Back in January 2004, Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolfe, Josh Berman and Tom Anderson launched an internet monster that devoured productivity, destroyed relationships, infected the minds of America’s youth and single handedly changed the internet’s landscape from a cold and bleak library of email and porn to a Vegas style strip complete with slutty pictures, disco lights, bad music, shotgun weddings and the drama, oh, the drama.  In January 2004, MySpace was born and so was the world’s obsession with social networking.  For better or worse.  It raised the most fundamental of questions, “will you be my friend?”  Yet, the social networking giant wasn’t as unstoppable as everybody thought.

It was still relatively uncharted territory; the internet.  Entrepreneurs and investors alike worked countless hours to figure out the next big thing.  So, when an obscure little service called MySpace hit the world wide web, it shook foundations and left many of those entrepreneurs and investors scratching their heads wondering if it could work.  MySpace’s answer was epic.

One month after its official release, according to MySpace.com, the site had already attracted more than 1 million unique members.  Those members were young; exactly what advertisers like to see.  Onehalfamazing.com reports that 74% of MySpace’s user base is under 35 years old.  Young people flocked to MySpace like masochists to Browns’ games.  It was like show and tell with millions of possible audience members.  MySpace allowed users to create a completely self indulgent web page capable of showing off every single little detail of his or her sad (and frankly boring) life.  But somehow we all needed it.  We, as a world, needed to think that people cared about our day to day lives.  Less than a year later MySpace.com touted more than 5 million unique members, each with a unique page and each just as addicted as the next.

The cultural phenomenon was under way.

In July of 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s massive media conglomerate, News Corporation, jumped on the bandwagon and purchased MySpace for $580 million.  If that sounds like a lot of money, it’s not.  Rupert Murdoch literally farts money.  Murdoch had a chubby the size of a Boeing 747 and, with 20 million unique users and a whole list of advertisers waiting to pounce, who could blame him?  He thought MySpace would be a limitless gravy train.  He was right; kind of.  With the support of News Corporation, MySpace became virtually unstoppable.  Only a perfect storm could topple the MySpace empire.  However, nobody knew that storm was brewing on the horizon, especially Murdoch.

Rupert Murdoch captained the MySpace ship into new territory, including a record label, a video platform and separate social networks for the United Kingdom and Australia.  Murdoch’s goal was to do to the internet what he did to other media; set his capitalist flag on every island imaginable.  But the new territory also brought more press, much of it negative.  MySpace was under scrutiny for allowing users to freely message and browse profiles.  MySpace basically became a giant, picture loaded phone book for sexual predators, scam artists, hackers and the easily addicted.  It was like an internet trailer park loaded with junkies and the socially insane.  Once MySpace’s users figured that out, they all left for greener pastures, mainly Facebook.

Three years after News Corporation purchased MySpace for $580 million dollars, Facebook overtook the social networking site with more unique visits from around the globe and so began the fall of MySpace.

The fall has been so quick, in fact, that MySpace’s co-president Jason Hirschhorn recently resigned after only four months on the job.  So what went wrong?

At the time, all we knew was MySpace.  We loved the gaudy profiles.  We loved the customization.  We loved connecting with old friends and spying on our lovers.  We loved it, because that’s all we knew.  We were just children discovering the candy store for the first time.

After six years of gorging ourselves on low quality sugary treats, we’re sick to our stomachs.  We quickly got tired of pages eye raping us with custom cursors, bright lights, sh*tty videos and terrible layouts.  Want to visit my profile?  No, your profile sucks, hick!  No, I do not want to be your “friend”.

MySpace was good for something however.  The site gave us the quintessential “MySpace Shot”, a picture taken typically in a bathroom mirror or via a weird angle as to hide the muffin top.  Countless men and women cried themselves to sleep when they discovered that their sexy internet hottie was nothing but an overweight used car salesman.  Ahh, those were the days.

MySpace did for the internet what VCRs did for television; it took worldwide medium and fundamentally changed the way it would be used, forever.  But, like the VCR, MySpace has been supplanted by better things.  People have moved on.  Unfortunately, the social networking site isn’t taking the news quite as gracefully as the VCR.  We’re not saying MySpace is bad but it’s time to put the ole girl out of her misery.

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