News Corp. Looking To Sell MySpace

rudy_wayne writes "News Corp. is reportedly trying to sell MySpace for $100 million, a fraction of the $580 million it originally paid for the social network in 2005. Parties interested in acquiring MySpace include private equity firm THL Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital, owner of social network Bebo (the company AOL bought for $850 million and then sold for $10 million). Chinese Internet holding company Tencent is also reportedly interested, and so is MySpace co-founder Chris De Wolfe. What's not yet clear is what any of these companies plan to do with MySpace if a sale goes through." This follows news of massive layoffs and a rapidly shrinking userbase in recent months.

Comments

I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[elrous0]

Or, here's an idea, how about you remove those annoying sparkly custom backgrounds, autoplaying songs, pages that look like a 13-year-old girl threw up all over them, incredibly intrusive advertising, the overlapping spaghetti code of multiple scripts, and ridiculous clutter? You know...become Facebook.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[tripleevenfall]

Hopefully without the impossible to decipher maze of privacy settings, security issues, harvesting user data for advertisers, etc?

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Kjella]

At this point that's like trying to become a better WoW than WoW, good luck. I definitively think they need to try being something very different from Facebook - in a good way - if they are to survive.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Xacid]

Pretty much nailed it.

Ish.

Take it back to before facebook discovered apps and changed the layout twice a year. You know, when it was simple and did what it was supposed to do.

And yes, didn't look like my little pony and bratz got shoved into a blender.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point that's like trying to become a better WoW than WoW, good luck. I definitively think they need to try being something very different from Facebook - in a good way - if they are to survive.

Something like facebook that is actually open would be a massive step up in my view. The issue with facebook isn't so much that their collecting data, as that data is not immediately surfaced. MySpace use to do this pretty well, but it died off when they started to disallow searching by keywords to find other people. In my view MySpace was great before NewsCorp fucked it up - it was the only network you could go on and actually find people by location and interests - now theres nothing, Facebook doesn't even allow that because they want to horde all the data so badly its just one giant fucking scam to aquire more subversively rather than surface any of it that is even useful for personal use.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[tripleevenfall]

But you're right - MySpace's advantage was that you could meet new people there. On Facebook there's really no such convention. Myspace could try to reinvent itself as a simple, open platform that promises not to make their service an ad-serving platform.

Instead of "a place for friends", how about a secure, private place for "old friends and new friends"

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[elrous0]

my little pony and bratz got shoved into a blender.

That's a pretty good way of putting it. I still get headaches even thinking about some of the pages on MySpace. I had one particularly tasteless friend whose page would have given a Japanese kid seizures.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[alostpacket]

Isn't that basically what Friendster was? People seem to forget them when talking about how Facebook beat MySpace. They always chalk it up to the clean design, but forget the faux exclusivity that Facebook used as marketing originally (limiting membership to .edu email addresses).

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[bluefoxlucid]

At this point that's like trying to become a better WoW than WoW,

I hate MMORPGs but I hear FF11 is far better designed than WoW. I'll stick to things I can buy, own, and casual play when I'm alone, rather than soul-sucking life sinks that purport to "let you socialize instead of isolate yourself" while you talk to people you never meet over a computer for 8 hours a day.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[shish]

remove those [...] pages that look like a 13-year-old girl threw up all over them

Alienate their core (only) audience, in order to become a second-rate competitor to facebook, in a market where second place is nothing? I'm not sure I see the benefit of this over your "$50 to kill it" suggestion...

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[rudy_wayne]

Myspace could try to reinvent itself as a simple, open platform that promises not to make their service an ad-serving platform.

Not going to happen. Whoever buys MySpace will have spent $100M and they are going to be looking for a return on their investment. That means ads, ads and more ads.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[wjousts]

Myspace could try to reinvent itself as a simple, open platform that promises not to make their service an ad-serving platform.

So in other words, completely remove all revenue generating capabilities and turn it into a massive black hole for the owners cash. Where do I submit my bid?

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[jo42]

Just "Make it dead, Jim".

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Anonymous Coward]

So you prefer playing alone, and hate socializing with people for 8 hours a day? And then you say WoW is life sucking? Wtf?

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[tripleevenfall]

This is /., that's what passes for a good business idea - something which will never make any money.

(actually this would need to promise that you'd be sued into oblivion for it to be a /. business idea, but...)

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[x*yy*x]

What's so hard about Facebook privacy settings? I find them really easy and understandable. Preview your profile as specific person makes it even easier to change it exactly how you want it.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Bing Tsher E]

I find it even easier to just not log onto Facebook. And if you close your account, make sure to delete all Facebook cookies and password saves, as any inadvertent blundering into Facebook.com name-space will likely automatically 'reactivate' your account.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook's privacy policies change every week. Every time they decide to update Facebook, they either disable some privacy feature that previously existed or they decide to add some new feature that exposes users to new vectors of attack.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[VGPowerlord]

I hate MMORPGs but I hear FF11 is far better designed than WoW.

Having played both, I can safely say you heard wrong... and there are a few million other people that are likely to agree,

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll pay $100 if you'll just kill Facebook.
And another $50 if you do it by raping it to pieces.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[bluefoxlucid]

I don't have to do an 8 hour campaign in all one shot because my "friends" are on. I can get up and do other stuff. I can do my laundry and cook while I play. I can play for 2 hours to get past a certain part and then save and come back later. I can play on weekends or burn out the last 2 hours after work on some nights when I have no other obligations.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Anonymous Coward]

"nstead of "a place for friends", how about a secure, private place for "old friends and new friends""

If you want a friend, get a dog.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[phantomfive]

That wasn't what killed it. People liked being able to customize your own page. That's all some people talked about for a while.

