Last month, Myspace sheepishly admitted that it had "accidentally" deleted 12 years' worth of its users' music during a server migration; now the Internet Archive has revealed that they were able to preserve two years' worth of that music, 50,000 tracks from 2008-2010, downloaded by an anonymous group of academics for research purposes. Read the rest
It's been a year since the music links on Myspace stopped working; at first the company insisted that they were working on it, but now they've admitted that all those files are lost: "As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies. If you would like more information, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Dr. Jana Jentzsch at DPO@myspace.com." Read the rest
In 2007, the Guardian's Victor Keegan published "Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?" in which he enumerated the unbridgeable moats and unscalable walls that "Rupert Murdoch's Myspace" had erected around itself, evaluating all the contenders to replace Myspace and finding them wanting. Read the rest
Myspace picked a symbolic day to stop tweeting: September 11, 2017. What happened? Are they among the exodus to other cooler platforms like everyone but the most hopelessly addicted? Maybe they got sick of the porn spam and the cesspool of trolling all-stars, aka verified users? Read the rest
Justin Timberlake just unveiled a video that shows off the new MySpace beta.
It appears that they're hoping to build on their popularity with musicians and the UI looks pretty nice. No word yet on when this will be open to the public. Read the rest
Today, the FTC announced a settlement with Myspace, involving charges that the social networking service misrepresented how it protects users' personal data. The settlement "bars Myspace from future privacy misrepresentations, requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy assessments for the next 20 years." Ed Felten breaks it down here. Read the rest
