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Raw images, no filters: Why MySpace fans want it back as relaunch hinted
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Francisco VelasquezBusiness reporter, New York
Monticah Hawkins/Melissa Kristin
Monticah Hawkins, left, and Melissa Kristin in their MySpace days
For Monticah Hawkins, a 31-year-old real-estate agent in Atlanta, MySpace wasn't just a website – it was a ritual.
"You could be authentic on MySpace," she says. "Upload raw images, no filters. You could have snot coming out your nose and nobody would judge."
MySpace, once the world's biggest social network, is flirting with a comeback. Its owners, brothers Tim and Chris Vanderhook, say they plan to relaunch the platform, though no date or product details have been announced.
A spokesperson for Viant, which owns MySpace, says the company does not have any updates to share "at this time."
But just the idea of a comeback has stirred nostalgia among people who remember the MySpace days of more than 20 years ago as a place where personal pages were messy, loud, and deeply individual.
It has also caught the attention of creators like Melissa Kristin, a TikTok star with more than 900,000 followers, who grew up on MySpace and remembers it as a more personal digital space.
"It was all very much your own little world, your own corner of the internet," Kristin says.
That sense of autonomy shaped how she expresses herself online today, and she believes that a revived MySpace should avoid the algorithmic, pay-to-play dynamics that dominate modern platforms.
"It would be best served for personal connection rather than performance," she says.
"Just to recapture that high we felt as millennials when we got all the friend requests and comments. It helped us feel connected."
Getty Images
MySpace launched in 2003 and quickly became a cultural hub, helping artists like Arctic Monkeys, Adele, and Nicki Minaj find early audiences.
But its highly customised pages, auto-playing music, and busy layouts eventually became a liability.
Facebook's cleaner, simpler design pulled users away, and MySpace struggled through redesigns and ownership changes before fading from mainstream use.
Marketing experts say any comeback will depend on learning from that history.
Dr Alexa Fox, a marketing professor at the University of Akron, says the platform was a "first mover" in social media, but one that became too complex for many users.
She believes MySpace's original strengths – music, creativity, and personal expression – could still resonate, but only with more accessible design.
"It could be more user-friendly, with less coding involved," she says.
Alex Mills, a social media strategist who has led campaigns for Spotify and Adobe, says the very thing people are nostalgic for, a feed without algorithms, was also "the thing that killed it."
"People still want a feed," Mills says. "They just want a better one than the ones optimising for rage bait."
Kevin McClary, head of performance marketing at Gorilla 76, believes MySpace should not try to compete directly with Meta, TikTok, or X.
"They can be successful and sustainable even as a niche platform," he says, arguing it should be rooted in 2000s culture.
McClary says leaning into MySpace's music identity could be a smart move, from profile songs to 2000s-themed festivals and merchandise.
He believes the audience could be broader than former users, with younger generations embracing the early-2000s aesthetics they never experienced firsthand.
"You see younger generations now buying old point-and-shoot digital cameras, MP3 players, even film cameras," McClary says. "They clearly have an interest in the past."
MySpace could meet users where that trend is...