But that wasn't what killed it. You couldn't truly customize it: it was covered with the ugliest ads known to man. Even if you had amazingly good designer sense, it was still an ugly page. Who really wants ads for adult friendfinder on their home page? No one, especially in their primary demographic.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[bluefoxlucid]

What I heard about FF11 was it's far more consistent and sensible, the simplest example being that monsters drop things like skin and tails and feathers rather than finished potions and completely constructed pieces of armor or boots or whatnot--why does a bird have boots? Players who move from one to the other tend to comment that WoW seems to be a hackery of rewards systems and diversions (i.e. side quests), while FF11 tends to be the exact same thing, but made with the forethought of "okay does this make sense?"

But as I've said, I play neither. I can only go by what I've heard.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Xacid]

Personally it's what killed it for me. Why? I thrive on that consistency in order to navigate through a familiar site efficiently. The fact that so much was able to be moved and hidden made it a total pain in the ass for me and ruined the experience.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[not already in use]

So, like Facebook without the ability to properly monetize it. I'm sure that would work out swimmingly.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Skatox]

That's the reason why i left myspace to facebook five years ago.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[AK Marc]

Yeah, and that's how many (most?) play WoW. That you don't have the self control to step away from a game that will continue to play itself in the background in real time while you are doing laundry isn't a fault of WoW.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Anonymous Coward]

You know facebook has:

incredibly intrusive advertising (like a search engine)
the overlapping spaghetti code of multiple scripts (apps)
clutter (the wall)
bloated (too much backgrounding)

But My Space does have it beat with the 3yr old girl look to it. Facebook just has the same look, but widgets everywhere... But it's getting there...

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[spliffington]

Which seems to be about every other website these days, since so many people (Satan spawned marketers) think it's a good idea to integrate facebook with their website...

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[vuffi_raa]

...and improve security, I deleted my myspace a while back because it constantly got hacked despite the fact that I had a totally unconnected email to anything and a 27 character alpha and numeric password and was rarely if ever. I would log out, and maybe a month or two later when I logged back in I would have been sending all kinds of spam to other myspace users during that time by god knows how many people.... not keylogged, not phished just plain hacked.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[Phoghat]

here's an idea, how about you remove those annoying sparkly custom backgrounds, autoplaying songs, pages that look like a 13-year-old girl threw up all over them, incredibly intrusive advertising, the overlapping spaghetti code of multiple scripts, and ridiculous clutter? You know...become Facebook.

Don't be a hater, all those pages were made by a 13 year old girl while throwing up.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[bluefoxlucid]

people strategize and they go in with teams in WoW. You can't just abandon your team, they need you. They have a healer and a warrior and whatever else, same as any other RPG. Take one away and the game suddenly becomes unwinnable.

Re:I'll throw in $50 if you'll just kill it

[AK Marc]

90% of content can be solo'd (leveling, daily quests at max level, grinding skills, playing entrepreneur in the auction house, etc.). Only raids and dungeons can't be solo'd. I read somewhere that the vast majority of WoW players aren't raiders (in the sense that raiders are anyone that enters a raid regularly, that compromises 10% or less of players). And instances have been trimmed down from some of the long ones of the original. Most can be done quickly in under an hour. An "8 hour campaign" doesn't exist in WoW outside raids, and even most raids are scheduled for 4 hours or less, hitting a goal and stopping.

So, your comment about requiring 8 hours uninterupted every time you enter WoW is simply false. Less than 10% of people focus on those longer "campaigns" and those campaigns are generally done in chunks of time under 8 hours.

I think you grossly hyperbolized to prove a point, and then decided, for reasons unknown to me, back your hyperbole as if it could possibly pass for a fact.

Follow the leaders

[JoeCommodore]

Microsoft, here's your chance!

Re:Follow the leaders

[tripleevenfall]

Microsoft doesn't buy ruined companies, they buy decent ones and THEN ruin them.

Re:Follow the leaders

[grub]

Microsoft doesn't buy ruined companies, they buy decent ones and THEN ruin them.

Two negatives makes a positive!

Re:Follow the leaders

[fuzznutz]

I thought that was Symantec's job.

Shoveling dirt

[tripleevenfall]

And nothing of value was lost.

(although I guess shitty local bands are going to have to find some other way to annoy people)

Re:Shoveling dirt

[hubie]

So what is the over-under in years until we hear this kind of story about Facebook?

Re:Shoveling dirt

[tripleevenfall]

Facebook has been adopted by the audience that is slow to adopt and slow to move away as well, which is older people.

Myspace was never generally being used by people over 30 or so (maybe even 25), and it wasn't used to connect with family or long-lost friends. It was being used the way Twitter is used today.

Facebook created a niche and I think will occupy it for the foreseeable future. Myspace's niche was gobbled up 75% by Twitter, 25% by facebook.

Re:Shoveling dirt

[Rakshasa Taisab]

MySpace has always been shit... And except for lol-privacy-panic crowd FaceBook actually has a pretty damn decent service. Ever notice how uncluttered the site is?

Re:Shoveling dirt

[S.O.B.]

I think you're right. Although I can see three things that could make a dent in Facebook:

1. Someone with big money that has a new take on the problem and gets it to market way ahead of Facebook. Someone like Google is big enough that they could take a run at Facebook if they wanted to.

2. An open platform (perhaps Diaspora or something like it) where people can be assured of some control over their personal information and privacy. This would tap into a new market of those who have been wary of Facebook in the past and appeal to existing Facebook users who are also concerned about privacy but grudging joined so they wouldn't be "left out".

3. Facebook fatigue and platform inertia. Facebook is as much a fad as Geocities and Myspace before them. Unless they are constantly innovating and evolving their ecosystem a new player/fad can pop up and dethrone them. And the more mature the Facebook platform becomes the more difficult it is to keep the platform evolving at the same pace. Sooner or later someone comes along that is more agile and flies right past you because they don't have the same baggage to contend with.

