If you are a young Millenial, you might be thinking what exactly is MySpace? Because MySpace in many ways could be the social media equivalent of a one hit wonder. It burns bright for a while but then eventually fizzles out even though MySpace still comes with some presence on the web it is no more the titan of social networking it used to be. 

 

MySpace was released in 2003 and was started as a task by band of euniverse employees. MySpace quickly flew in the ranks and in 2005 it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for around 580 millions. 

The acquisition is at the time viewed as a deal that is good News Corporation but to visualize just how much MySpace fell from grace News Corporation later sold MySpace to Specific Media for 35 Millions. It’s was something really wrong with MySpace however the question remains what did exactly happen? Opinion varies but few characteristics remain in everybody's hypothesis. 

MySpace’s ad deal with Google for 3 years’ worth of advertisements nine hundred million dollars is often cited among the big problems that lead to MySpace falling out of favour having its consumers. 

One former executive of MySpace said: “It was a good deal however in the future it finished up not being so good” The problems with the advertising was that to be able to ensure that enough MySpace users visited Google so that they could receive their money they had to include more adverts and couldn’t really experiment flexibly with all the MySpace format. 

And this all happened about the time Facebook unveiled a new layout that is simple causing more people to jump onto Facebook and since April 2008 when Facebook overtook MySpace into the Alexa ranks MySpace just hasn’t been able to compete. Facebook and to a smaller extent Twitter, simply replaced it for most people. MySpace as had a resurgence that is small when singer Justin Timberlake stepped in as co-owner and also the site which is now being re-launched with strong emphasis on music. Whether this may shoot MySpace back within the rankings stays to be seen but for now MySpace stays a cautionary tale about the fleeting nature of social networking success.