I never thought I’d be writing one of those “I remember way back when…” blog posts, but here I am, about to do that :) 

Myspace.com is probably the most popular blogging site, in fact, probably one of the most popular sites on the web.  It has 41 million registered users, and myspace.com ranks 19th on the list of “most-visited internet sites” (according to MediaMetrix).  Last July, it sold for $580 million.  Yes, $580 million.

The ironic part of all of this, is that during the internet boom of the late nineties, Myspace.com was one of the services that was considered one of the “spectactular dot com flameouts” (a term coined by Philip Kaplan, owner of fuckedcompany.com).  Back then, Myspace.com was this crazy service where it gave free disk space to over 9 million people.  The business plan involved making money by (a) the then (un)lucrative banner ads, and (b) a free-grace period, followed by a subscription service.  To top it off, there was even competition in this space (driveway.com, xdrive.com, freeway.com and freedrive.com to name a few) despite any proof that their business model was sound.

Their problems were two-fold: (1) online advertising wasn’t thriving during that time (targeted ads based on profile info.. huh?) and (2)  when the free grace period ended, people just signed up for new accounts. 

Myspace.com was then funded by an insane $14.6 million dollars and employed about 30 people.  In May 2001, myspace.com folded and customers were given a “generous” 3 day notice to download all their files before they were permanently deleted.

Fast forward to 2005, and myspace.com is the darling of the internet.  A thriving blogging community and an online advertiser’s wet dream — myspace.com houses the dream 14 to 30 year old demographic.  A cool $580 million dollars and Myspace.com went from bust to boom in just 4 years later. Talk about a big turnaround! The only things that are similar between now and then?  The domain name.