Re:Shoveling dirt

[cjb658]

If only it were this easy to get rid of *real* garbage.

Re:Shoveling dirt

[hubie]

Facebook has been adopted by the audience that is slow to adopt and slow to move away as well, which is older people.

So was AOL. People talk of Facebook, especially since it is the darling of the media at the moment, like it is the very fabric that holds civilization together. Having been around these interwebs since the 80's, I can recall many who have risen and fallen. They'll have their cycle, I'm sure.

Re:Shoveling dirt

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever notice how uncluttered the site is?

Not in the last few years...

Re:Shoveling dirt

[Lashat]

Amen to that. I figured that I should probably get a Facebook account once ....wait for it...

my mother had one. Oof. It's great for sharing pics of her granddaughter with her and the rest of the family. Not to mention finding old friends. For old co-workers you should be using LinkedIn. Never mix business with pleasure, unless you are posting to /. at work.

Yeah, I read about this

[Quato]

I totally read about this on Facebook.

Re:Yeah, I read about this

[gosand]

I can't wait to read this ABOUT Facebook. At least MySpace was short-lived and only appeared to be populated by people with the attention span of a hummingbird, and who were of the age where being annoying just came natural. Facebook has taken annoying to a whole new level, and generation. I spend maybe 5 minutes a month on there... I cannot fathom how people can spend hours on it every day.

Overvalued ...

[gstoddart]

What I find most interesting about this summary is just how overvalued some of these companies became, and that someone actually was willing to pay that much:

reportedly trying to sell MySpace for $100 million, a fraction of the $580 million it originally paid for the social network in 2005. Parties interested in acquiring MySpace include private equity firm THL Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital, owner of social network Bebo (the company AOL bought for $850 million and then sold for $10 million)

I mean ... bought for $580M and sold for $100M ... bought for $850M and sold for $10M ... those are really big differences in the valuations of these things.

This further reaffirms my belief that the 'market' has long ago given up on actual fundamentals of 'value', and mostly follow hype and become totally irrational. It's all funny money and speculation. I always though financial people were supposed to know better.

I can't wait until we 'learn' that neither Facebook nor Zynga are actually worth what people say they are now.

Re:Overvalued ...

[tripleevenfall]

AOL didn't become AOL by making smart business decisions.

They made it by doing things like thinking Bebo was a great product.

Re:Overvalued ...

[Anonymous Coward]

MySpace WAS valued at $580 million.

It's not that the original value was incorrect. It's that MySpace LOST value over time. I can buy a $1500 computer today, and in 6 months it will be worth $1000, and in another 6 months it will be worth $700. That doesn't mean the original price I paid was incorrect. It just means that computers lose value quickly.

Likewise, websites can gain value very quickly, and lose value very quickly. They are high-risk. It could have very well been that MySpace evolved into what Facebook is today, and valued in the billions. In which case, NewsCorp would have been praised for their smart move at buying it at $580 million.

Re:Overvalued ...

[alen]

kids in a garage or harvard make a cool website that becomes popular. copycats follow. the originals get financing and don't want to sell since they are the best and can make more money.

giant mega corps take notice of new trends and want to get in on them. of course they can't make something themselves because after the endless meetings and changes by MBA's no one will ever want to use the product. so they buy one of the copycats for a ridiculous premium.

the current employees are afraid and don't want anything to do with the new purchase so it sits in limbo unable to grow and doesn't really do anything. until the market leader kills it off by taking the market

Facebook and Zynga actually make money. close to $1 billion in profits each last i read

Re:Overvalued ...

[Kjella]

The way you present it is a bit misleading, the thing is you can look like a strong competitor but then it turns out the market ran with somebody else. Take something like AltaVista, they were a huge search engine around 1998. Unless you had a very good crystal ball you could easily think they would become what Google is today. Google doesn't sound like such a bad investment, does it?

Same with social sites, if there's anything that has network effects it's this. You* are on Facebook because everyone else is on Facebook, it all gravitates towards one big network. The winner will be a huge Google-class company, the others will be an AltaVista-class nobody. MySpace is in the "nobody" class, but that's easy to say in retrospect. It's all about what it potentially could have been.

* well, everyone EXCEPT you then

This further reaffirms my belief that the 'market' has long ago given up on actual fundamentals of 'value', and mostly follow hype and become totally irrational. It's all funny money and speculation. I always though financial people were supposed to know better.

If you give an absolutely certain cash flow, I can tell you on the cent what that's worth. It will be pretty close to the bank interest, because otherwise everybody (if over) or nobody (if under) would invest in it. Everybody else are speculating, even if you think that "oh this company has really good products and I think they'll sell well in the future" and invest long term that's speculation. And if *everybody* thinks that, then it'll already be priced so in the market. Then you're speculating that they'll do even better than the market thinks (or short because you think it'll do worse, but that's generally considered more speculative). Even things that lower your risk are speculation, if you fix the interest rate on your loan (or savings) you are taking a bet against the money market, compared to floating interest. It just a matter of degree.

Re:Overvalued ...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah except in this story, facebook WAS the copycat

Re:Overvalued ...

[Anonymous Coward]

But why did NewsCorp think they could evaluate the risk? They have competency in news and media, not social networking. For example if I'm an art collector, I'm going to buy art because I know the trends, and not buy a copper mine which I know nothing about.

Re:Overvalued ...

