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Specific Media To Buy MySpace

Posted by samzenpus on from the deal-of-the-century dept.

tripleevenfall writes "Ad-targeting firm Specific Media has agreed to buy News Corp.'s struggling social-media site Myspace. The deal for $35 million is well below the $100 million News Corp. was seeking for the troubled social-media site. The deal involves considerably more equity for News Corp. than cash and they will retain a small stake in the site, according to a person familiar with the matter."

52 comments

  1. one down one to go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Now we only need to do something to convince people that facebook is for old people and maybe this whole "connect with people on the internet fad" will be over with and done. Good riddance I say. Now please excuse me I am going to go over and read today's xkcd as a way to use the internet the way God planned it.

    1. Re:one down one to go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      How droll. Connecting with people has always been a part of the Internet. It's gleefully destroying your own privacy to the extent that it's a moral statement that's new.

    2. Re:one down one to go by second_coming · · Score: 1

      Silly me. I thought connections were what the internet was all about.

  2. Congrats by greymond · · Score: 1

    On buying a site no one but "indie" musicians care about.

    --
    Ave Molech Setting
    1. Re:Congrats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, you'd think that a music label would buy the site, seeing as the people on there these days are music groups.

    2. Re:Congrats by oldmac31310 · · Score: 2

      Hey I'm a musician/producer and have two MySpace pages and I don't care about it! It has been of almost no use to me.

      --
      http://www.acetonestudio.com
  3. Ha ha rupert by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Informative

    News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005, sold it for $35 million. 6% eh? Always nice when nice things happen to nice people.

    1. Re:Ha ha rupert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      yeah, well, at least he still has a friend in 'tom'.

    2. Re:Ha ha rupert by eln · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There was an article in Bloomberg Businessweek last week about MySpace and how it all went wrong. It's really interesting how quickly MySpace went from the planned jewel in the crown of News Corp. to Murdoch's abandoned stepchild.

      Even at the time of the News Corp acquisition, cracks were showing in MySpace's dominance of the social network scene, but the infusion of cash and media expertise from News Corp could potentially have helped it. Unfortunately, once Murdoch shifted his focus to acquiring the Wall Street Journal, he no longer cared about what happened to MySpace and any hope (however small) of saving it was lost.

    3. Re:Ha ha rupert by stern · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You ignore the fact that they earned income on it in the meantime. Revenue in 2008 was $900 million (I don't know what the profit was). I believe that News Corp's investment in MySpace may have been quite profitable, even if they had only a stub left at the end.

    4. Re:Ha ha rupert by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      If it made no profit it doesn't matter if the site made $500 trillion in revenue.

    5. Re:Ha ha rupert by interkin3tic · · Score: 2

      You ignore the fact that they earned income on it in the meantime. Revenue in 2008 was $900 million (I don't know what the profit was). I believe that News Corp's investment in MySpace may have been quite profitable, even if they had only a stub left at the end.

      I think if it were profitable, they'd be selling it for more than 6% of what they paid for it.

    6. Re:Ha ha rupert by jd · · Score: 1

      They'll sell it for what people think it's worth today, not what income was derived through it, say, last year or the year before. If it has no value now, then 6% of what they paid for it might actually be a very good deal no matter how much they made from it before.

      There may be other reasons for the sale. News International is currently in VERY Hot Water in the UK (espionage against government officials, hacking into phones of celebrities, bugging, and may have been carrying out bribery or intimidation against senior officials in Scotland Yard) - cash from a fire sale will help keep the books in the black and avoid the shareholders getting cold feet.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    7. Re:Ha ha rupert by 228e2 · · Score: 1

      Heh, Tom left myspace a long time ago . . .you no longer get his as an auto friend.

      --
      Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
    8. Re:Ha ha rupert by the_humeister · · Score: 1

      I never understood how or why MySpace became so popular. The individual pages were just so bad: horrible backgrounds, horrible background music that won't shut up, videos that keep playing, etc. It all reminded me of geocities (*shudder*). In contrast, Facebook just provides a much more clean and polished look.

    9. Re:Ha ha rupert by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      In the weird and corrupt world of high finance they did not sell it for 35 million dollars, they sold in for 35 million dollars worth of stock of the company buying it. Now it depends what the companies worth, ie news group is selling my space but via owning a large chunk of specific media still owns myspace.

      So a quick shuffle shake to try rebranding with some troll B$ celebrities or on-sell specific media with the now delusion marketing that they bought myspace cheap and a worth a whole lot more (especially after dumping most of myspace staff, leaving it run in high profit inevitable maintenance and update collapse mode).

      Then of course unlike you little people, there is the whole write off $545 million as a tax avoidance scam against other income whilst in reality still owning myspace by owning the bought it.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    10. Re:Ha ha rupert by XahXhaX · · Score: 1

      That's probably why it became popular. The development of social networking mirrors the rise and development of the internet. Myspace is to social networking what Geocities was to the early web.

