Is Throwback Thursday Keeping MySpace Alive?

Now that we've reached the point where teens have decided that Facebook isn't cool anymore, its predecessor MySpace seems like a distant memory — which actually might be an asset for the site, which somehow still exists. In fact, thanks largely to Throwback Thursday, MySpace currently has 50 million monthly users. Really? Really? There are still 50 million people who spend time on MySpace?

Apparently, though, that number might be a little misleading. At least some of those 50 million people aren't really "on MySpace" so much as just logging back in to find old pictures they can post on other social media sites for Throwback Thursday.

"MySpace was an early photo-sharing platform," Tim Vanderhook, the CEO of Viant, which owns MySpace's parent company, explained to the Wall Street Journal. "So we still see a lot of people coming back to access old photos. They may not visit every day, but they come back once a week or once a month."

In other words, a hashtag created and primarily used on social media sites which are not MySpace is driving some significant portion of MySpace's traffic. Talk about sad.

Though I guess it's still better than the time that MySpace tried to blackmail us with embarrassing old photos in an effort to drum up some traffic. Who knew that soon a hashtag would emerge to make us actually want to show people those pictures?

In an even more bizarre twist, though, it seems that MySpace is still attracting new users, including young ones — at least according to Vianderhook. Maybe it's because they know their parents deserted it long ago, unlike Facebook?

Of course, there's no official word on how many of those 50 million monthly users are new, young account holders and how many are people popping in to grab some Thursday pictures. But either way, it seems that MySpace's traffic is increasing rather than trickling off into oblivion. Could they make a comeback? I suppose anything is possible in the age of the Internet.

Though considering MySpace has over one billion registered users and only 50 million monthly unique visitors...it would be a long comeback.