[dev.null.matt]

What I find most interesting about this summary is just how overvalued some of these companies became, and that someone actually was willing to pay that much:

reportedly trying to sell MySpace for $100 million, a fraction of the $580 million it originally paid for the social network in 2005. Parties interested in acquiring MySpace include private equity firm THL Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital, owner of social network Bebo (the company AOL bought for $850 million and then sold for $10 million)

I mean ... bought for $580M and sold for $100M ... bought for $850M and sold for $10M ... those are really big differences in the valuations of these things.

This further reaffirms my belief that the 'market' has long ago given up on actual fundamentals of 'value', and mostly follow hype and become totally irrational. It's all funny money and speculation. I always though financial people were supposed to know better.

I can't wait until we 'learn' that neither Facebook nor Zynga are actually worth what people say they are now.

And groupon, don't forget them.

Re:Overvalued ...

[chemicaldave]

They're valuable as long as they remain popular and advertisers pay for access to their users. Where don't you see the value in that? It's just a very volatile and competitive market. Myspace didn't lose value because of a bubble, it lost value because it lost users. It's true that there is a lot of hype in valuing Internet companies. I don't believe Facebook is really for $50bn, but that doesn't mean it has no value. In all markets there will be people who overvalue goods.

Re:Overvalued ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, hindsight is 20/20.

Social networking was a new market. NewsCorp jumped in because they probably thought it was an evolution of their media distribution business. They were wrong.

Now we have Facebook, and we have a clear picture of how social networking is "suppose" to work. Facebook defined that for us. Just like how Apple defined how tablets are "suppose" to work, and now everything is compared against that.

I'm not saying that NewsCorp made a good decision, I'm simply saying that they took a risk, and it didn't pay off. That happens. No one knew at the time that it was a stupid idea. Sure, we have the peanut gallery saying it's a bad idea, but really: how many of us are qualified to even say that? NewsCorp failed, and now those who said it would fail feel like they were right all along, but they really have no idea and just happened by chance to pick the correct result. Where was their "expert" opinion about the NY Times pay-wall that was suppose to fail miserably?

Re:Overvalued ...

[El Torico]

It's called "hubris".

Re:Overvalued ...

[Dog-Cow]

Altavista was an advertisement for DEC. It wasn't a search company. If you thought it would somehow win out over a dedicated search company, you weren't paying any attention to reality.

Re:Overvalued ...

[Crudely_Indecent]

We're talking about a company owned by Rupert Murdoch here. Remember, he's the guy who claimed copyright on the word "Sky" and sued Skype over it.

These guys aren't so bright. After putting up their paywall to protect their web content, they found that readership dropped..... One article suggests that advertisers are much less interested in News Corp because of their paywall decision - less traffic = fewer sales.

Personally, I say more power to them. I think stupidity should be encouraged. They should definitely hold out for $100 million on MySpace. By the time they realize that nobody is buying, it will be dead, and I will laugh.

Re:Overvalued ...

[johnjaydk]

Everybody else are speculating, even if you think that "oh this company has really good products and I think they'll sell well in the future" and invest long term that's speculation.

NO. That is called investing. Gambling on a company becoming profitable and giving a good ROI is a GOOD THING.

Speculation is disregarding the prospect of ROI and just gambling that the stock price will go up. Just like the resent housing bobble.

Re:Overvalued ...

[gstoddart]

They're valuable as long as they remain popular and advertisers pay for access to their users. Where don't you see the value in that? It's just a very volatile and competitive market. Myspace didn't lose value because of a bubble, it lost value because it lost users

I'm not entirely convinced of that ... advertisers are willing to pay the money because they have also bought into the hype. They're part of the bubble. In fact, they probably make the most money except for the 3-4 guys who become overnight billionaires.

Nowadays, it seems like you could put "social" in front of anything, and everyone will flock to it as the new hotness, and throw cash at you. In a lot of ways, it's reminiscent of the .COM bubble -- if you added .COM to your company name, and had something resembling an idea, you could get VC money thrown at you as everyone speculated that you'd make them rich. Next thing you know, you're liquidating 100 Herman Miller chairs in your bankruptcy clear out.

I'm not saying these things don't have some degree of 'value' -- I'm saying that the 'value' is very intangible and fleeting, and it can evaporate as quickly as it came. Precisely like when AOL bought Time Warner with stocks that were eventually worthless.

The more it gets over-valued, the more it becomes a ponzi scheme -- nobody wants to be the last one holding it when it crashes, and in the meantime, it gets traded for literally years worth of projected revenue. Everybody knows it's not worth 100 years (or whatever) of revenue in the long term ... but in the short term, as long as people still pay those prices and it keeps going up, you can make some cash.

To me, that pretty much defines a bubble. You know it's unsustainable, but as long as you can get in and out before that actually happens, you're golden. This isn't anything more than betting on fads. Which, isn't any different than anything else ... I just find it much more glaring with tech stuff.

Re:Overvalued ...

[fermion]

I think this kind of bad deals are more frequent than we think. The difference is that some firms are allowed to fail, and some are not. Some of it has to do when the management is just so incompentant and criminal that nothing can be done, as in the case of Enron who paid 100 million to put their name on a baseball stadium. It is one thing for Newscorp or AOL to pay 850 million for a firm, another for $100 million billboard.

Then there is the financial firm and car manufacturers who seem to make equally silly decisions, paying huge sums for services that produce no product, and then the public is expected to foot the bills when the parties get so expensive they dwarf revenue. Certainly is appropriate for companies with the financial capability to risk some of the funds in prudently risky ventures. They key here is that the risk should be to the firm, and not spread out over a population that was not going to benefit significantly if the risk paid off.

Re:Overvalued ...

[Myopic]

Just to be clear, the market has always followed irrational hype. The canonical example is tulip bulbs, but you could go way back to purple dye. It's the nature of human beings.

Re:Overvalued ...