      Plus, it was 'the thing' to do if you were in a band, so just about everybody from major to indie was on there and that attracted a ton of their users.

    11. Re:Ha ha rupert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It became popular because people could... show off their artistic creativity...
      While this is all fine and well, it becomes awful when basic browsing functionality becomes broken.

      A similar site that is popular in Asian areas is Zuup.
      It had similar customization options, but it also had a very clear navigation bar at the top of every page and profiles were in an iframe. (some question the use of iframes, but they are useful, get over it, XHR has nothing on iframe besides content fitting in with the document, but seamless iframes are coming in HTML5 which should fix those problems)

      Facebook, I actually find it a pain to use now. It seriously is terrible. The interface is an absolute mess.
      I prefer the old version. The only decent thing in the new versions is the new commenting system, that is it, the rest is terrible. They removed so much of what made Facebook good, or hid some of it away behind several complicated and hidden links.
      Want to have a customized look to your profile? Too bad, you will wear your white uniform, you will walk like everyone else and you will talk like everyone else.
      It's not like they need to allow you to customize EVERY SINGLE THING, just let people have a page where they can throw modules around in whatever order they want, hell, even positioned absolutely with various manually set heights if they really want to.
      As long as it keeps navigation clean and visible, there shouldn't be a problem with it.
      In fact, you used to be able to do this, but not anymore as far as I can tell. The many profiles I remember simply do not exist that way anymore. Nice clean, polished walls for everyone, eh?

      But no, to hell with creativity.

  4. $35 million? Ouch! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does this mean all the ridiculous MyFox stuff will go away?

  5. Congrats to the Vanderhooks by natebrau · · Score: 0
    Cool!

    I'm very curious what will happen under SM's tutelage. Moving back to Santa Monica, I would guess.

    If they can turn MySpace from a catch-all into something which grabs onto a few small niches, then it's definitely got a future.

    I wonder how they will handle the translation from a C# sharp into something a bit more maintainable? I'd be surprised if they didn't change their development philosophy, especially considering SM's legacy development philosophy.

    Then again- SM has picked up a number of very high-level people from MySpace and FAN, so we'll see if they have enough "hooks" between the two to make it a successful merger.

    1. Re:Congrats to the Vanderhooks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And how exactly is C# not "maintainable"?

    2. Re:Congrats to the Vanderhooks by cosm · · Score: 2

      I wonder how they will handle the translation from a C# sharp into something a bit more maintainable?

      I know its cool to bash Microsoft on here, saying C# (or do you mean C##, must be new :) isn't maintainable isn't really fair to the language. Perhaps the project's (MySpace that is) overall structure is poorly designed, but that doesn't make the tools it was designed with unmaintainable. Am I missing something?

      --
      'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    3. Re:Congrats to the Vanderhooks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And how exactly is C# not "maintainable"?

      I dunno, you're the only one who said it's not, so you tell us.

    4. Re:Congrats to the Vanderhooks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry- slip of the 'ol gray matter there about C##. :)

      But SM's developers don't have a history with C#, and MySpace will be going through a round of (potentially large) layoffs.

      So who is left to actually maintain legacy C# and write new C# code? The alternative is to rewrite and/or port to something a little more common.

      Another angle is that one of the reasons why MySpace had problems was because they went with C# in the first place, another being that it was because they're based in L.A.

      Re: http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/03/MySpace-Debate

      With SM being based out of Irvine, (branch office in Santa Monica), leaving L.A. isn't very likely, but potentially ditching C# is.

      As ever, though, just my opinion. :)

    5. Re:Congrats to the Vanderhooks by natebrau · · Score: 1

      Sorry- forgot to login to reply.

    6. Re:Congrats to the Vanderhooks by cbraescu1 · · Score: 1

      one of the reasons why MySpace had problems was because they went with C# in the first place

      Actually MySpace was first programmed in ColdFusion.

      --
      Catalin Braescu
      Ofaly.com
    7. Re:Congrats to the Vanderhooks by cosm · · Score: 1

      Gotcha, however I just don't see how the language itself is at fault at all. Ditching C# because new devs know other stuff, that's understandable, but ditching the language because of the language seems to be placing too much blame on the .NET stack and not enough on the million other aspects of the business.

      --
      'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    8. Re:Congrats to the Vanderhooks by unity · · Score: 1

      Actually it was done in asp/vbscript first. of course it was just a diskspace website back then -- when a few hundred meg was a big deal.

    9. Re:Congrats to the Vanderhooks by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      but ditching the language because of the language seems to be placing too much blame on the .NET stack

      I suspect it's more about the talent than the technology. C# and .NET are fine for corporate drone work (I say that lovingly, you guys get to go home at 5) but it's not likely to attract the kind of creative outside-the-box talent that it seems to take to innovate on the Internet.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  6. Reminds me of a movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes.

