Can deleted fans hurt MySpace?

"MySpace squandered the only thing it had left."

That is the verdict of Onesheet founder Brenden Mulligan, who believes the social media sites decision to delete fan bases from each artist page is another bad decision in a long line of errors.

"What matters is that MySpace has made increasingly bad decisions for too many years to every hope that they’ll become relevant again," said Mulligan, on Tech Crunch.

"Their latest bad decision shows how detached they are from the little value they still offer the entertainment industry."

After a Justin Timberlake led launch a few weeks ago, the erased audience which bands have built since the sites original launch in 2003 means each artist must now start from scratch.

Wasting data gathered during the past decade appeared too much for Mulligan, who was unwavering in his disapproval of the move.

"To put it simply, THEY DELETED THE F*CKING FANS," he wrote.

Branded as "Rebuilt. Redesigned. Reinvented", the new site offers users a revamped design and experience. But despite the changes Mulligan believes the fan base omission is as shocking as it is damaging to the music site.

On the old MySpace site, Britney Spears has around 1.5 million friends, which is in stark contrast to the mere 7,000 connections that sit on the new site.

Justin Timberlake also fares the same, having only 50,000 new fans despite previously hitting 1.5 million, a problem Mulligan believes will be difficult to recover from.

"Getting musicians to care at all about MySpace again is a hard enough challenge," Mulligan said.

"Getting them to care enough to try to rebuild a fan base on the platform is out of the question.

"And that’s what they’re expecting. Every musician starts out in the new MySpace with zero fans. They need to start from scratch.

"To tell their audience “Go back to MySpace and connect with us!”

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