[EMeta]

To be fair, MySpace (flawed as it was) had a significant chance of cleaning its ugliness up & getting into the position that Facebook is now. While FB's value is still quite arguable, from current profits alone it's certainly at least an order of magnitude above the $600M paid for MySpace. And I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that at least shortly before that purchase, MySpace still had a 10% chance of becoming that big. FB had a lot more savvy people at the helm and was far less afraid to keep making big changes, but that's a hiring issue more than anything else.

Re:Overvalued ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A thing is worth whatever someone will pay for it.

Re:Overvalued ...

[gstoddart]

Just to be clear, the market has always followed irrational hype. The canonical example is tulip bulbs, but you could go way back to purple dye.

OK ... I'm not suggesting what you've said is wrong, but I'd love some clarification.

Tulip bulbs?? Really? Why? I'm stumped on both of your examples.

I have no doubt people have always been irrational. That part is a given. :-P

Re:Overvalued ...

[flosofl]

>Tulip bulbs?? Really?

I thought everyone knew about Tulip Mania. I'm sure it's in Wikipedia, look it up. It's probably the first known "bubble" in recorded history. Tulip bulbs were being bought, sold, and speculated on at insane prices. Sometimes a bulb was worth many many times what a skilled craftsman would make in a year.

It kicked off right after they were first introduced to the Netherlands (I think) in the 1600s.

Re:Overvalued ...

[gstoddart]

I thought everyone knew about Tulip Mania. I'm sure it's in Wikipedia, look it up. It's probably the first known "bubble" in recorded history. Tulip bulbs were being bought, sold, and speculated on at insane prices. Sometimes a bulb was worth many many times what a skilled craftsman would make in a year.

You know, somehow I missed that one. I've literally never heard of it ... thanks for the info.

And, in case anybody thinks they're kidding, this and this are what I tracked down.

That's just funny.

Re:Overvalued ...

[jschottm]

I mean ... bought for $580M and sold for $100M

Sure, but consider that Google alone paid News Corp $900M during that time, News Corp still comes out ahead. Value and worth are funny concepts. MySpace might only have been "worth" $300 million to you if you were running a theoretical competitor at the time that News Corp bought it, but they turned around and made a nice profit on it, even at the higher price. And by buying it, they denied your company the ability to make that profit.

It's all funny money and speculation. I always though financial people were supposed to know better.

Small risk leads to small profit, large risk leads to larger profit. If you have perverse incentives that reward high risk behavior by financial people with little consequence for failure, that's what they're going to do.

if news corp is selling it...

[Anonymous Coward]

.... it means it has no value

Obligatory Simpsons...

[Anonymous Coward]

[Homer Simpson]

"My Space".... is that thing still around?

[/Homer Simpson]

Re:Obligatory Simpsons...

[Joe The Dragon]

Homer: Oh, yeah! I'm betting on Jai-alai in the Cayman Islands, I invested in
              something called "News Corp"--
Lisa: Dad, that's Fox!
Homer: [shrieks] Undo! Undo! [hits key, sighs]

Wanted

[ackthpt]

Turd Polisher

No prior experience necessary, only 100m$

Re:Wanted

[Reilaos]

Turd Polishing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJ9fy1qSFI

How much do the Mythbusters crew make per episode?

Re:Wanted

[TurdPolisher]

Suh-weet!! Sign me up!

Re:Wanted

[dasdrewid]

Too much. I'd do their job for free + a burrito. Also, I get to sleep in the rooms they build in the shop for overnight experiments.

There is opportunity here

[lwsimon]

Seriously - a company could make a ton here.

$100m for the "MySpace" name is what this amounts to. Take it, shut it down for a month, and relaunch the service completely re-invented. Take from Facebook what works (clean, simple, consistent layout; an accessible auth system; cater to businesses), and loudly fix some of its shortcomings (Insane privacy issues; constantly changing API and business pages; vendor lock-in). I think it would be an enormous hit.

Hell - simply allowing users to stick with old versions of the service for a year after new changes launch would garner a lot of attention. How many silly "Bring back the old Facebook!!!" groups exist?

Re:There is opportunity here

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly "Bring back the old facebook" groups?

Facebook went from a customizable, usable but messy layout to a clean, difficult to use, confusing layout.

I've basically given up on facebook, I use it mostly through my blackberry for those people who prefer facebook to email.

Re:There is opportunity here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php

Re:There is opportunity here

[NevarMore]

Hell - simply allowing users to stick with old versions of the service for a year after new changes launch would garner a lot of attention. How many silly "Bring back the old Facebook!!!" groups exist?

I'm not defending Facebook here, but I'm currently working on software projects where we have to keep old crufty features around for ONE customer. Its not necessarily easy to support and manage these things. To do it right entails a detailed configuration page to set the various feature options, to half-ass it means managing some magic strings in a configuration file. Support becomes harder because you have to determine what options the customer has set before you can assist them and sort out the issue. Testing takes longer because you have to test both old and new features in conjunction.

Re:There is opportunity here

[lwsimon]

Yes, that's the case. I didn't say it would be easy on the developers - I'm coming at this from a marketing perspective.

Being able to say "We will not retire features without a year's warning, pressing security issues aside" would be a great marketing tactic to the stupid number of people who are resistant to change.

Re:There is opportunity here

[lwsimon]

Yep. Do the same thing with MySpace, but just be an implementation of OpenID - but for God's sake, don't call it that on public pages.

Re:There is opportunity here

[mangu]

simply allowing users to stick with old versions of the service for a year after new changes launch would garner a lot of attention

Only problem is it would take a year for that to gather attention. Meanwhile you don't have those $100 million that could have been used to something immediately profitable. And you can bet Facebook wouldn't stand still, as soon as you implement something good they would copy it.

Re:There is opportunity here

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh no.

