That was actually the most interesting part of MySpace. Sure, you could get bad designs, but there was an ability to express one's self that you can't do beyond the header image--much like the amateur GeoCities aesthetic we admire. MySpace and GeoCities were why and where I started to learn CSS.

There are tens of thousands of people who first learned to code by customising their MySpace page. They might have made some seriously ugly stuff but that feature was amazing for getting people in to the tech industry. It was brilliant.

Definitely. MySpace was killed because Facebook was superior. And Facebook was superior because it didn't look like shit, people used real names and real photos of themselves, and they did that because it was only available to university students so it was quite a bit more private than MySpace. It didn't really have anything to do with ads.