MySpace Starts #TBT Campaign: Will It Work? | Velocity Agency

Myspace is giving long-time social media users the ultimate “throwback Thursday” experience.

The aged network has been trying to reach a new audience and take back their old one for almost 10 years, and are using your old, embarrassing MySpace photographs to do it.

“Myspace has been reaching out to connect past users to re-engage them through personalized experience,” a spokesperson for MySpace stated in an interview with Mashable.

The site, which hit peak popularity in the early 2000’s are now e-mailing former MySpacer’s decade old photos of themselves labeled “the good, the rad, and what were you thinking?” with a link connecting to their old profiles.

Although a humorous and enjoyable marketing approach, will the personal touch land MySpace back in the elite networks?

Right now, no one can be sure. Within the past several years, the dated social site has been redesigned, updated, lost focused, regained focused and yet none of the reconstruction of MySpace has caused any stir in their low web traffic. A disappointing ranking of 982 total web traffic as of May 2014, to be exact, that has plateaued for roughly a year.

With all of the more modern sharing networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Tumblr, there is intense pressure to keep up with the constant changes and MySpace has fallen behind to this concept. It isn’t just that the site itself is lacking in new features, but that the branding of the network is having trouble identifying its purpose. Formerly music-oriented, turned social engagement, flipped back to music-oriented, MySpace’s identity crisis could be playing a major role in the company’s failure to flourish. A flaw they’ve had since the company began in 2003.

The history of MySpace is not much of a story as it is a short chapter. Two music-loving computer nerds by the name of Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson joined forces to create one of the first big social networks. At first, MySpace was crushing it in the numbers. In 2006 it passed Google as most visited website in the U.S. which is mind-blowing if you consider Googles epic popularity today. Everyone who was Anyone had a Myspace page and tweens and teens relished in the creative freedom of choosing ones own music, fonts and backgrounds on their personalized page.

All was right in the world of Myspace until 2006 when Facebook showed up to the social network scene with the ultimate game-changer, and Myspace has been in a rapid decline ever since.

However, they haven’t given up just yet. Justin Timberlake has apparently taken up quite a bit of stock in the company (a rumored $35 million worth) and has put publicity plans into motion recently with a string of A-list celebrity attended parties and expensive advertisements.

Will all of these tactics work? Or is MySpace going to continue to be that expensive work-in-progress house that never quite gets finished? In the end it will all boil down to brand loyalty, from not only the investors but from previous users of MySpace. Maybe this time around we can keep our Ed Hardy trucker hats out of future pictures.

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Velocity Agency is a digital marketing and advertising firm specializing in digital and internet marketing & advertising, print, web design, graphic design, film, and HD video promotion and post-production. Velocity serves clients all over the United States from our Metairie, LA office just outside of New Orleans by strategically implementing proprietary tools and techniques to get you the most conversions for your business through lead generation, cost-per-acquisition, and top line revenue.