Myspace eyes comeback as an an 'antidote' to social media fatigue — but it may be a long shot

Myspace's owners are hoping to launch a comeback in a crowded and complicated social media landscape. The early 2000s platform would capitalize on nostalgia and rejection of the traditional social media experience. Analysts caution that Myspace could face tough competition to attract advertisers, evolving regulatory requirements, and a fundamentally changed consumer demographic. Its owners, Tim and Chris Vanderhook, co-founders of Viant Technology, recently appeared in a documentary, "Myspace," directed by Tommy Avalone, where they teased another "relaunch" after a previous failed attempt in 2013. "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," They said in the documentary. "And if that one doesn't work, we'll do it again." Myspace, co-founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, was acquired by the Vanderhook brothers in 2011. The platform is remembered for its quirky interface, customizable profiles, glittering layout, and everyone's first friend "Tom." Once the most popular social media website in the world, with 115 million visitors per month in 2008, it was quickly overtaken by Facebook and became a relic of the Y2K era. The Vanderhook brothers attempted to "modernize" the platform by building an "entirely new Myspace." Still, with a revolving door of owners and the loss of advertisers to Facebook, the platform struggled. "It just became an onslaught of losses," Tim Vanderhook said in the documentary. "We lost a little over $150 million," Chris Vanderhook added. They didn't outline a clear timeline for rollout. If Myspace were to relaunch, it would be entering a complicated new era of social media, one in which the dominant players such as Meta's Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and Reddit, among others, are grappling with a wave of legal backlash as well as growing digital fatigue. "Excitement about Myspace's relaunch reflects nostalgia for a more analog time, when algorithms were less dominant in our lives," Kate Winick, a principal analyst at Forrester, told CNBC. "We're seeing this in recent moves by both brands and users towards smaller, more private social experiences that feel less built for the algorithm and more personal to the individual user, like the explosion of growth on Substack and private communities on Discord." Winick said. It also comes as millennials and Gen Zers are increasingly opting out of social media use, due to declining mental health and addiction driven by dominant platforms. Instead, they're looking to go offline, embrace analog technology, and yearn for the 90s and early 2000s. With these headwinds in sight, the success of Myspace hinges on some key factors, including attracting advertisers, sustaining user interest, and dodging a thorny regulatory environment. Myspace has to balance users' appetite for nostalgia with the clean interfaces, seamless discovery, and short-form content that have come to define modern social media.