Before we get too wrapped up in a potential comeback by social media’s “grandfather”, MySpace, let me first say the answer to the question posed in the heading is a resounding “No”.

Yes, Justin Timberlake is attracting a lot of press and notoriety to MySpace since he was part of a group that acquired the company last June for $35 million. And yes, MySpace has gained a million users in over a month, while legitimately claiming to have more than 42 million songs in its library.

With these facts and stats, you are probably wondering how anyone can doubt the potential resurgence? But it might be a case of semantics more than anything else.

MySpace is publicly repositioning itself in a very public way as a community of music lovers and sharers, and not the social media behemoth it was five years ago. In the words of LL Cool J, don’t call it comeback.

If MySpace is to really re-enter the digital scene, we should all be all over it, similar to an athlete lacing it up once again. Many people forget Michael Jordan played for the Washington Wizards, but it was still a ton of fun while it was happening.

For MySpace, it seems the money is there, the content is coming and the users are following suit. Something about this seems both very right and a little bit wrong. Right in the sense that MySpace was such a trailblazer, it seems weird that social media has moved on without it. A little bit wrong because its latest incarnation is not what we recognize MySpace to be.

It will be fun and fascinating to watch MySpace’s rebound unfold before us, and here’s hoping they have moved beyond the problems that has plagued it to the point of near extinction the first time around.

The leadership seems to understand the art of reinvention, as oppose to trying to simply strike their luck once again against Facebook. This time, it could be different.

Tags: facebook, justin timberlake, myspace, sysomos

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 at 7:30 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.