I roasted MySpace hard back in the day, but now I kind of miss it. I was all too happy to move over to Facebook and leave MySpace behind.
For me, the exodus from MySpace to Facebook marks the inflection point were smaller internet communities died and were replaced with services from megacorps.
At the time, MySpace was an echo of free homepage sites on providers like AngelFire and Geocities. My friend group had moved over to MySpace from a custom site our friend hosted on a server in his living room. His web site did pretty much everything that MySpace did, MySpace just did it better.
I don't want MySpace back, but I do want some of the cool interactive content back that seems to all but have died out.
I can see why people might want it to come back, but I don't think bringing it back will bring back the good old days.
Much of that was made the early web less shit was people being more mentally stable by having most of their social interactions happen for real offline, rather than clinging like Harlow's monkey to a simulacrum of togetherness mediated via a screen like we do today.
MySpace was notorious for people with social problems who weren't getting out much. Bedroom musicians were able to share tunes and get buzz that they wouldn't have been able to achieve before, since they couldn't manage the in-real-life socialization needed for self-promotion.
My first paid software gig was making a famous person's MySpace page. I got my first software job because of this. So I have a real soft spot for MySpace.
They can try to bring back something resembling the MySpace experience, but they can't bring back the millions of songs they deleted in 2018 with no backup. That was a great crime against modern music history.
Pages with personality like that are not just examples of how bad UX can be, they are examples of how UX can be used as an artistic form of self-expression.
True, but it was all quite harmless. Today's perfectly designed web sites are made by folks who know exactly how to make you addicted to the algorithmic feed and whatnot.
Ah, MySpace, I think I made thousands of custom MySpace themes, hacking their complete lack of html escaping to change the layout. I wonder if they'd stil allow that same level of jankiness
Today we have no social networks. Zuckerberg has turned Facebook into.. frankly I don't even know what it is. But it's not about getting updates from your friends.
instagram took that place but he fucked that one up too by mutating it into a cheap tiktok clone instead.
Social networks are now just influencer/media produced slob to be consumed by the masses. A Youtube with shorter clips.
It's not an actual social network where you could find out what your friends are up to
I roasted MySpace hard back in the day, but now I kind of miss it. I was all too happy to move over to Facebook and leave MySpace behind.
For me, the exodus from MySpace to Facebook marks the inflection point were smaller internet communities died and were replaced with services from megacorps.
At the time, MySpace was an echo of free homepage sites on providers like AngelFire and Geocities. My friend group had moved over to MySpace from a custom site our friend hosted on a server in his living room. His web site did pretty much everything that MySpace did, MySpace just did it better.
I don't want MySpace back, but I do want some of the cool interactive content back that seems to all but have died out.
I can see why people might want it to come back, but I don't think bringing it back will bring back the good old days.
Much of that was made the early web less shit was people being more mentally stable by having most of their social interactions happen for real offline, rather than clinging like Harlow's monkey to a simulacrum of togetherness mediated via a screen like we do today.
MySpace was notorious for people with social problems who weren't getting out much. Bedroom musicians were able to share tunes and get buzz that they wouldn't have been able to achieve before, since they couldn't manage the in-real-life socialization needed for self-promotion.
> clinging like Harlow's monkey to a simulacrum of togetherness mediated via a screen like we do today
Damn that analogy hits hard.
I was curious too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow#Monkey_studies
My first paid software gig was making a famous person's MySpace page. I got my first software job because of this. So I have a real soft spot for MySpace.
I made a fun thing this week for nostalgia:
https://allthedamn.tools/myspace-profile-generator/
They can try to bring back something resembling the MySpace experience, but they can't bring back the millions of songs they deleted in 2018 with no backup. That was a great crime against modern music history.
Talk about rose-colored glasses and "the good ol' days". All I can remember are the animated gifs flash and spinning around on people's pages...
Pages with personality like that are not just examples of how bad UX can be, they are examples of how UX can be used as an artistic form of self-expression.
You still have that sort of expression on neocities. It's a genuine treat to see what people are building over there.
https://neocities.org/browse
I miss that quite a lot. For the past 20 years the Web has been a sterile wasteland full of minimalist white and grays and 0 personality.
That's what I miss. Some level of personality is desperately missing from modern alternatives.
True, but it was all quite harmless. Today's perfectly designed web sites are made by folks who know exactly how to make you addicted to the algorithmic feed and whatnot.
My friend Tom hasn't gotten in touch for a while.
While Hi5 and MySpace were interesting times, I don't care about the possibility of them coming back.
Ah, MySpace, I think I made thousands of custom MySpace themes, hacking their complete lack of html escaping to change the layout. I wonder if they'd stil allow that same level of jankiness
I can see large amounts of exploits and scams being a thing these days.
It already exists: https://spacehey.com/
PS: not a user, so caveat emptor
Sure to be as successful as the Digg resurrection lol
As a MySpace fan, I don't want it back at all. Can we stop this rehashing of memories and come up with something new?
Great for its time, but with the way the internet is, it will just turn in to another toxic echo chamber.
Next up: Toy Story 7, Andy finds a Sinclair ZX Spectrum in the attic and its missing its 16kb expansion module called Chippy.
It's not for you or me - it's for the AI companies so that they can have "human" content (good luck with that).
Sure. Get mega rich and buy it so you can do whatever you want with it, including shutting it down. Hell, make a GoFundMe for it, see what happens.
myspace was a social network.
Today we have no social networks. Zuckerberg has turned Facebook into.. frankly I don't even know what it is. But it's not about getting updates from your friends. instagram took that place but he fucked that one up too by mutating it into a cheap tiktok clone instead.
Social networks are now just influencer/media produced slob to be consumed by the masses. A Youtube with shorter clips.
It's not an actual social network where you could find out what your friends are up to