Social networking site for creatives Myspace has been withering away for a long time.
Started in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris Dewolfe, the site was the place to be online.
How times have changed and the final nail in the coffin is news that a botched server migration has seen Myspace lose all data posted before 2015.
All data sounds bad, but in numbers that means 53 million songs posted by 14.2 million musicians and artists, along with posts from hundreds of millions of users.
Myspace was the internet’s early Facebook and was set to become an electronic archive of music, fashion and social trends for the early 21stCentury.
But now all is lost.
Diminishing return
“Due to a server migration files were corrupted and unable to be transferred to our updated site. There is no way to recover the lost data,” Myspace has Tweeted.
The gaffe opens the row about who owns personal data on line and who has the responsibility of backing up the files and keeping them.
Some people use their social media posts as a timeline of their thoughts, relationships and interactions with their loved ones that will be online forever.
Someone must pay for preserving those memories that add up to trillions of bytes of data floating around in the Cloud. Myspace has picked up the tab with a diminishing financial return for 16 years, but can social media users rely on someone else to act as custodians of their online lives for free and forever?
Familiar path
Myspace executives are familiar with data wipes.
In 2013, a relaunch of the site saw most of the site’s text content disappear. Music and images were unscathed in the hope that users would rebuild their communities, but the hoped for resurrection never came and Myspace’s user base has dwindled ever since.
Myspace is running a banner telling visitors: “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 apologise for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your backup copies. If you would like more information, please contact our data protection officer.”
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