The IT Nerd

MySpace? What’s that you ask? Well, for those of us who have been around for a while, MySpace was the social network to be on. This was long before Twitter and Facebook to give you an idea of how long ago it was. I had completely forgotten about them until this story popped up where MySpace tried to do a server migration, but…..

Myspace, the once mighty social network, has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet.

The company is blaming a faulty server migration for the mass deletion, which appears to have happened more than a year ago, when the first reports appeared of users unable to access older content. The company has confirmed to online archivists that music has been lost permanently, dashing hopes that a backup could be used to permanently protect the collection for future generations.

More than 50m tracks from 14 million artists have been lost, including songs that led to the rise of the “Myspace Generation” cohort of artists, such as Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys and Yeasayer. As well as music, the site has also accidentally deleted pictures and videos stored on its servers.

Okay. Let’s be clear on one thing. MySpace to a huge degree is a footnote in the history of the Internet at this point. But the fact that years and years of history appears to be gone is just mind blowing. I cannot imagine how a project like a server migration would not have backup plans in place to ensure that content didn’t go into the ether forever. And for that reason, rumors have circulated that this was no accident. I’m not going to go down the conspiracy theory path. Instead, I would say that if you have content on any social network and you want to ensure that you always have a copy, you should back it up. A lot of social networks have this option and you should look into what you have available to you you.

How the mighty have fallen. Myspace which used to be at the top of the social networking universe has hit hard times since being bought by News Corp. Today, it was announced that half of the Myspace staff has been laid off in a desperate attempt to keep themselves alive:

MySpace CEO Mike Jones today announced a “significant organizational restructuring that will result in a 47 percent staff reduction across all divisions globally and impact about 500 employees,” confirming many rumors that the News Corp.-owned social network would be going through heavy layoffs before possibly seeking a new buyer.

Formerly a social-networking sensation, MySpace lost more and more ground to Facebook over the past few years until it finally underwent a massive redesign that focuses on pop culture media-sharing for young users rather than attempting to be a universally appealing social network.

I’m not a fan of social networking sites myself. But I can’t remember the last time I even thought about Myspace. It’s so three years ago. Facebook is the king of social networking. Until something comes along and displaces it. Any bets on what that might be?