My Space was the first major social media company. At that time in my life, I was like getting bullied really bad, and then on my Space people like loved how I look looked up to me, like loved my style. It was a trip, and it was the first major social media company to collapse. The story of my Space was about a bunch of people who were really not that good at what they did, but we're successful. My name is Joanne McNeil. I'm a writer who covered internet culture since the early days of social media. Of all the companies I've written about, my Space is the most compelling. On my new podcast, Main Accounts the Story of my Space, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. The users just went from like zero sixty on, like I'm in ninth grade and I'm posting pictures from my friencing tournament to taking all of my regular friends off just adding like hundreds of kids with like dark emo bangs and an eyeliner just every day like hundreds of strangers. The social network often felt like a house party thrown when someone's parents were out of town. But life on my Space could be messy and chaotic. Now we have this concept of online safety. There wasn't that in the two thousands, and sometimes unspeakably tragic. Probably twenty minutes later, I just had a horrible feeling that ran through my entire body. I stopped in mid sentence and ran up to a room. At the height of its popularity, a quarter million users were signing up for new accounts every day. We were all figuring out how to live online together in real time. They made the Internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub, like I feel like a cool place and also slightly dame chers It's a wild West, you know. Way before bizdev deals for partnerships were coming along, things were just happening. What was this social media sensation? Who is MySpace? Tom? Why did news Court make a play for the social network? Rupert Murnock lost lots and lots of money on MySpace because it turned out it was actually not a good business. Why aren't people using MySpace now? I remember one day realizing that I had only been using Facebook for weeks and weeks and hadn't checked my MySpace at all. We'll explore all that and more, because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. If the beginning of Tila Tequila being on my radar as this MySpace influencer for being a queer woman of color, if that was like the promise of the Internet. The day that I saw that image of her doing a Nazi salute with a bunch of all right dirtbags, that was the nail in the coffin. And so I feel like that moment for me really crystallized where we started and unfortunately, where we wound up. Listen to main accounts the story of MySpace starting March fifteenth on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows
My Space was the first major social media company. At that time in my life, I was like getting bullied really bad, and then on my Space people like loved how I look looked up to me, like loved my style. It was a trip, and it was the first major social media company to collapse. The story of my Space was about a bunch of people who were really not that good at what they did, but we're successful. My name is Joanne McNeil. I'm a writer who covered internet culture since the early days of social media. Of all the companies I've written about, my Space is the most compelling. On my new podcast, Main Accounts the Story of my Space, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. The users just went from like zero sixty on, like I'm in ninth grade and I'm posting pictures from my friencing tournament to taking all of my regular friends off just adding like hundreds of kids with like dark emo bangs and an eyeliner just every day like hundreds of strangers. The social network often felt like a house party thrown when someone's parents were out of town. But life on my Space could be messy and chaotic. Now we have this concept of online safety. There wasn't that in the two thousands, and sometimes unspeakably tragic. Probably twenty minutes later, I just had a horrible feeling that ran through my entire body. I stopped in mid sentence and ran up to a room. At the height of its popularity, a quarter million users were signing up for new accounts every day. We were all figuring out how to live online together in real time. They made the Internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub, like I feel like a cool place and also slightly dame chers It's a wild West, you know. Way before bizdev deals for partnerships were coming along, things were just happening. What was this social media sensation? Who is MySpace? Tom? Why did news Court make a play for the social network? Rupert Murnock lost lots and lots of money on MySpace because it turned out it was actually not a good business. Why aren't people using MySpace now? I remember one day realizing that I had only been using Facebook for weeks and weeks and hadn't checked my MySpace at all. We'll explore all that and more, because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. If the beginning of Tila Tequila being on my radar as this MySpace influencer for being a queer woman of color, if that was like the promise of the Internet. The day that I saw that image of her doing a Nazi salute with a bunch of all right dirtbags, that was the nail in the coffin. And so I feel like that moment for me really crystallized where we started and unfortunately, where we wound up. Listen to main accounts the story of MySpace starting March fifteenth on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows