WhereIsAtlas · Social networking
MySpace
The first social network to rule the world — for about three years
Acquired — Sold for $35M in 2011 after News Corp paid $580M; now a music-focused site.
Launched in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, MySpace let users build heavily customised profile pages, rank their 'Top 8' friends and — crucially — let bands upload music. By 2006 it was the most visited website in the United States, with over 100 million monthly users, and News Corp had paid $580 million for it.
The decline was rapid. Facebook's cleaner design won campuses, then everyone; spam and redesign whiplash drove users away; and in 2011 News Corp sold MySpace to Specific Media — with Justin Timberlake as a co-owner — for roughly $35 million, one of tech's most brutal write-downs.
A 2013 redesign repositioned the site around music and entertainment. It still exists, but its most famous relic is the 2019 disclosure that a server migration had quietly lost everything users uploaded between 2003 and 2015 — 50 million songs gone, a digital-library tragedy in miniature.
Quick facts
- Launched
- Aug 2003
- Founders
- Tom Anderson, Chris DeWolfe
- Sold to News Corp
- $580M (2005)
- Resold for
- ≈ $35M (2011)
- Peak users
- ≈ 115M (2008)
- 2019 data loss
- ≈ 50M songs from 2003–15
Sources
- Wikipedia: MySpace — Wikipedia (2026-01-10)
- MySpace loses 12 years of music — The Verge (2025-12-10)
- News Corp sells MySpace — BBC News (2025-12-10)
Related: blockbuster · dot com bubble · wework