Since its creation in July 2003, MySpace has added many features to increase the way in which profiles can be customized, and to improve the general running of the website. These upgrades have often led to downtime or slow running.

On September 25, 2003, MySpace announced the addition of several major features to the site. Included were the first group profiles, the ability to empty the trash in the mailbox, a new look for the bulletin board, a mail indicator live anywhere on the system, unlimited friends, and the option to change an email and turn off reminders. Also, a number of bugs were fixed.

October 2003 brought new features such as leaving comments on people's profile pictures, hiding online status, having the ability to block friend requests, and approve comments before they could be posted. In November of 2003, MySpace added features such as Classifieds, picture ranking, and a way to find users by interest. The "Online Now" status was also added in more areas, and the Mailbox was vastly improved. At this time, users were starting to experiment with HTML, creating more elaborate and decorative profiles that attracted greater interest. Some users offered their help so that new and inexperienced users could also learn how to customize their profile.

On December 18, 2003, MySpace introduced their Instant Messenger, for one-on-one IM communication between users. Some MySpace users have created their own IRC chatrooms and marketed them as 'unofficial'. MySpace added its own Chat Rooms in February of 2004. To this date, MySpace generates a large amount of revenue through promotional partnerships and sponsorships.

In 2004, musical artists were allowed to create their own profiles and were given the option to post streaming MP3s of their songs to build up bigger fanbases. Some bands even allowed the MP3s to be downloaded.

In early April 2004, new features such as forums, games, Advanced Browse, and a new Journal customization were introduced to the public. The games included the very popular Gold Miner.

On June 4, 2004, members were given the ability to create brand-new groups so that like-minded people could share a common bond. There are two ways a group may gain members: The moderator of any group can invite members individually, or members can join themselves by either word of mouth or by browsing the 'Groups' section of MySpace.

Autumn of 2004 brought another small feature to the blogs. Users could now give "props", later changed to "kudos", to their friends if they were in support of them, to praise them, or just to give them respect. Another name change came to the journals; they were now called blogs.

Towards the end of 2004, and into 2005, MySpace gave the option to "event invite". Many bands are now using this feature to invite fans to shows, and it can be used for many other purposes as well. Also at this time, rumors of a possible shutdown of the site began circulating. To resolve this, Tom posted on everyone's Mailbox, saying "MySpace is not shutting down, and it will never shut down".

On January 27, 2005, MySpace introduced another new feature that lets members see if their friends on AOL, Yahoo!, or MSN are members on MySpace. After early teething problems this is now a useful addition to the site.

MySpace implemented another new feature with member's schools, that previously people had to show that they were alumni or students of. On February 8, 2005, all those who had entered their schools into the system were automatically assembled into a homepage for each school or college of which they were an alumnus or student. Members could now search for classmates with much ease, and in the process the homepages replaced some thriving groups dedicated to schools. The new homepages displayed fifteen members at random; all were students of the school, plus recently added members were pushed to the left hand side of the page. The homepage also gave classified spaces for people to sell textbooks, and advertise open apartments and spaces for roommates. Also those looking for these items or positions could request in their own section. The homepage came with its own forums, thus rendering the original groups useless, however there was no ability to add pictures, and unlike the groups, there was no moderator.

On February 24, 2005, MySpace implemented a handy new way for moderators to keep certain threads constantly at the top of group forums. On other sites with forums, these are known as "sticky threads", that are perpetually accessible to all users, rather than having to search through pages of other threads. For a moderator to make a thread "stick" to the top, they must activate what MySpace calls Pins; pinning a thread sends it to the top until it is unpinned. This feature is useful for those who want attention drawn to a certain topic rather than have it pushed down by others, or having to "bump" it back up.

On March 28, 2005, customizable name-URLs were introduced. With this new system, users were permitted to specify a string of text that would become part of a link to their profile page. After implementing this feature, users could acess other profiles by entering "www.myspace.com/NAME," rather than "www.myspace.com/IDNUMBER." ID numbers were usually 7-10 numerals in length, and were inconvenient and difficult to remember.

On June 11, 2005, MySpace introduced a calendar system, similar to the calendars that free webmail providers offer.

On July 18, 2005, News Corp. announced the proposed acquisition of MySpace (and its stakeholder Intermix Media) for $580 million.

On September 30, 2005, News Corp. completed the acquisition of MySpace (and its stakeowner Intermix Media).

On December 16, 2005, MySpace introduced a ratings system for teachers and professors, the service is limited to the U.S. and Canada

On December 20, 2005, MySpace added a birthday notification for all members who accepted it