  7. A match made in heaven? by torgis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, let me get this straight. A social media site known mainly for the sheer hideousness of its user-created pages has been purchased by an ad-targeting agency known for its slow, blinky, flash-ridden, "shoot the monkey" ads? Dear god. Not since geocities has a user been easily able to chew up pre-generated HTML and barf up horrible atrocities of clashing styles and colors that make it feel as if your eyes are being raped with a wire brush. If you have photosensitive epilepsy you might want to avoid myspace in the future. In fact, even if you don't have photosensitive epilepsy, you might want to steer clear as well.

    1. Re:A match made in heaven? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A social media site known mainly for the sheer hideousness of its user-created pages

      Well, that and pictures of teenage girls' cleavage taken in bathrooms.

      Personally, I never saw the allure of myspace. But then again I lived through the Internet of the 90's which was about the same thing, so I guess I was already de-sensitized to the visual violence.

  8. So... by denzacar · · Score: 2

    You're saying MySpace WAS useful for something after all?

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  9. Bet by Niris · · Score: 1

    Bet Tom is laughing in his pile of money.

    1. Re:Bet by blair1q · · Score: 1

      Maybe not.

      He tried to buy it back when the price was still $100 million.

    2. Re:Bet by mr_lizard13 · · Score: 1

      Hey, Tom's my friend on MySpace, leave him out of this.

      --
      "We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
  10. Great by microbee · · Score: 1

    One more name I don't have to hear about.

  11. Great work if you can get it by rudy_wayne · · Score: 0

    You buy MySpace for $580 Million and sell it for $35 Million. And I bet nobody at NewsCorp. got fired for this wonderful bit of business dealing.

    What a great job to have.

    1. Re:Great work if you can get it by blair1q · · Score: 4, Informative

      I doubt it. Apparently they mined it for about a $billion in revenue in a partnership with Google's ad bureau. They probably didn't hit anything like the original targets they projected for it, but they probably made a respectable profit on it.

    2. Re:Great work if you can get it by bhcompy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You buy a baseball player for $50 million. Baseball player generates you $100 million in increased ticket and merchandise sales as well as market exposure. At the end of his contract, you cannot sell him for anything. You get $0. Was this a financial victory? You don't need to sell something for more than you bought it for to come out positive.

    3. Re:Great work if you can get it by XahXhaX · · Score: 1

      That's assuming they did ever turn a profit from Myspace. Somehow I doubt it ever made them enough to recoup.

      Either way this is still Newscorp we're talking about. $500 million is not going to bust the company, and I sincerely doubt any one of their executives lost sleep over this loss.

  12. Fuck Rupert Murdoch. by Lilith's+Heart-shape · · Score: 0

    I'm glad his purchase of MySpace turned out so badly for him.

    --

    I write sci-fi for metalheads

  13. And nothing of value was gained by oldmac31310 · · Score: 1

    by a company of no value!

    --
    http://www.acetonestudio.com
  14. Facebook is, what $35B now? by billstewart · · Score: 1

    Sure, its value is floating and fictitious, but apparently the market thinks it's 1000x more valuable than MySpace by now.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
    1. Re:Facebook is, what $35B now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Facebook is for the time being still a private company. Its value is a target number for a future IPO, and thus even more fictitious than a market cap.

  15. Not quite as bad as it seems by s7uar7 · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to this story from 2006, Google signed a $900m agreement to power the MySpace search between Q4 2006 and Q2 2010. The caveat is that it was, "so long as Fox achieves its expected traffic levels and other commitments." Either way Murdoch hasn't lost quite as much as the headline figures suggest.

  16. Difficult to merge old & new media by peter303 · · Score: 1

    Of a long list: ABC & InfoSeek, Time Warner & AOL, MicroSoft & NBC, Fox & MySpace; none is really thriving. AOL is trying to revive by itself again. MSNBC hasnt done much new in a long time.

  17. My - who? by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    MySpace is still around? I'm surprised. It hasn't been relevant ( or palatable ) for most of its dreadful life.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    1. Re:My - who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Myspace got people laid.

      News Corp. took a site that had mllions using it, perhaps because people like getting laid, and commercialized it to the point that they could give away gold bullion for logging in and people wouldn't bother.

      Fucking capitalists.

  18. Here's the formula... by Jack9 · · Score: 1

    http://adage.com/article/digital/specific-media-ceo-talks-myspace-justin-timberlake/228494/

    1. Buy MySpace
    2. Have Justin Timberlake promote it
    3. ???
    PROFIT!!!

    --

    Often wrong but never in doubt.
    I am Jack9.
    Everyone knows me.
  19. When is Facebook's turn? by antdude · · Score: 1

    ;) And who is the next big social network star? :P

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  20. New Media Animation's take on this by Animats · · Score: 1

    Here's New Media Animation's take on this. They're a quick-turn animation house in Tapei, and they do one or two commentaries on the day's news every day.