MySpace up for sale

http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/02/news-corp-myspace-sale/

by acangiano • 15 years ago

54 30 15 years ago

venturebeat.com

jonpaul• 15 years ago

Linkbait. It's not actually up for sale.

yakto• 15 years ago

No matter who's steering the ship, it's going to be hard to stop this downward momentum: http://i.imgur.com/lD4go.png

shasta• 15 years ago

It looks like downward momentum on that graph has already been mostly stopped by the x axis.

powrtoch2• 15 years ago

Too bad profits don't have that failsafe.

zepolen• 15 years ago

Taken in context: http://i.imgur.com/BTGz8.png

Reddit recently posted their traffic stats, http://blog.reddit.com/2011/02/reddit-billions-served.html which shows they have ~14 million visitors.

Point is, a lot of people still know and use myspace.

I could see it coming back if they set their goals straight and concentrate on being the place for artists/bands in the music industry to promote their stuff.

jasonoliver• 15 years ago

They are already losing traction and engagement with their only remaining target userbase, namely musicians and bands. If Newscorp is able to unload it, it will likely be for a Bebo-like amount (when Aol sold it, not when they bought it, lol).

powrtoch2• 15 years ago

I will be shocked if Google buys out this cesspool. Unless they need a project to assign to engineers who've misbehaved.

saturdaysaint• 15 years ago

I wonder if the domain and brand name would have any value to Google. As distasteful as we view it, more non-techies that I talk to know what Myspace is than know what Gmail or most non-search Google products (Chrome, Buzz, Reader, possibly even Android, etc.) are. I'd find a well engineered Google social network with a Myspace brand attached to it novel to say the least.

Not that I can see it happening.

marquis• 15 years ago

I have to agree with you. Every musician I know still has a myspace page, and many still use yahoo or hotmail. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea just to get the domain name and content..

jhamburger2• 15 years ago

News Corp's acquisition for $500m will probably be remembered as a collossal blunder, but considering Facebook's current valuation, and that Myspace could have been Facebook if it were better executed, it wasn't a bad gamble really.

danilocampos• 15 years ago

The problem is treating these things as gambles. When you look at Facebook, their success is a result of understanding their product and its potential pretty damn well, then working extremely hard to bridge the gap between the two.

If you're going to plunk down $500m on a company, you should have a very clear idea of what you want to do with it and how you're going to grow it. MySpace was bought by a big ass dinosaur who thought "being successful on the internet" was as simple as writing a check – or buying a sack of magical beans.

dotBen2• 15 years ago

Myspace could have been Facebook

I disagree, and I spent a year working with MySpace in the relative hay-days of 2007-2008.

You could write a book on why Facebook has succeeded and MySpace hasn't... but the two headline thoughts for me are that:

1) MySpace was generational, Facebook is pan-generational. MySpace took everything that was current and popular in the early to mid 2000's and fashioned it into a web-based product that became part of pop culture of that era - thus the massive connection with the bands, the celebrities, etc. That was clever, but it was a time-limited play. Facebook appeals to multiple generations because it doesn't have that pop-culture appeal. Facebook is a utility, MySpace is/was a product.

2) Facebook was built as a data-play from the ground up. All of its value leverages its data and power of the network. MySpace's data model is/was atrocious and was never built with that in mind. Instead it was built as an ever-changing digital based bilboard ad.

shortlived• 15 years ago

Is there any argument to be made regarding the quality of UX/engineering at facebook vs. myspace. I love using FB and cringe everytime I need to go onto myspace.

pedalpete• 15 years ago

I think your point about the 'generational' vs. 'pan-generational' is slightly off, but at the same time may point to one of the big differences in culture of the two companies.

MySpace was/is a marketing tool for bands and eventually celebrity (very LA, very limited lifespan).

Facebook was about YOU and YOUR friends. Only once Facebook had fostered a deep connection between you and your friends did they expand into a platform for other types of services.

I don't think facebook was built as a 'data-play' from the ground up, but Zuckerberg worked with what he is comfortable with and was surrounded by, data. MySpace founders Chris and Tom likely worked with what they were comfortable with and surrounded by, celebrity.

jaredsohn2• 15 years ago

>News Corp's acquisition for $500m will probably be remembered as a collossal blunder

Didn't they have a $900 million search deal from Google, though? (Granted, my understanding is they didn't hit their numbers so they made slightly less than that, but still I think this makes it likely that News Corp's acquisition of MySpace was profitable and not a collossal blunder.)

Here's an older TechCrunch article talking about how buying MySpace was one of Murdoch's best decisions ever. (I agree that it looks less good now, but overall I don't think it was horribly bad from a financial perspective): http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/15/three-years-later-buying-my...

drgath• 15 years ago

News Corp as a whole, brings in about a billion in revenue / quarter. MySpace loses $150 million+ / quarter, and that's a number that is continually increasing. So if they don't sell it, a few years from now it could seriously threaten the entire company.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372103,00.asp

bitskits• 15 years ago

Is there any value for a company (probably not a startup, since they are still pretty expensive from that perspective) to buy MySpace as a "pick n pull" of sorts, to repackage as a new social product? I am not a software engineer, is this kind of thing feasible?

gscott• 15 years ago

I would buy it just to change the terrible logo.

armandososa• 15 years ago

I think somebody should buy old Virb (before their last two pivots, when it was a well designed myspace) and rebrand it as MySpace.

rmason• 15 years ago

These things usually start quietly. Truth is MySpace has probably been shopped around for quite a while. They didn't find any takers so only now do they publicly announce it in the hope that someone, anyone steps up.

  DST?? How about Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal?  He led the group that invested in Citibank and surely MySpace isn't that big a white elephant.

MySpace up for sale

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