businessbriefs
9:36in productionCh. 1 · Built by insiders, shipped to the world/ 9:36 · ceiling 15 min
Rise & fall

Myspace

Tom Anderson & Chris DeWolfe · 2003

Myspace won the web — then lost it by treating users as traffic, not stakeholders.

Myspace was the first globally reaching social network. It grew fast, peaked at 115 million monthly visitors, and was acquired for $580 million. But it never built infrastructure, governance, or trust to match its scale — and collapsed when attention shifted to platforms that treated users as people, not pageviews.

Rise & fallThe internetSocial mediaPlatformsThe internet across the network →
Chapters & takeaways4
  1. 0:58
    Built by insiders, shipped to the world

    Myspace was built for insiders first — eUniverse employees — and scaled globally before any competitor.

  2. 2:30
    Peak traffic, no moat

    It held the

  3. 4:09
    Acquired for scale, not strategy

    News Corp paid $580 million in July 2005 — then treated Myspace as an ad inventory play, not a technology asset.

  4. 5:50
    Collapse in plain sight

    Facebook overtook it in U.S. unique visitors in May 2009 — and by 2019, Myspace had just 7 million monthly visitors.

Worth your time?

Yes. Study the whole thing.

3.5/ 5
What works
  • Its open profile customisation — HTML/CSS editing, embedded music players, and friend-list visibility — attracted musicians, fans, and early adopters, turning it into the dominant U.S. web destination by June 2006.
What does not
  • Myspace failed to retain users after 2009 because it could not match Facebook’s focus on identity, privacy controls, or algorithmic feed curation — and News Corporation prioritised short-term ad yield over technical investment.
Study it if
  • product managers
  • platform strategists
  • media investors
Skip it if
  • founders seeking inspiration
  • marketers looking for growth hacks
The written brief1 min read

What the company or idea is

Myspace was a social networking site launched on August 1, 2003, built by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe as part of eUniverse; its first users were eUniverse employees.

How it actually makes money

Myspace made money through advertising, primarily display ads and sponsored content; it did not charge users or take equity from musicians.

What works

Its open profile customisation — HTML/CSS editing, embedded music players, and friend-list visibility — attracted musicians, fans, and early adopters, turning it into the dominant U.S. web destination by June 2006.

What does not

Myspace failed to retain users after 2009 because it could not match Facebook’s focus on identity, privacy controls, or algorithmic feed curation — and News Corporation prioritised short-term ad yield over technical investment.

What to take from it

Growth at scale does not imply defensibility: Myspace proved global reach and cultural influence are possible without durable architecture, governance, or user trust.

Is it worth your time

Yes — as a case study in platform growth without product discipline, and in how acquisition by a legacy media firm accelerates strategic drift.

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