No company encapsulated the speed at which it was possible to rise to the apex of its field in this technological age more than MySpace.

 Formed in 2003, MySpace became an integral part of the rise to prominence of the new phenomenon of social media, and in its heyday it was considered to hold a massively influential place in modern culture.

 At the peak of its popularity, MySpace became locked in a tough battle with Facebook for dominance in the new arena of social media. And although both were espoused by hundreds of millions of people, it was often considered that, if Facebook was the social network intended for everyone, MySpace was aimed more towards a younger audience.

 The original purpose of MySpace was not as a social network, however. The original domain owner, YourZ.com, intended the site to be used by its users to store their data and share it with others.

When the owners decided that the site should be free for all to access, it quickly began to take off, and, as was common in those years of the early 21^st century, a number of its founders made fortunes out of the equity which they bought in the company.

 But by 2005, the hungry pack of multi-national media companies, which had largely stood by and watched the arrival of the new kids on the block, were circling around these enterprises, keen to get access to their vast audiences in order to market their own content and products to them. So Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and American media giant Viacom engaged in a bidding war to acquire MySpace, which resulted in NewsCorp winning the battle, at a price of $580million – today equivalent to £364million.

 For a while it seemed the massive investment was paying off as, a year later, the company was said to be worth three times its purchase price, and there was talk of a British version of MySpace being launched, and in August 2006, the company opened its one millionth account, and was going head-to-head with Facebook, which had diversified from its original audience of mainly college students into the mainstream.

 From 2008 onwards though, MySpace went into decline, many people attributing this to its lack of innovation in comparison with Facebook and Twitter, which at the time were constantly devising new ways of both attracting new users, and enticing existing ones to spend more of their time on their networks.

 Many users became alienated after MySpace signed a deal with Google to integrate advertisements on the two networks. The addition of more ads in a space already crowded with them made the site  slower – just at the time when Facebook unveiled a cleaner, streamlined version of its own interface.

Inevitably, NewsCorp eventually carried out a cull of senior MySpace management, before, in 2011, it tried to relaunch the site with a greater focus on music and entertainment content.

 Losses at MySpace doubled between 2009 and 2010, prompting NewsCorp to put the site up for sale, but no one bid the reserve price by the time a deadline for a deal to be struck arrived.

 Finally, in June 2011, it was acquired by Specific Media, whose majority shareholder is the singer Justin Timberlake. The purchase price was reported to be $35million.

 Its halcyon days clearly behind it, it has since been slowly re-inventing itself, and in September 2012 a new look for the site was unveiled, which showcases a selection of new music and video content, along with sections for news in these categories. Now, it is operating very much as a showcase where performers can post their material, and viewers can discuss it, making it akin to a mix between Facebook and YouTube.

So MySpace is back -  it now remains to be seen whether a new target audience is ready to take it to their hearts once again, or whether its time will be considered to have passed.

 This guest blog was contributed by Lesley Sampson, a freelance writer who is dead keen on all things to do with SEO and PPC services.

image credit @cdn.theatlantic.com/