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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."

11 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. 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 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.

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. So... by denzacar · · Score: 2

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

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  4. 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
  5. 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.

  6. 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
  7. 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.

  8. 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.