Myspace's owners confirmed this week they're actively planning a relaunch. Chris and Tim Vanderhook, the brothers who bought the platform back in 2011 through their company Specific Media, now part of Viant Technology, went on record saying it plainly. "We still own Myspace. We are stewards of the Myspace brand at this point, and we are going to relaunch Myspace." No firm date yet, they say they're waiting for the right moment, but the intent is real.
What's on the wishlist is the part that got me. Customizable profiles with your own background and layout. The Top 8 friends list, ranked. A signature song that auto-plays when someone lands on your page. A chronological feed with no algorithm deciding what you see. Co-founder Chris DeWolfe has been pretty direct about the pitch, positioning it against algorithm-driven feeds that he says are what makes modern social media compulsive in the first place. And it's not just nostalgia talk in a vacuum, Myspace's own user count reportedly went from around 200,000 in 2023 to roughly 6 million by early this year, mostly people in their 30s and 40s who are tired of the algorithm treadmill. Tom Anderson, the guy who was everybody's first friend, isn't part of this relaunch, which feels like the one real loss in the whole plan.
Why I actually care about this one
I'm not going to pretend I'm neutral here. I grew up on Myspace in high school, and it was a genuinely different kind of internet than what we have now. Your Top 8 was a social contract. Move somebody down a spot and you'd hear about it the next day at school, no exceptions. I taught myself basic HTML just to get an animated background working right or get a song to auto-play the second someone opened my profile. Nobody made me learn that, I wanted my page to look like mine. That's the part I think gets lost talking about "social media" as one category now. Myspace was a place you built. Facebook and Instagram are places you scroll.
And that's exactly why I'd go back in a heartbeat if they do this right. I already barely open Facebook, and when I do it's mostly frustration. Watching a video there now feels like half the screen is an ad, the actual content gets squeezed into whatever real estate is left, and you can't get through a scroll session without three sponsored posts breaking up your feed. That's before you even get into what Meta does with your data behind the scenes. I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way, the fact that Myspace picked up 6 million users without even relaunching yet says people are already looking for the exit.
Can it actually hurt Facebook
Here's my honest read on whether this actually threatens Facebook. It depends entirely on execution, and execution is exactly where old Myspace fell apart the first time, remember the site used to crawl to a stop because of how much custom CSS people crammed into their profiles. If the new version keeps the creative freedom and the algorithm-free feed but runs on modern infrastructure that doesn't buckle, and if it stays lighter on ads than Facebook's current mess, that's a real alternative for people my age who already miss what social media used to feel like. If it ships half-built or gets loaded up with its own ad problems six months in, it'll be a nostalgia blip that fades by next summer. I want to be wrong about being skeptical. I'd genuinely like a version of the internet back where my profile was mine, not a feed algorithm's guess at what keeps me scrolling five more minutes.
A personal take on a developing story, my opinion, your mileage will vary. Verified August 2, 2026 (Source). For an app that stays out of your data entirely, the studio's lineup is at jcmobileappstudio.com/apps.
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