First off, let me say, I know, I know: We do not need more social media. But I think we need MySpace back.
In fact, I think it's the social media site for our time because we need less social media.
Who isn't exhausted with the app formerly known as Twitter and its myriad of clones? Truth is, they all kind of suck. Instagram, meanwhile, has kind of sucked for years. Facebook isn't even worth mentioning. TikTok, on the other hand, is almost too good. It's nearly impossible to put down — we should want to walk away.
Any site online that's trying to be something is also trying to be too much. Instagram is trying to be Twitter; X is trying to be YouTube; TikTok is trying to be Instagram and maybe also Pinterest. In the race to become everything, these platforms are losing their novelty. And we get less useful, more harmful, and comparatively mediocre products as a result. When was the last time you logged on and had a good time? As Rolling Stone's E.J. Dickson wrote, the internet isn't fun anymore.
Enter MySpace. It was the perfect passive social media site. Passive is the essential word. MySpace was like AIM but grown up a little. It died before it lived long enough to become the villain. For the uninitiated — or the younger folks out there — MySpace was basically like creating a personal homepage (also, a homepage is like the...main page for a website... oh God, I'm old). But you could customize colors and designs, have your favorite track playing on your page, post status updates, talk with pals by leaving comments, and, most notably, rank your Top 8 friends. MySpace, which still exists, collected a few notable pages from back in the day, and they'll give you a good picture of what things looked like.
You could personalize your profile page using rudimentary knowledge of HTML and CSS; the platform taught a generation how to code. That was part of the charm. It allowed users to express themselves and their interests by creating a singular space that was unique to them. It was made for people and not brand advertisers.
Now, I think the winds of change are blowing back in MySpace's direction. BeReal took off because it promised to be a social media site designed to make you do less curating. What if we had a curated social media site designed to do less? Instagram recently launched the ability to add songs to notes and posts. That's a cheap copy of a key MySpace feature: the ability to add a song to your profile page to match your mood. Instagram's Notes feature is like setting an emo AIM away message. Insider recently published research that suggests social media as we knew it is dying — regular people are posting less while still checking their feeds. Influencers post a ton, but they're basically just brands. Normal folks want to log in, check things, and log off. We're already doing that with sites not designed for that. That was pretty much MySpace's entire purpose.
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So, why not MySpace? Why can't we bring it back? Who says you can't go home? It is the perfect social media site for 2023. It is a snapshot of your life. You update it as you please, but it doesn't require constant attention and maintenance. If you log off for a two-week vacation, things would basically be as you left it. There wouldn't 15 different trends you missed. You wouldn't have to worry about gaining or losing followers because you took a break from posting because — gasp — followers weren't really a thing. You had the social hierarchy associated with your Top 8, and that was all you needed. The platform was far more focused on making a cool page and talking to your actual friends.
The real reason MySpace hasn't been revived is because the suits can't monetize it, but honestly, when has that ever stopped anything in tech?
This isn't just a rosy bit of nostalgia from me, though I admit that's part of it. I am the person, after all, who once dug up the remnants of his old MySpace out of dumb curiosity.
Beyond the nostalgia, I do truly think there's a real opportunity to shift how we interact with social media moving forward. MySpace does still exist in some form, so maybe it's a tall ask to have it rebrand into some 2023 version of its old self. Yet, the revived MySpace doesn't have to be MySpace. If everyone suddenly joined NoSpace, effectively a MySpace dupe for Gen Z, that would be just as radical. These days, people crave a more intimate online experience, and MySpace was just that.
Whatever happens, I'm certain about one thing. We have to keep the Top 8. Sure, it seems petty to rank your friends. But that was exactly what made MySpace so personal: The stakes were so low the only drama was figuring out who were the eight friends you considered closest.
In short: Reject modernity, embrace tradition — bring back MySpace.
Topics Social Media
