Launched on August 1, 2003, it was the first social network to reach a global audience and had a significant influence on technology, pop culture and music.

[5][6] In July 2005, Myspace was acquired by News Corporation for $580 million;[7] in June 2006, it surpassed Yahoo and Google to become the most visited website in the United States.

It was during this early period in June 2003, just prior to the birth of MySpace, that Jeffrey Edell was brought on as chairman of parent company Intermix Media.

[22] eUniverse used its 20 million users and e-mail subscribers to breathe life into MySpace[23] and move it to the head of the pack of social networking websites.

A key architect was tech expert Toan Nguyen, who helped stabilize the platform when Greenspan asked him to join the team.

[24] Co-founder and CTO Aber Whitcomb played an integral role in software architecture, utilizing the then-superior development speed of ColdFusion over other dynamic database driven server-side languages of the time.

[31] News Corporation had beat out Viacom by offering a higher price for the website,[32] and the purchase was seen as a good investment at the time.

ComScore said that a key driver of the site's success in the US was high "engagement levels", with the average MySpace user viewing over 660 pages a month.

The alliance's goal was to promote a common set of standards for software developers to write programs for social networks.

Google had been unsuccessful in building its own social networking site Orkut in the American market, and was using the alliance to present a counterweight to Facebook.

[42][43][44][45] By late 2007 and into 2008, MySpace was considered the leading social networking site, and consistently beat out its main competitor Facebook in traffic.

There are several suggested explanations for its decline, including the fact that it stuck to a "portal strategy" of building an audience around entertainment and music, whereas Facebook and Twitter continually added new features to improve the social networking experience.

[54][55] MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe reported that he had to fight Fox Interactive Media's sales team, who monetized the site without regard to user experience.

The volatility of social networks was exemplified in 2006, when Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal launched an investigation into children's exposure to pornography on MySpace.

In addition, MySpace had particular problems with vandalism, phishing, malware, and spam, which it failed to curtail, making the site seem inhospitable.

[61][62][63] News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch was said to be frustrated that MySpace never met expectations as a distribution outlet for Fox studio content and missed the US$1 billion mark in total revenues.

MySpace president Tom Anderson stepped down while Chris DeWolfe was replaced as CEO by former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta.

Furthermore, the opening of extravagant new offices around the world was questioned, as Facebook did not have similarly expensive expansion plans but still attracted international users at a rapid rate.

[70] Myspace registered its sharpest audience declines in February 2011, as traffic fell 44% from a year earlier to 37.7 million U.S. visitors.

[14] On June 29, 2011, Myspace announced in an email to label partners and press that it had been acquired by Specific Media for an undisclosed sum, which was rumored to be as low as $35 million.

[79] On February 11, 2016, it was announced that Myspace and its parent company had been bought by Time Inc.[17] On January 31, 2018, Time Inc. was in turn purchased by Meredith Corporation,[19] who went on to sell a number of Time Inc.'s assets, including (as it announced on November 4, 2019)[80] selling its equity in Viant, the parent company of Specific Media, back to Viant Technology Holding Inc.[81] In May 2016, the data for almost 360 million Myspace accounts was offered on TheRealDeal dark market website, which included email addresses, usernames, and weakly encrypted passwords (SHA1 hashes of the first 10 characters of the password converted to lowercase and stored without a cryptographic salt).

[85] As of October 5, 2024, Myspace was placed in a read-only mode of sorts, as no new articles have been published since early 2022,[86] However, most images on the site were broken, and existing songs also could not be played.

[96] Artists including My Chemical Romance, Nicki Minaj, Lily Allen, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry gained fame and recognition through Myspace.

On May 16, 2007, Myspace partnered with news publications National Geographic, the New York Times and Reuters to provide professional visual contents on its social-networking Web site.

[101] On August 8, 2007, Myspace partnered with satire publication The Onion to provide audio, video and print content to the site.

[102] On October 22, 2007, Myspace launched its first original web series, Roommates, which intended to give its users a television-like experience with the interactive benefits of the Internet.

[105] On March 10, 2010, Myspace added new features including a recommendation engine for new users that suggests games, music and videos based on their previous search habits.

BTIG (.com) analyst Richard Greenfield said, "Most investors have written off MySpace now," and was unsure whether the changes would help the company recover.

In 2009, MySpace began migrating from HDD to SSD technology in some of their servers, resulting in space and power usage savings.

[124][125] In November 2008, MySpace announced that user-uploaded content infringing on copyrights held by MTV and its subsidiary networks would be redistributed with advertisements to generate revenue for the companies.