The History of SceneKids.com (and Ginpop)
SceneKids.com has lived several lives since 2001: a Florida music-scene website, a concert search engine, a microprofile popularity contest, and eventually a social network that grew to over 15 million impressions a month before rebranding to Ginpop and shutting down in 2020. It was built and run, start to finish, by a single developer. This is the full story of how one domain — registered in response to a threat to get its owner "kicked out of the scene" — became a small piece of scene history.
2001: a domain born out of spite
The domain was registered in 2001 for the pettiest, most fitting reason imaginable. After a one-night stand went sideways, the other person threatened to get the site's future owner, Josh Sherman, "kicked out of the scene." Registering SceneKids.com was the response — equal parts joke and dare. Few origin stories are so perfectly on-brand for the subculture the site would come to represent.
2002: a Florida music-scene website
The first real iteration launched in 2002 as a site dedicated to the Florida music scene, centered on the Tampa area. It featured show listings, classified ads, interviews, and photos from live events — the connective tissue of a local scene before social media did that job. It also ran a SHOUTcast station that regularly spun local bands, including Local Story, Jenji, Greetings From Joon (later Pilots v. Aeroplanes), and Sidblu (later Burning Idols).
2006: a concert search engine
In 2006, the site rebooted as a concert search engine, scraping show listings from MySpace — then the center of gravity for bands and fans alike. It was a natural pivot: MySpace was where the scene's music lived, so meeting people there made sense. For more on that platform's role in the era, see How MySpace Built Scene Culture.
2007: ShowsTonight.com
By 2007, the concert-search idea had grown into its own brand, ShowsTonight.com (now defunct). The SceneKids name went quiet for a stretch while the project chased the live-listings angle.
2011: from popularity contest to social network
In 2011, the site rebooted yet again — this time as a microprofile website built around a popularity contest. The mechanic was simple: drive links to the site, and your photos climbed higher on the listings. As users poured in and feedback rolled in, the site slowly grew into a full social network with a deep feature set. Over time it reached over 15 million impressions a month. The underlying system was flexible enough to run several niche communities at once, though many of those spin-off properties were eventually sunset.
2017: the Ginpop rebrand
In 2017, the site was rebranded as Ginpop. The goal was to put distance between the platform and two things: "scene" culture, which had aged, and the word "kids" — the latter largely because a youth-coded name had become a real moderation liability, drawing bad actors who targeted minors. (The Ginpop name itself was a domain left over from an earlier failed startup.) In hindsight, scrubbing the scene identity is arguably what cost the brand its distinctiveness — and it's why some people still search for "Ginpop" today.
2020: the shutdown
The end came on May 22, 2020 — a date chosen deliberately to land on the site's anniversary, capping a nine-year run as a social network. It wasn't any single cause so much as a perfect storm. Engagement had been sliding for years, and as engagement fell so did ad revenue, until advertising no longer covered even the basics: domain, servers, and backups. A donation experiment never gained enough traction to close the gap. The spread of privacy activism and ad-blocking chipped away further, and inappropriate photos posted by users got the site blocked by some advertisers. The COVID-19 collapse in advertising during early 2020 was the final blow, nearly wiping out what revenue remained.
The shutdown notice didn't sugarcoat it — it called the site "Yet Another COVID-19 Victim" — but it signed off with real gratitude to the community that made the nine-year journey possible. Nearly two decades after a spite-fueled domain registration, the project had run its course.
One developer, start to finish
Through every reboot and rebrand, SceneKids was a solo effort, built and maintained by Josh Sherman. He documented much of the journey — the wins, the missteps, and the technical decisions — on his personal site, joshtronic.com. It's a candid, firsthand look at what it actually takes to run a niche social network for the better part of two decades.
The throughline
For all its reinventions — local music site, concert search engine, popularity contest, social network — SceneKids kept circling the same idea: give a scene a place to gather online. The constant restarts were both its strength and its weakness. Each reboot chased a real opportunity, and the willingness to tear things down and try again is a big part of why the project lasted as long as it did. But the repeated identity changes also made it hard for any single version to fully take root, and the audience had to keep re-learning what the site even was.
The clearest lesson, in hindsight, is the one the Ginpop rebrand drove home: for a niche brand, focus is the value. Broadening to chase a bigger, blander audience can quietly erase the very thing that made people show up in the first place. It's hard-won insight — the kind that only comes from building and rebuilding the same project, solo, across nearly two decades.
What SceneKids.com is now
The community never fully scattered. A simple signup page on the old domain quietly drew hundreds of former users back, proof that the nostalgia is real. Rather than revive the social network, SceneKids.com is being rebuilt as a Y2K nostalgia hub — guides, history, and a celebration of the era's music, fashion, and culture. If you want the bigger picture, see What Is a Scene Kid? and The Y2K Scene Revival Explained.
If you were there for any of its lives, the door's open again.
FAQ
What was SceneKids.com? It started in 2002 as a Florida music-scene website and, after several reboots, became a social network that grew to over 15 million impressions a month before rebranding to Ginpop.
What is Ginpop? Ginpop was SceneKids.com after a 2017 rebrand meant to move away from "scene" culture and the "kids" name. The original SceneKids identity is the one people remember.
When did SceneKids.com shut down? On May 22, 2020 — fittingly, its anniversary — after years of declining ad revenue, a failed donation push, the rise of ad-blocking, and the COVID-19 ad collapse.
Who created SceneKids.com? It was built and run solo by Josh Sherman, who blogged about the project at joshtronic.com.