How Myspace Influenced a Movement: From A Millennials Perspective
In 2003, I was 8 years old. Growing up with cousins both younger and older than me (with only 5–10 years in between all of us), we were always keeping each other up to date on the latest trends in each of our respective age groups. Wether it be games, playing outside, or sharing music, TV shows and other forms of entertainment, we were always in the know.
I remember the first time I discovered what I now know as Social Media. I walked into my cousin’s bedroom (who was 18 at the time), and saw her paying super close attention to something on her computer. When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was on MySpace.
She showed me how she could customize her page with different backgrounds, music, all kinds of colors, a biography, and got to connect with her friends all at the same time.
It all absolutely fascinated me, and I was about 12 years old when my parents finally came around to the idea of letting me put a personal profile on the internet.
But how did MySpace come to be such a trailblazer for different social networking sites that we know and use everyday 18 years later?
Created and founded in 2003 by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace was a pioneer for sites like Facebook and Twitter, which are now integral parts of everyday life. According to an article written by Lori Kozolowski published by Forbes.com in May 2012, the inspiration and creation of MySpace actually stemmed from a class project in Chris DeWolfe’s MBA program at the University of Southern California.
“As his last year as an M.B.A. student at the University of Southern California, DeWolfe took a course called “The Impact of Tech on Media and Entertainment.” In that class, for his final project, DeWolfe created “Sitegeist” — which had some of the elements of what would become MySpace. It was CitySearch meets IM meets email meets Match.com — combining community features onto one mega-site.” (Kozolowski 2012)
The ability to connect with undiscovered artists, your friends, family, even people from across the world that you don’t even know in an instant took the world by storm. It even taught users basic HTML skills without even realizing it just because of your pages ability to be customized. According to a chart published by ourworldindata.org, From 2005–2008 Myspace was the most popular social networking webpage, even ranking above Google in terms of number of visits to the site.
But now begs the question: What aspect of Myspace really influenced the creation of sites like Facebook & Twitter the most?
In my opinion, it had to be the ability to blog or post on your own page, as well as your friends/other users of the site. In an article written by Robin Swire back in 2014, he describes it perfectly when he says:
“Here you could share your deep thoughts and feelings, fill out a random survey that told your friends about how cool you were, or even stick a YouTube video in there. Your friends could then comment on it. MySpace also featured the iconic ‘bulletin board’ too where users could share inane stories and updates, paving way for the creation of the Facebook Timeline.” (Swire 2014)
The photo above shows what Myspace’s iconic bulletin board looked like. Now take a look at the picture below. Think about how much influence Myspace really had to make Facebook a reality, just based off looks- let alone the trends and similarities that followed.
In the end, we have Myspace to thank for a lot of things. It was the founding father and example that social networking founders like Mark Zuckerberg built their empires on, while simaltaneously bringing social networking as the main method of communication to an entire generation. It has influenced every day people like you & I, and even world leaders like the President of the United States.
Even though one day I logged out of Myspace for what I never thought would be the last time- I’ll never forget that day I sat on my cousins futon bed in our tiny hometown and discovered I could interact with people through a screen, at any time, any day. Who knew that one day my funky little Myspace page I got at 12 years old would influence not only my daily means of communication- but eventually my career?