Branding is everything. The MySpace brand is lousy. If you're going to develop something new, then just create a new name, and new brand. The only value MySpace has is the small amount of traffic (that is quickly going down) and any old data on users that can be mined.

Re:There is opportunity here

[NevarMore]

But even on the marketing side, isn't it still more complexity and more work? You're going from selling one product with a fixed set of features to a product with a variable set of features.

Re:There is opportunity here

[geniice]

That's been tried several times with Napster and hasn't worked out. In fact I can't think of any of the web's fallen giants who've managed to make a comeback.

Re:There is opportunity here

[chemicaldave]

Or better yet, why doesn't Facebook buy it and keep the layout so it still retains the old customers who refuse to switch. Though I'd be curious to know how long it would take to earn a decent ROI.

Re:There is opportunity here

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that is how the market works. It's not about features. Sure, some features help but after that it's purely about marketing and image.

Look at Apple for example, their products aren't particularly spectacular. However their image is the wet dream of any marketer. Competitors are cheaper and have better features but they aren't Apple.

Same with Facebook. It has carved out its place in the daily lifes of a broad spectrum of people. A better service couldn't compete with that except for a small niche or a bajillion marketing dollars.

Re:There is opportunity here

[Archon-X]

Honestly, the people that complain loudly about new changes in FB [etc] are more than likely the people that spend too much time on the site - and are hence never going to leave.

For the casual user, the changes don't interrupt them seeing which friend is doing what.

All in all - nothing of value is lost by removing older features.

Re:There is opportunity here

[shoptroll]

$100 million for 34 million users is a marketing department's wet dream. Screw relaunching the service, someone is going to snatch this up, harvest the user data and close everything down before spaming the living crap out of everyone.

Re:There is opportunity here

[Quirkz]

What about the whatever-dot-com sock puppet that made it into the ads for that other thing?

Re:There is opportunity here

[tooyoung]

we have to keep old crufty features around for ONE customer. Its not necessarily easy to support and manage these things. To do it right entails a detailed configuration page to set the various feature options

So, to "do it right" you have to burden 100% of your users with a complex configuration page for features that only a single customer uses?

Re:There is opportunity here

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... Hell yes.

$1 / user / month is the rule of thumb. With that, it would take 4 months to make back your initial investment (due to list attrition). That's assuming only email marketing --- if you kept the site active but tossed an increasing amount of full-page ads on it, you'd make substantially more...

Re:There is opportunity here

[Legion303]

Sounds like it was a super effective ad campaign.

Re:There is opportunity here

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe how misunderstood myspace is. Myspace is a collaborative trust metric for musicians, artists and fans. MTV should buy myspace if anyone at all should. Myspace is Advogatos annoying little sister, but as much as the nerds on slashdot, et al are concerned you are going to have to deal with it. I think MTV should just run a myspace makeover show and call it good after a year or two. Fuck man, I can't believe society is going to gather together and throw myspace out. I mean I haven't been on there for a considerable amount of time in a while, but shit, if I had 110 million dollars I'd be on it, I've lived on the darn internet for 8years now, that's internet instead of television, and myspace is still a strong player in social sites I enjoy. I don't want to lose myspace.

Hell, why doesn't the FSF invest and offer a large variety of licensing models for artists. That distribution model to get rid of the RIAA, well myspace is a decent middle road, as far as I can tell. Perhaps MySpace should have a full reboot every five years, like an OS upgrade schedule. The orginal rule, is that data is king and I know some of my first websites were completely ridiculous and a little embarrassing, but I was still proud of what I did, because I was learning. What I miss after losing that stuff is some of the things I wrote down, you know my data, you can't dump the data on MySpace without losing a considerable cultural entity. Or, maybe we should just abandon it at the first sign of trouble.

It sounds worse than it is

[Anonymous Coward]

"The landmark search advertising deal between Google and News Corp. is set to expire on June 30, 2010, just a little more than a year from now. The $900 million deal, announced in August 2006 .."

in language News Corp can understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Haw haw!

Hahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until this happens to Facebook.

Oh! Good!

[killmenow]

I was worried at first. I thought it said MyOuterSpace for a minute there.

I'll give you a dollar

[geekoid]

and you can keep 40%

Re:I'll give you a dollar

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll give you a dollar...and you can keep 40%

At this rate, they're lucky that Tencent is offering more than $0.10...

Purchase Value vs.Sale Value Does't Equal Profits

[Anonymous Coward]

People see the initial price tag, and then the garage sale sticker five years later, and presume that the deal was a waste.

That's like buying a new car, selling a used car and then claiming the whole venture was worthless.

The ultimate value of MySpace to News Corp. while it was in their possession, is really only known to News Corp.

Remember: this is a company bent on manipulating social order, augmenting the outcome of elections, provoking and supporting wars in which (and I'm lowballing here) tens of thousands die. I bet owning MySpace allowed them to be privy to data that was either otherwise impossible to obtain, or would have demanded hideous expenses in consulting fees.

Just because it appears as a cost center on paper does not mean it was a bad decision.

older people

[formfeed]

Facebook has been adopted by the audience that is slow to adopt and slow to move away as well, which is older people. ... Facebook created a niche and I think will occupy it for the foreseeable future.

True. Really, really old people (30+) give stability to your platform.

But it is the irresponsible and naive young that drive the ad-revenue.

Re:older people

[icebraining]

But it is the irresponsible and naive young that drive the ad-revenue.

It is? That's interesting. I'd think that the less tech-savvy (thus more likely to 'fall' for ads) and with more disposable income would provide more revenue.

Re:older people

[formfeed]

more disposable income

I wonder.
The ad-industry certainly targets younger people.

