Thursday, June 30, 2011

Myspace, A Shadow Of Its Former Self, Is Sold

MySpace, the social network site that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought six years ago for $580, has been acquired by the ad network Specific Media for about $35 million in stock. That's about one dollar in stock for each of the 35 million users who access the website each month.

While that is an enormous user base, MySpace has consistently lost money virtually every year for News Corp, dragging down the company's stellar financial performance in television, movies, and newspaper publishing.

Although there were other bidders offering similar deals, Specific Media was reportedly selected because it had come up with an appealing business plan to incorporate MySpace into its own ad network and to bring in Justin Timberlake as a partner and investor to reenergize the site by focusing it on music -- with the apparent hope of doing for MySpace what William Shatner has done for Priceline. (Timberlake portrayed an investor in MySpace competitor Facebook in last year's The Social Network .)

No comments:

Post a Comment