Do you remember… the MySpace Top 8?

Few things on the early web caused as much trouble as eight small squares. On MySpace, your Top 8 sat right there on your profile for everyone to see: the eight friends you’d chosen, in the order you’d chosen them.

Being first meant something. Being bumped down to fifth meant something too. Being dropped off altogether meant a very awkward week at school.

People rearranged them after arguments, after new crushes and after nights out. They checked other people’s Top 8s to see where they stood. Some insisted the order meant nothing at all, which nobody believed for a second.

MySpace eventually renamed it Top Friends and let you show more than eight, which took a little of the sting out of it. It never quite took out the memory. Plenty of people now in their thirties and forties can still tell you who was in their Top 8, and exactly who wasn’t.