The 30+ might have more income, but maybe not "disposable income" (mortgage, college loans, kids, ..). The 17 yo who lives at home might be the easier target.

Simplify and secure

[paiute]

Ban company pages. Ban movie pages. Ban everything except people. Make it harder to become a 'friend'.

Re:Simplify and secure

[Anonymous Coward]

Ban company pages. Ban movie pages. Ban everything except people.

Indie bands are the only thing of value on myspace, it was a useful tool for them to network and get bookings. Bands with myspace (or facebook) pages will become the exception rather than the rule. Current fads Twitter and bandcamp/soundcloud are better for "Connecting with fans" ( twat-speak for an RSS feed).

Re:Simplify and secure

[moogaloonie]

Then it would just be Facebook. I would do the precise opposite, but then I quite enjoyed having Myspace friends like Zombie Lincoln, CARtoons magazine, the color blue etc.

News Corp killed it

[thetoadwarrior]

They should be lucky to get anything for it. Most MySpace pages make Geocities look like art and on top of that anyone who may have cared about it ran away the second Murdoch and his evil empire touched it. Only old people like Murdoch. Everyone else would rather not support him.

new aol

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on Facebook buy MySpace so you will be the new AOL.

lol

[Alex Belits]

pwnt

My MySpace experience

[datavirtue]

Register..... Login..... Picture of Matthew McConaughey with his shirt off... never went back

Re:My MySpace experience

[elrous0]

In all fairness, that's the exact same experience I had when I registered to vote.

Yeah, what failures!

[DesScorp]

Microsoft doesn't buy ruined companies, they buy decent ones and THEN ruin them.

Yeah, Bungie, Visio, and Hotmail sure dissapeared after Microsoft bought them. Oh wait...

Ruin, really? Before Google came along, Hotmail WAS webmail. And it's still hugely successful. Bungie helped fuel the rise of Microsoft's XBox empire. MS's purchase of Great Plains financial software has vaulted the Dynamics line from a small offering that caters to small offices to a large ERP suite that is increasingly muscling in on Oracle's and SAP's territory.

Looking at Microsoft's long history of acquisitions, it's hard to objectively say that most of them were busts. Most of them were purchased simply so that MS could integrate their products into existing suites. Microsoft bought Forethought.. the company that created Powerpoint.. for $14 million dollars. How much money do you think PowerPoint has made for Microsoft over the years? Me, I'd say that purchase has paid for itself many times over. And while you may hate it (and I certainly do), calling PowerPoint a a failure would be pure BS. It's The Standard in presentation software.

There are other numerous examples of now retired software products that, at the time, made tremendous sense to buy. FoxPro, for instance, was enormously popular, and made MS a lot of money. Ditto for Frontpage. For years, if you didn't know HTML, Frontpage was pretty much the way to get a web page up. Again, and it was tremendously successful in the market.

Here's a basic truth that we here at Slashdot are loathe to admit: Microsoft is a successful company because they've got some pretty smart people working there. All that money didn't just come from nowhere. They kinda know what they're doing over there in Redmond, you know?

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft doesn't buy ruined companies, they buy decent ones and THEN ruin them.

They kinda know what they're doing over there in Redmond, you know?

One does not walk into Redmond. It is a barren wasteland. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. And the Ballmer is ever watchful...

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hotmail was far superior before M$ took it over.

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[Jawnn]

Microsoft doesn't buy ruined companies, they buy decent ones and THEN ruin them.

Yeah, Bungie, Visio, and Hotmail sure dissapeared after Microsoft bought them. Oh wait...

Ruin, really?

One word... FrontPage. There are more, of course, and we could go on trading licks all day, but in the end, the corpses of products that were killed by Microsoft would probably outnumber those still living. And yes, by the time MS got done with it, FrontPage deserved to die, but that's the whole point.

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[dadelbunts]

Dont you know everyone here hates MS for no real reason. Microsoft could donate all the money they have to starving kids and people on slashdot would still complain that they are evil or some shit about blue screens.

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[Wamoc]

One word... FrontPage. There are more, of course, and we could go on trading licks all day, but in the end, the corpses of products that were killed by Microsoft would probably outnumber those still living. And yes, by the time MS got done with it, FrontPage deserved to die, but that's the whole point.

There are other numerous examples of now retired software products that, at the time, made tremendous sense to buy. FoxPro, for instance, was enormously popular, and made MS a lot of money. Ditto for Frontpage. For years, if you didn't know HTML, Frontpage was pretty much the way to get a web page up. Again, and it was tremendously successful in the market.

Please read all of short posts before submitting flamebait

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bungie hasnt failed just because hasnt been asimillated, and still retains some independent self

HotMail started to fade since microsoft buyed, was secon to yahoo mail time before gmail

Dynamics... really? you really have drinked to much of the cool aid (tm) its an ugly mess, new versions are letting down old user configs and old formats because of that... in that market that its a big no no

power point never was better that aldus persuasion or harvard graphics but where killed just becuase microsoft bundled powerpoint with word and excell... standart because of monopolistic bahaviour isnt a merit you know

You relly are out of your mind... foxpro killed the dbase market, microsoft buyed just to sold it at half the price or less. FrontPage? How old are you? who lied that much to you?

Mmmm i see, microsoft employees are smart people just like you... right?

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[xhrit]

>Microsoft is a successful company because they've got some pretty smart people working there. All that money didn't just come from nowhere.

Microsoft's money came from the same place that all money comes from. The only reason Microsoft is a successful company is because Billy's mommy had connections and was able to hand his startup several no bid contracts. After all you don't get anywhere in a corporate oligarchy without cronyism.

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you retarded?

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[AK Marc]

Ruin doesn't always mean "make disappear or fail in a business sense." Arguably, to many, Bungie is worse than before the acquisition. And they could consider that "worseness" to be ruined, if it tainted the original.

