Summary:
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Myspace plans a comeback, with the Vanderhook brothers confirming in a documentary they will relaunch the platform soon.
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The documentary “Myspace” premiered at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival, featuring key figures who built audiences on the site.
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Myspace, once a pioneer in social networking, was bought by Specific Media in 2011 but failed to regain popularity.
Myspace is planning a comeback, and the news comes straight from the people who own it. Brothers Tim and Chris Vanderhook confirmed in a new documentary that they intend to bring back the social network that shaped online life in the 2000s, though they offered no date and no details about what a new version would look like.
“We are going to relaunch Myspace,” Tim Vanderhook said in the film, adding that the brothers are waiting for the right time.
The comments appear in “Myspace,” a documentary from director Tommy Avallone that premiered at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival in April and has no streaming release yet. The film features Myspace co-founder Chris DeWolfe along with Dane Cook, Jeffree Star and Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba, among others who built early audiences on the site.
Myspace launched Aug. 1, 2003, a year before Facebook, and became the first social network to reach a global audience. Users taught themselves just enough HTML to turn a profile into something loud and personal. Bands found fans without a label in between, and the Top 8 friends list caused more damage to middle school friendships than anyone likes to admit.
The Vanderhooks’ company, Specific Media, bought Myspace in 2011 with Justin Timberlake as an investor for a reported $35 million. A music focused redesign followed in 2013 and never brought the old crowd back. “It was a different company at that point,” Tim Vanderhook said. His brother noted the site had cycled through four sets of management before they took over.
Myspace still exists online as a graveyard of broken links and stranded posts. Viant Technology, the Vanderhooks’ ad tech company, owns it now.
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Tom Anderson, the co-founder who was everyone’s automatic first friend, is not expected to take part.
“And if that one doesn’t work, we’ll do it again,” Tim Vanderhook said.
