MySpace relaunch plans are gathering momentum, after the platform’s owners confirmed their intention to bring back the once-dominant social network, though no date or product details have been set. The announcement, such as it is, comes via a documentary rather than a boardroom press release, which tells you something about where this project currently stands.
The Vanderhook brothers, Tim and Chris, who own MySpace through Viant Technology (Nasdaq: DSP), stated in the film, titled Myspace and directed by Tommy Avallone: ‘We still own Myspace. 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.’
That last clause deserves attention. According to Quartz, Chris Vanderhook acknowledged the venture had bled roughly $150 million before a previous relaunch attempt collapsed. Tim Vanderhook described it as ‘an onslaught of losses.’ These are not the words of men who found the exercise straightforward. The question is whether the third attempt, whenever it arrives, has a different answer.
A Viant spokesperson told the BBC the company has no updates to share ‘at this time.’ Make of that what you will.
The Numbers Behind the Myth
It is easy to forget how dominant MySpace once was. Quartz, citing Fox Business, reports the platform drew around 115 million visitors per month in 2008. Facebook overtook it in global traffic around that time and surpassed MySpace in unique US visitors in 2009. By 2005, MySpace had already passed 22 million members, according to research cited by USA Today, the same year News Corporation bought it.
Viant Technology then acquired MySpace in 2011. Tom Anderson, one of the platform’s original co-founders alongside Chris DeWolfe and Jon Hart, sold his stake back in 2005 and is not expected to be part of any relaunch.
The ownership history has its own texture. People reports that Tim Vanderhook recounted how he and Chris wrote a fake press release claiming Justin Timberlake would join them to acquire MySpace from News Corp, confronting a News Corp executive at a conference in Palos Verdes to secure the deal. It worked. Whether that same audacity can move markets a second time is a different question.
What MySpace Relaunch Plans Must Get Right
The emotional case for a return is not hard to find. Monticah Hawkins, a 31-year-old real-estate agent in Atlanta, remembers the platform as a place of unfiltered self-expression. ‘You could be authentic on MySpace,’ she says. ‘Upload raw images, no filters. You could have snot coming out your nose and nobody would judge.’
Melissa Kristin, a TikTok creator with more than 900,000 followers who grew up on MySpace, is equally clear about what made it different. ‘It was all very much your own little world, your own corner of the internet,’ she says. She believes a revived version ‘would be best served for personal connection rather than performance.’
The strategic case is more complicated. Kate Winick, a principal analyst at Forrester, speaking to CNBC, argues the excitement ‘reflects nostalgia for a more analog time, when algorithms were less dominant in our lives,’ and points to growth on Substack and private communities on Discord as signs that users are gravitating toward smaller, more controlled spaces. That is genuinely useful framing: the market for anti-algorithmic social platforms does appear to be growing.
But Kevin McClary, head of performance marketing at Gorilla 76, cautions against any attempt to go toe-to-toe with Meta, TikTok, or X. ‘They can be successful and sustainable even as a niche platform,’ he says. His read is that MySpace should lean into its music identity and early-2000s aesthetic, noting that younger generations are already buying point-and-shoot digital cameras and MP3 players in pursuit of analogue texture they never experienced themselves.
Alex Mills, a social media strategist with campaign experience at Spotify and Adobe, offers the sharpest paradox: the feed-free, algorithm-free experience people romanticise was also ‘the thing that killed it.’ ‘People still want a feed,’ he says. ‘They just want a better one than the ones optimising for rage bait.’
My read is that both things can be true. There is genuine demand for less manipulative social spaces. There is also no evidence that demand translates into sustained daily usage once the novelty wears off. The Vanderhooks have lost $150 million learning that lesson once. The documentary suggests they know it. Whether knowing it is enough remains the only question worth asking when the relaunch date finally arrives.
