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Specific Media To Buy MySpace
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."
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.
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.