the upcoming documentary called, well, Myspace: ‘We still own Myspace. We are stewards of the Myspace brand at this point, and we are going to relaunch Myspace.’

‘We’re just waiting for the right time to do it. And if that one doesn’t work, we’ll do it again.’

What happened to Myspace?

Myspace was sold to News Corporation, the media giant owned by Rupert Murdoch, in 2005 for $580million.

More people were browsing Myspace than Google at the time, according to website traffic tracker comScore.

Metro’s own picture editor Myles Goode was among them – that’s his picture with a floppy black fringe in the top image of this story.

He said he used the social media network to learn how to code and design.

MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson’s profile page (Picture: MySpace)

‘I now do this for a living – 2006 me would scream if he knew I was making graphics and animations for money,’ the designer said.

‘Also the fact it was secondary to actually socialising and wasn’t taken super seriously, unless of course you wasn’t in your best friend’s Top 8.’

The ‘place for friends’, as its tagline once was, also served as one of the world’s largest music catalogues with some 52million songs.

The Vanderbooks managed to persuade Murdoch to sell in 2011 as Facebook, Reddit and what was then called Twitter lured users away.

Chris, who co-owns the AI advert company Viant Technology with Tim, said in the Myspace documentary that News Corp wasn’t returning their calls.

So they got creative: they faked a press release that pop star Justin Timberlake had joined their acquisition team, despite this very much not being the case.

Myspace’s popularity fell off a cliff in the late 2000s as Facebook soared (Picture: PA)

Tim said: ‘We found out that the guy from News Corp who was in charge of making the decision was at a conference in Palos Verdes.

‘We meet him outside the conference. He says, “You better not be f**king lying about Justin Timberlake”.’

While they were very much lying, the gambit helped Chris and Tom nab a sit-down with Timberlake, who agreed to join and helped the bid pass.

‘We really tried to modernise it, but it was a different company at that point. It wasn’t the same Myspace,’ Tim said.

‘By that time, they had been through four other sets of management and CEOs.

‘We were going to be the fifth ones, and I think that there were a lot of the people who were really just done.’

Chris Vanderhook and Tim Vanderhook (Picture: Getty Images/Jason LaVeris)

Chris DeWolfe, one of the co-founders of Myspace, told People last week that there is a big appetite for a music-driven website like Myspace.

‘I do think the algorithms have a lot to do with the addictive nature of social media,’ he said.

‘Everything’s programmed to you and what you’re going to like, with the complete and total notion of increasing the amount of minutes that you’re going to spend on a particular social media site.’

This isn’t the first time that the return of the 25-year-old Myspace has been teased.

In a since-deleted post on Threads in January, co-founder Tom Anderson said that if he reached one million followers, he’ll ‘talk Myspace’.

He refers to himself on Threads as the ‘Former 1st friend’ – Tom would automatically be a Myspace user’s friend when they joined.

Millennials, it was safe to say, were begging for Myspace’s resurrection.

‘MILLENNIALSSSSSSSSS ASSEMBLEEEEEEEE!!!’ replied one user, according to Parade magazine.

Another added: ‘“Can we please bring back MySpace, like it was?! We didn’t know how good we had it! We’re sorry! Please, help us!’

Tom, however, removed the most after thousands of users criticised him for his investments in SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-making company.

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