Re:Yeah, what failures!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a basic truth that we here at Slashdot are loathe to admit: Microsoft is a successful company because they've got some pretty smart people working there. All that money didn't just come from nowhere. They kinda know what they're doing over there in Redmond, you know?

Maybe they do make a lot of money but their products and software is still shit. The Dynamics line of software is nothing more than a highly polished turd.

I hope Facebook is next

[Deliveranc3]

It hasn't felt like the UI is designed for usability in a long while. Now there's restrictions on posting URLs and all kinds of other crappola.

How about Slashdot admin's put Slashdot back to where it was 3 years ago and go make a "social networking site".

I'd sign up.

Cash tender offer

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got $4.57 in my hand, cash money, that I'd pay for MySpace. Contact me if interested ... myspace.com/frustratedfortyishwannabeteen

Re:Purchase Value vs.Sale Value Does't Equal Profi

[foniksonik]

I'd mark this insightful if I could. Great points. Even just looking at ad revenue would likely prove out a slight profit after the sale. Add the sale of data mining activities, etc and it should be profitable on paper plus the other bonuses you mentioned.

/nelsonlaugh

[shoptroll]

Good work Mr. Murdoch.

We'll probably see him selling the NYT next after the great paywall failure.

Re:/nelsonlaugh

[dkleinsc]

We'll probably see him selling the NYT next after the great paywall failure.

That would be really impressive seeing as he doesn't own it. You're probably thinking of the Wall St Journal, which is a completely different publication.

Re:/nelsonlaugh

[shoptroll]

Right. Got the two mixed up. Thanks for correcting me.

Re:/nelsonlaugh

[Loadmaster]

He's probably thinking of the New York Post. Which is an even more different publication.

My vote is for Chris

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets go with someone that has a vision not an investment firm. If you don't have a vision then the company shrivel and dies as is evidenced by Myspace's current condition.

But in all reality the only thing Myspace has going for it is it's name and that's barely worth $10 million. It's much easier to just build good sites to begin with that don't have any expectation for a return on investment over the short term while you build up the brand. And whatever you do, don't sell control of the company away.

Understand this financial people, you can't buy social networking companies. You can only invest in them short term. You will always need a social team with a team leader like Steve Jobs. And that company will always need to reinvent itself with experimental sites which it can later incorporate into itself. You create, you don't buy. If it's not original and different then no one will care.

Only $100 Million?

[tunapez]

Geez, why not make up a higher number? Considering modern economists aren't really constrained by reality when it comes to eValuations, let's just add another zero and make it a mere $1Billion.
 
  Anyone hear of the dot-com bubble? If that is too ancient to recall, perhaps I could use a real estate metaphor...

Re:Only $100 Million?

[AnujMore]

Maybe 100M _is_ the "made up higher number".

You should be in myspace

[Anonymous Coward]

Darn. If only we had listened to Paul Banks!

Looks like the myth of Murdoch the biz genius

[Perp Atuitie]

finally gets busted in a major way. Guess he should just stick to the tits and ass that launched his so-called career.

Potential.

[__aazsst3756]

Facebook is not really that great, they are only popular right now because everyone else is on it. There is potential for MySpace to retake the lead, but it would not be easy, and would upset the 10 people still there. What would it take?

• Switch to a few very clean styles (end the kiddy dazzling unicorn look).
• Take privacy seriously, and make this your selling point
• Make it easy to turn games completely off. I personally don't want to ever get another game notice in my life.
• Make the settings very clear and simple.
• Have a setting to completely wipe data from servers after a usable selectable time period (i.e. 6 months).
• Clean ads, they need to make money, but it not obtrusively (again, think google).
• Build own ad system (if they don't have already), and screen ads for clean look, quality, privacy.
• Put assurances in user agreement that they will never sell my personal data, or any data to make linking possible (i.e. UserID)
• You get the idea...

Funny, I closed my myspace account 2 nights ago

[xjerky]

Don't laugh - I hadn't touched it in years at this point, and never "pimped" out my page to begin with...it was just an easy way to communicate with my family cross-country with pictures, etc.

But on a whim I went to stalker paradise site mylife.com and looked my name up - lo and behold, I found a picture of myself. A pic that I had only ever uploaded to myspace. So, even though I had set my profile completely to private, myspace apparently sold my picture to mylife.com. Fuckers.

Maybe Facebook isn't much better, but I have yet to see Facebook pics of me from Google/mylife searches, etc.

Re:Funny, I closed my myspace account 2 nights ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I ask why you're using mylife? Some searching I've been doing says that they're a bunch of scam artists. Putting them on the same line as Google seems odd to me.

Re:Purchase Value vs.Sale Value Does't Equal Profi

[GrumblyStuff]

It would be interesting to know if the purchase yielded more than $480 million in return.

Why not go back to what it did well?

[moogaloonie]

I never understood why Myspace wants to be Facebook so badly. I'd always viewed Facebook as a social networking tool to stay in touch with friends, family, and associates. Myspace always seemed like more of a shrine to my personal interests, such as bands, books, movies etc. If it were mine, I'd take a cue from second life and allow users to make actual "myspaces", or 3D rooms we could decorate with clickable posters and pictures of our interests. The backgrounds would then become wallpaper and the music player could be a user-chosen device like a jukebox or iPod. It's a shame to see it failing so fast, in some ways I enjoyed using Myspace more 3 years ago than I do using Facebook now.

Good luck, you fuckers

[Legion303]

What a shame Rupert lost money on this sinking ship.

Friendster cease to exist on May 31st, 2011.

[antdude]

http://geeks.thedailywh.at/2011/04/26/social-network-obit-of-the-day/

I am surprised this older social network is still alive!