For anyone who spent hours customizing their Myspace page and ranking their Top 8 friends, its planned comeback will be welcome news.
Brothers Chris and Tim Vanderhook, whose company acquired the social media platform for $35 million in 2011, have revealed plans to relaunch it.
The brothers confirmed the move in the new documentary Myspace, which explores the meteoric rise and sudden fall of the pioneering social network.
‘We still own Myspace,’ Tim said in the documentary, according to People.
‘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.’
While the announcement may be music to millennials’ ears, the owners have not revealed a launch date, development timeline or which classic features could return.
Launched by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe in 2003, Myspace became the world’s largest social network before Facebook overtook it in 2008.
Users carefully ranked friends in a public Top 8 and selected songs that automatically played on their profiles
News about the relaunch quickly spread online, with one user saying: ‘Nobody today is emotionally stable enough to handle the return of the Top 8 friend list.’
Many questioned if they would be able to access their old accounts from years ago and hoped it would have the ‘old-school feel and leave out the algorithms.’
Myspace has remained online despite its dramatic decline, with successive owners, including Chris and Tim, repeatedly attempting to restore its popularity.
After acquiring the platform in 2011, the brothers spent two years transforming it into a music-centered service, but the redesign failed to win back users.
‘We built an entirely new Myspace,’ Chris explained in the doc, while Tim added, ‘We really tried to modernize it, but it was a different company at that point. It wasn’t the same Myspace.’
Before Tim and Chris took over, News Corporation bought it for $580 million in 2005 and sold it three years later to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for $35 million.
Chris said: ‘I think that there were a lot of people who were really just done.’
He explained that ‘the minute the deal closed, things just started unraveling. Everything that could go wrong [went] wrong.’
Brothers Chris (left) and Tim Vanderhook, whose company acquired the social media platform for $35 million in 2011, have revealed plans to relaunch it
Co-founder Tom Anderson famously appeared as everyone’s first friend
The brothers’ attempted revival suffered a major blow when every advertiser reportedly canceled its contract, with brands favoring Facebook over Myspace.
As Tim put it, ‘It became just an onslaught of losses.’
But for those who came of age in the 2000s, Myspace was far more than another social network – it shaped how they presented themselves online.
Users carefully ranked friends in a public Top 8, selected songs that automatically played on their profiles and connected with co-founder Anderson, who famously appeared as everyone’s first friend.
The platform also became a powerful launchpad for emerging musicians, including Adele.
Her career gained momentum after her friend Lyndon, whom she affectionately called ‘Mr Myspace UK,’ uploaded one of her demos to the site.
‘I was on it from, like, New Year’s Eve 2004 and it blew up because of Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys,’ Adele told E! News in 2008.
‘My best friend Jack was in Lily’s top friends, Lily was huge, and then I got spotted like that. That was literally it.’
