Antony N Britt – Author

As some will know, before antonynbritt.com, I was a prolific user of Myspace. Now when I say Myspace, I don’t mean the second-rate music streaming service they have now. I’m referring to the days when Myspace gave you what was equal to a ready made website. Here, you could customise it to your desires, fill it with photographs and most important … post blogs.

I was a regular user from 2006 to 2010, a time when I posted over 400 blogs, gaining 100,000 page views and thousands of comments. I regularly topped the Myspace blog charts for the UK but Myspace was more than a blogging platform to me, it was a community.

You had groups, a network of friends, all which formed an integral part of the online family.

Unfortunately, these are now gone.

What happened was the incompetent mismanagement at the hands of the owners – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. People left in millions, departing to the more friendly Facebook as Myspace committed suicide. Groups were shut down, users had their profiles forcibly changed and the entire site became a pain to use. My once, pastel blue customised blog was now a generic white with no scope for formatting, the same as everybody else. Not that it mattered. Nobody was still around to read it, anyway.

I continued blogging on Myspace until September 2011. By then, the company was in the hands of pop star Justin Timberlake, a man intent on inflicting masses of streamed music of the banal kind he produces. He was not interested in blogs, nor cared that millions worldwide once lived within the Myspace community.

Users were unimportant … so he killed them.

After setting up this site, I still stepped back for a visit at least once a week, but it was hard seeing the neglect. Pages taking an age to navigate, and much content lost. You could tell the owners didn’t give a damn.

First to go were many of the photos on my blogs, thus rendering the text useless when referring to the pics. At some point last year, all the lovely comments I had received over the years, vanished. Then, in June 2013, Timberlake and co desecrated the grave.

A new Myspace had been launched, but most of the old users still wanted the classic Myspace. They were not interested in the music streaming site Timberlake was forcing on them. If they had wanted it, they would have gone to a half decent one. Still, on June 13, it was reported the entire classic Myspace had gone. Millions of blogs and photos – lost. Also, emails and comments, many of whom were from people now dead, were wiped.

Do they still exist? It was reported that new Myspace were asking users to vote if they wanted them back. How condescending. Complaints flooded in their thousands but the more vociferous ones resulted in simply having their new profiles removed.

What is sad is that I met so many good friends on there. Some have found me, but many will be gone forever. I can think of a number of lovely people from Myspace who have since died. While their blogs were still visible, my friends were so alive. Now, Myspace has trod on and killed them all over again.

Thank you, Timberlake and Myspace. You have pissed on the graves of millions.

Shame on you.

Nick