Myspace, or my____, whatever you want to call it or however you want to write it, has been around seemingly since the dawn of the web itself.
To younger users, while Myspace may be a relic of the technological Cold War post the dotcom boom which we never really knew of nor understood, other social networks have taken the plinth space away from the music-centric site.
And with Napster, now a paid for service as opposed to an illegal one - though it sounded like a great idea at the time, with peer to peer network of file sharers keen to get hold of the new pop beats of the late 90’s.
The memories are fond, but the notion that Myspace is even here on the web even still, a decade into the twenty-first century, is baffling to not only myself but to many others also.
Truth be told, though Myspace as a name and as a brand still rings the nostaligic bells of the past in our ever technologically fluid minds, it is simply that. A brand from the past, bringing about bands of the future; if you will excuse the wordplay.
Just like MSN Hotmail back in the day, it offers a sense of nostalgia to the younger generation, now in their late teens and early to mid twenties or so. But unlike Hotmail which evolved into the new Windows Live suite of products, competing with its rivals successfully and aiming to new levels, Myspace did not.
Myspace, however, evolved into a less-than service, promoting music and movies instead of the social debacle we all want from the web nowadays. But the userbase figures do not show an evolution as such; more so a genetic defect passed on from clone to clone in a detestable display of Darwinism gone mad.
While Facebook’s figures jumped by over 40 million in the same time that Myspace lost 30 million, it knew that is younger sister in the social networking world had the better advantage. It was the parents’ favourite; that is, if you count each and every one of the Generation Y as such.
There is no doubt that Myspace is still a huge repository for music though, whether upcoming or otherwise. But besides that, it has thankfully bowed out of the Generation Y game by ceasing to continue with the vast social media update-like activity that propelled it to fame in the first place.
For most, it serves as a memory to the past, and an open authentication feature of the future, allowing users to sign in under their dotsyhotsy15 username created in 2000, in a different world of peace, harmony and only the threat of homegrown terrorism to worry about.
Myspace isn’t dead, per se. It may be hemorrhaging users like a dying man on a hospital gurney left to bleed out. But it serves as a living will to what was ‘back in the day’: a time of innocence on the web, and only the occasional sex offender friending you out of curiosity of your overtly teenage profile picture.
