I bumped into this Twitter page today! A huge pang of nostalgia hit me. It is about the good old MySpace Memories. And then I thought, why not look back at those good old days.
Am sure am not alone in this! Immediately I rushed to check my MySpace page, but unfortunately, It didn’t go through, either I have been deleted, or MySpace is just rude to me. It says my username does not exist! And that my email is not associated with any account. I find this strange because I was their number one fan back in the mid-2000s. They should treat me better. I just raised a ticket.
Anyway, we are the generation that was lucky to see technology evolve from basic communication and data transfer to the now complicated and creepy Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The social media has been on the fore of the Tech evolution, in fact, the social media space has evolved faster than any other sector in Technology. Thanks to the development of computers and the advancements in the smartphone technology.
We are the generation that learnt to use the mouse, joystick, keyboard etc. the hard way. It was a must-have. We are a lucky generation that has seen the rapid technological changes in the world.
Then In Came MySpace
Until 2003, teenagers were using the internet to communicate by sending Instant Messages (IM), joining chat rooms, and gaming sites through email.
Online social interaction was mostly personalized or one-on-one within small groups. Then the millennium came with the idea of online social networking. The first online community was the “Whole Earth Lectronic Link (WELL) that was started way back in 1985 by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant.
The user groups were formed around a common bond amongst the members like games, politics, work, hobbies etc.
Then in came MySpace. MySpace was not the first virtual community to develop into a social network as we know it today, but It was the most popular around the time.
MySpace hosted groups of people linked together by a common interest. It reduced the world to a global village by connecting people from all over the world. MySpace achieved this with a difference. It incorporated pomp, style, colour etc. And above all, it gave the user the power to customize their walls to whatever they liked. All you needed was some basic HTML skills.
Thanks to the hip founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe who thought it is important to add some glitters, and colour in the otherwise dull user groups.
Brief Story of MySpace
MySpace began in July 2003 as a platform for sharing music. The site suddenly appealed to the teenagers and people under the age of thirty. This age group was made up of tech-savvy individuals of the time which led to MySpace rapid growth.
Rupert Murdock’s News Corp Purchased MySpace for 580 Million dollars in July 2005. At the time, MySpace was the 6th largest website in the world in terms of monthly visits. In essence, MySpace was receiving as many page views as Google, which was by then the internet giant. Everyone seemed to be hanging out at MySpace.
Good old days with MySpace
Facebook may have won the social media wars, but it is far from the experience we got from MySpace. I was a MySpace addict 14 years ago, before the days of Facey-B, Snapchat and Instagram.
Looking back, I would say MySpace offered its members more freedom, compared to the latest social media networks. The current mediums are very rigid like Twitter has a post character limit, Facebook has this dull blue, grey and white look. Argh! Quite annoying!
However, looking back, at my personal MySpace wall, the photos, videos and audio files are just a priceless piece that I will forever cherish. MySpace was an exciting debut to the social media networks; it defined what social media is right now.
Now let us take a trip back to the mid-2000s when MySpace was a must-have for all teenagers. What do you remember?
My ten most Cherished MySpace Moments
There were some unique characteristics of MySpace that made it special, here are some of the ten most cherished moments in MySpace.
1. Feeling bad when your friend removes you from the top 8 friends.
It was drama when you find out your friend has removed your profile from his or her top 8 friends.
I remember having one day when I fought with my buddy in school, and I couldn’t wait to get home and remove him from my top 8 friends list. Ohh... good old days!
You could have hundreds or even thousands of friends, but those that made it to your list of top 8 were proudly displayed on your profile. These choices always caused drama. Your girlfriend would ask why you are appearing at number 1 on the list of another girls’ Myspace!
The Top 8 spot was a make or break for relationships back then!
Image credit: Usagi/MySpace
2. Finding the Best Background took Days or weeks sometimes.
MySpage walls were the most colourful of all social media Apps back then. MySpace gave its users total control over the page. With basic HTML knowledge, you could come up with a very conspicuous profile.
A lot of time and creativity was spent in design the custom look of MySpace wall. It took hours, and sometimes days just to settle on a colour, pattern, glitters and background theme. The key ingredient was the wallpaper.
Just glancing at your friend’s wall would give you hints of his or her personality. The girls' walls were mostly pink with glitters and all that. While guys mostly had horror, game or funny memes on their profile.
But after hours of design and re-design, this is what you come up with!
3. Do you remember the “Who I’d like to meet” hints?
This feature would let the world know exactly who you are. It enables you to express your individuality and allow you to pick some notable role models or people that you admire most. It could be a hero, an author, a celebrity etc.
4. How about these emojis, do you have a recollection of them?
These were the original Emojis, from which the latest emojis were developed. The good old MySpace will forever be missed. A look at these emojis gives me goosebumps when I remember how we used to over-use them on posts.
It seems like a long time ago. Fourteen years ago, some people were just born or were too young to comprehend. The new social media icons, emoji and memes have killed the thrill of the original emojis. I particularly loved the laughing green emoji and the green alien. The new-look MySpace is not even close to this.
5. Remember the Music Player?
MySpace was primarily designed for hosting music. The music player was the bad boy of MySpace! It is what made MySpace stand out at the time when music copyright laws were stringent.
The player was the darling of many, as it provides continuous background music as you work on your weird design skills on your profile.
6. Weird Usernames with reverse Russian Characters.
It is only on MySpace that creatives would come up with such usernames. By that time, comment tagging was yet to be invented. Because it would be hard to tag such a name in your comment, you would spend a whole day looking for the reversed R and N on your keyboard.
Remember we didn’t have phones; thus you would have to do a Google search for the special characters. I remember spending hours in the library with my buddies trying to come up with new HTML hacks and tricks for developing killer usernames and profile pages.
7. Aaargh…! Not again!
https://twitter.com/Myspace_Memory/status/316555219217555456?s=20
Back in the days, bugs were a common thing even in big companies like Microsoft Windows. MySpace was not an exception. You would get this error message every so often that we were used to it. All we did was to refresh the page and wait for a few seconds then you resume posting.
I wonder whether the technical team were picking up all these millions of reports!
8. What was your income?
https://twitter.com/Myspace_Memory/status/315117197590683648?s=20
£250,000 was the income on my profile for a very long time. I still wish I could earn such an amount! Social media is cool, you can lie about anything, and nobody will even be bothered!
What would someone who earn such an amount be doing online? That was goofy when I think about it from an adult’s perspective.
9. Did you delete Tom from your MySpace List?
Does the face look familiar?
That was Tom, the co-founder of MySpace how I miss this smiley face. It was quite reassuring. I even was afraid that if I delete or unfriend him, I would lose my account
10. The Exodus – Mass migration to Facebook
Then the new kid on the block came in, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. Everybody moved to Facebook. The biggest blow was when Facebook introduced games like Farmville. This move immediately turned MySpace into a ghost town.
A few die-hards still frequent MySpace. But nowadays, like Yahoo, it is more of a new site than a social media network. All the thrill, pomp, glitters are gone.
MySpace will forever be remembered for the impact it had in our life when the millennium was just kicking in.
Do you remember the last time you logged into your MySpace account?
