Myspace’s founders announced in a new documentary that they are planning to bring back the early-2000s social media platform, hoping to take advantage of cultural nostalgia for a smaller, more personal internet that was less algorithm-driven in order to revive the brand. With no specific timeline given (and a previous failed relaunch in 2013 that put them $150 million in the red), it’s an open question whether or not this relaunch will actually happen. But as we look back on the early days of social media with a rosy appreciation for simpler platforms that weren’t relentlessly optimized for endless scrolling, we have to ask: Is it actually possible to go back? Do users actually want what they say they want from social media? And what does that mean for how brands should react to the launch of new, niche social media platforms?
A Platform That Depends On User Posts Is Doomed
In the Myspace era, posting and updating was an inherent part of participating in the platform. But when we ran an overnight poll in Forrester’s ConsumerVoices Market Research Online Community, 41% of respondents said they post to their Instagram grid once a month or less, with similar results for Facebook (38%) and TikTok (47%).* Sixty-four percent of respondents described themselves as passive users, including the majority of Gen Z and Millennial respondents. Whether correlative or causative, the shift by major platforms toward passive consumption of entertainment has gotten users out of the habit of personal posting, making it unlikely that a platform centered around curating an individual profile like Myspace could succeed today. The algorithm era has functionally changed the meaning of an “active user” on social media.
Users Value Connection Over Content But Still Choose Content
Not seeing content from real people is a frequent complaint about social media platforms, and many of Forrester’s poll respondents repeated that trope, though the generation gap was wide: Overall, 56% said they mainly use social as a tool for connection rather than entertainment, but 70% of Boomers described it as a way of keeping up with family and friends, while only 29% of Gen Zers said the same. Gen Z might simply be more aware of their content consumption habits because, when asked if they’d be interested in a social media site that was specifically dedicated to people they know sharing the kind of content that was available on Myspace (small life updates, songs they’re currently listening to, who they talk to the most, etc.), just 16% of all our respondents said they were very interested in such a site.
Myspace Is The Beanie Baby Of Social Platforms
In a world where users aren’t actively interested in regularly posting or consuming personal updates, is there still a world where Myspace can transcend that structural issue on the nostalgic strength of its brand? Just one-third of our sample reported that they ever used Myspace (according to Comscore data from 2006, more than half of all Myspace site visitors were already aged 35 and up that year, suggesting that many young Millennials never adopted the site and went straight to Facebook), and only 20% said they saw any point in Myspace returning. When we asked readers to elaborate on their response, one commenter neatly summed up the prevailing sentiment: “I think there’s nostalgia for Myspace to return because every other social media site is hot garbage at this point, and people long for the social media and internet that ‘was’ instead of what currently is.” In fact, 17% of qualitative responses used the term “garbage” as a descriptor of the current state of social media platforms — but Myspace didn’t present as the solution. As the Princess Diana bear rapidly aging in a storage box in your attic would point out, age and nostalgia don’t automatically combine to confer value.
*Note: This poll was administered to a random sample of 446 online adults in the US, the UK, and Canada in Forrester’s ConsumerVoices Market Research Online Community between August 4–5, 2026. This data isn’t weighted to be representative of total country populations.
Walk, Don’t Run, When It Comes To New Platform Adoption
Brands that make riding trends part of their identity can make some waves in earned media with a smart, first-mover strategy. But most businesses should wait to see if their customers are actually active on a new platform before reallocating their ad spend or focus. New platform adoption frequently falls off after the initial surge in interest (how’s your BeReal strategy going?), and most brands will be better served by concentrating on platforms that already have a critical mass of users.
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