MySpace

A place for friends

Zombie
19902026

MySpace was the world's biggest social network in the mid-2000s, launched in August 2003 and bought by News Corp for $580 million in 2005. Facebook overtook it in 2008-2009, News Corp dumped it for $35 million in 2011, and it survives today as a music site nobody visits: a textbook zombie.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2003
  2. August 2003 Launch
    MySpace launches

    Built inside eUniverse to compete with Friendster.

  3. 2005
  4. 18 July 2005 Acquisition
    News Corp announces $580M Intermix acquisition

    MySpace becomes the centrepiece of Fox Interactive Media.

  5. 2006
  6. 11 July 2006 Peak
    Most-visited website in the United States

    MySpace passes Yahoo and Google in US visits (Hitwise).

  7. 7 August 2006 Funding
    Google pays $900 million for search rights

    A three-year advertising deal that briefly makes the News Corp purchase look like a bargain.

  8. 2008
  9. May 2008 Decline
    Facebook passes MySpace in worldwide visitors

    The crossover point; US follows in May 2009.

  10. 2009
  11. 16 June 2009 Decline
    MySpace lays off 30% of staff

    Almost 1,400 people go as traffic and ad revenue slide against Facebook.

  12. 2011
  13. 29 June 2011 Acquisition
    News Corp sells MySpace for $35 million

    Specific Media buys; ~94% loss on the purchase price.

  14. 2016
  15. 11 February 2016 Acquisition
    Time Inc. acquires Myspace parent Viant

    The brand changes hands again, this time for its ad-targeting data.

  16. 2019
  17. March 2019 Incident
    12 years of uploaded music lost

    A server migration destroys files uploaded 2003-2015: an estimated 50 million songs.

The site through time

Read the old front page here, in one piece, from our own capture: myspace.com, 1 June 2007 →

Browse myspace.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2003 2007 2011 2015 2019 2023 2026 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

eUniverse / Intermix Media 2003–2005 Founded
News Corporation 2005–2011 Acquisition, $580M Via acquisition of Intermix Media, announced July 18, 2005
Specific Media 2011–now Acquisition, $35M Later Time Inc., then Viant/Meredith

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Monthly active users ▲ 75.9 million December 2008 Reported US unique visitors at the peak (comScore)

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Our analysis: MySpace was never formally shut down; it bled users to Facebook from 2008 onward and survives as a music-focused zombie site. The 2019 server migration that lost 12 years of uploaded music erased most of what made it historically valuable.

History [edit]

The first giant

MySpace launched in August 2003 out of eUniverse, an LA marketing company, built in months by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe to out-Friendster Friendster. Where Friendster policed its users, MySpace let them run wild: custom HTML profiles, glitter graphics, autoplaying songs, and Tom as everyone's first friend. It became the home of emo bands, scene kids and a generation's self-expression.

$580 million up, $35 million down

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought MySpace's parent Intermix for $580 million in July 2005, and for a while it looked cheap: in 2006 MySpace was the most-visited website in America. But the product stagnated under corporate revenue targets while Facebook shipped features. The crossover came in 2008-2009, and the collapse was fast. News Corp sold MySpace to Specific Media (with Justin Timberlake attached) for $35 million in June 2011. The site still exists as a music community, which makes it the canonical zombie: alive in DNS, dead in culture. In 2019 a botched server migration destroyed every song, photo and video uploaded before 2016.

Similar projects

Friendster The social network that came first 2002–2015 Orkut Brazil's living room, built in a 20% project 2004–2014 Yik Yak Anonymous, local, and impossible to moderate 2013–2017 Google+ The social network everyone was signed up to and nobody used 2011–2019 Miiverse Nintendo's hand-drawn social network 2012–2017 Bebo The $850 million write-off 2005–2013

Sources [edit]

  1. News Corporation to Acquire Intermix Media, Inc. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 18 July 2005 [archived]
  2. News Corp. Takes Bath In Sale Of Myspace NPR 29 June 2011 [archived]
  3. Myspace Acquired, CEO Out: Email From Mike Jones To Employees TechCrunch 29 June 2011 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).