Myspace has become sort of the joke of the social media world for taking off so rapidly after it launched in 2003 and then seemingly dying a slow and painful death. However, the joke may actually be on us.
The social network still attracts 50.6 million unique visitors each month, which is nothing to laugh at. While #TBT may fill your Twitter and Instagram feeds every Thursday, that Internet meme is actually helping to drive traffic to Myspace.
Many people have old photos on the site still, which they may go back and download off of their Myspace profiles, according to Tim Vanderhook, the CEO of Viant, Inc., the parent company of Specific Media, which owns Myspace, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
"Myspace was an early photo-sharing platform," Vanderhook told The Wall Street Journal. "So we still see a lot of people coming back to access old photos. They may not visit every day but they come back once a week or once a month."
And that's not all. Myspace also apparently has a "vibrant audience of 17 to 25-year-olds," according to The Wall Street Journal. Advertiser-friendly video is also doing quite well. In November, Myspace had more than 300 million video views, putting the site in 16th place on comScore's Video Metrix ranking. However, this isn't your mother's Myspace. If you recall, the social network announced its rebranding in 2012 after News Corp sold the company to Specific Media for $35 million, a fraction of the $580 million it bought it for. Justin Timberlake helped bring Myspace back as a hub for new music, and the social network ditched the uppercase "S."
If you hop on Myspace today, you'll also notice that there's a load of original content on the site as well. I never had a Myspace account and probably wouldn't use the social network to discover new music, but I did read an oral history of All That last year on the site, which also got some traction around the Internet, so maybe this whole nostalgia thing really is working for Myspace.
Image: Robert Scoble / Flickr
