You Can Still Find Your Old Myspace Profile. Here's How
Myspace — do you remember that? It's where everyone's favorite buddy Tom hung out. It's where you spent your days engaged in a Hunger Games-level battle royale for a high spot in your friends' Top Ten and then got high on the power of your own ranked list of people in your life. It's where you could upload playlists targeted at your crush.
Launched in 2003, the platform essentially ishered in the era of social media, attracting millions of users until Facebook became the site of choice.
If you're nostalgic for the era of glitter gifs and selfies without the help of a front-facing camera, we might be able to help. While we can't actually teleport you back to 2006, we might have a few tricks up our sleeve to help you figure out what your old Myspace profile was and give you a chance at uncovering that time capsule.
How to find your Myspace profile
A lot of Myspace features have been lost to time. Myspace messages prior to 2013 are gone, and the option to download old blog posts was sunsetted the following year. Myspace does, however, still let you look at your old profile — usually. You can still check it out as long as you didn't delete your profile at some point along the way.
If your profile is still on the website and you remember your username, finding it is a snap. Just type myspace.com/username into the search bar and replace "username" with the name you used to use on the platform.
This does not mean that you've signed into the site, but it does let you see the old pictures and messages from your friends on your wall. You can also go to the Myspace home page and type your old URL in the search bar. If your profile won't load from the URL or search, you can always reach Myspace via its help request form.
Use the Wayback Machine to view your old profile
If Myspace itself doesn't have your old profile stored, there may be another way: A tool fondly referred to as the Wayback Machine. If you were ever an active Myspace user, there's a good chance your profile has been saved to the archive.
To access it, visit the Internet Archive and look for the Wayback Machine on the homepage. For this trick, however, you will need to remember your old username. Type myspace.com/username into the Wayback Machine and wait for the magic to happen.
When it loads, you should be looking at a calendar of all of the years that the Wayback Machine has been around. If your profile was captured, that information will be shown at the top of the screen and you can navigate from there.
For example, if a profile was saved twice between December 5, 2008 and February 23, 2012 then you can go to December of 2008 on the calendar and click the blue highlighted number. Voila — your profile! Not every image may load and not every link may work, but it should be largely there.
A Myspace history lesson
Myspace might feel like it was a decade-long era unto itself, but the website was created in 2003 and only truly reigned supreme as the most popular social network between the years of 2006 and 2008. If you're too young to really remember it, pour one out for what you missed. It was the hottest place on the internet to keep in touch with friends, send the millennial version of a chain letter to twelve people you know or risk bad luck forever, and learn some basic coding skills to keep your profile looking fly.
So why isn't Myspace still around, if it was that great? One simple answer: Facebook. Myspace started to face a steep decline in users as Facebook rolled out account creation options to more than just university students. As time went on Myspace was sold into new ownership and decided to try and stay relevant not by clinging to its old base, but by pursuing a new one.
When Myspace music took over
However, it instead entered the era of Myspace Music, when classic profiles began to disappear and be replaced by bands and musicians in 2008. Yeah, that's right; Myspace does still exist... It's just mostly for musicians now, or people who like to keep tabs on up and coming bands.
In fact, it was even owned by one. Original owners Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe sold it to Rupert Murdoch in 2005. Murdoch would go on to sell to someone that could really try and get the site in sync: Justin Timberlake. He acquired the site in a joint purchase deal with Specific Media, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Timberlake did ultimately say "bye, bye, bye," to the networking website in 2016. It has changed hands a few more times since then, and is now owned by Time Inc.