
Myspace to Be Sold to Specific Media for $35 Million - ssclafani
http://allthingsd.com/20110629/exclusive-myspace-to-be-sold-to-specific-media-at-35-million/
======
staunch
That's a damn steal. There's still significantly more than $35 million worth
of value left in MySpace.

With a new strategy and good execution someone could turn the site into
something really big again. The press would eat it up too, because everyone
loves a come-back story.

Instead some shitty ad company is probably going to turn it into a link farm.

~~~
dasil003
It has value in it, but I don't know what strategy could turn it around.
Social networking adoption is a lot about fashion, and with the opinion that
MySpace is old, tired, ugly and boring having crossed the chasm years ago, it
seems a very tough sell to turn that around.

~~~
jerf
Rebrand it, sell it as "retro", deal with the fact you won't be Facebook.
Lately the nostalgia lifecycle seems to be measured in months, so I'm actually
half serious here.

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billpaetzke
Just FYI, we are hiring ex-Myspace developers at Leads360. We've hired four
ex-Myspacers in the past six months. Our technology stack is similar, so the
learning curve is only slight. And we have lots of interesting and challenging
projects to do. Located in El Segundo; full-time local only.

If you got laid off or are ready to jump ship, then email Bill at
bpaetzke@leads360.com.

~~~
jaaron
Likewise, we're a new, funded Santa Monica based startup still looking for top
web, mobile & backend engineers. Email aaron@projectwbs.com or find me at
@jaaronfarr.

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Major_Grooves
They might actually have made their money on the deal. Do we know how much
revenues MySpace generated while News Corp owned them?

~~~
WrkInProgress
They had the 900 million dollar advertising deal with Google at one point.

~~~
marcf
As I said in response to another post, the 2006 Google-Myspace deal had
minimum traffic requirements, thus it isn't clear that they made the $900M
from Google:

<http://mashable.com/2010/12/16/myspace-google-search-deal/>

I've be interested in knowing whether the targets were met and how much Google
paid Myspace in the end.

~~~
NoPiece
They did have revenue besides google - In 2007 MySpace had $1 billion in
revenue.

<http://www.businessinsider.com/2007/7/myspace-1b-of-r>

~~~
marcf
The $1B in revenue is only an estimate based on projections and a continued
growth trajectory. Not saying it isn't true, but it isn't a solid source for
their actual revenue.

Did News Corporation annual filings every break out revenue from MySpace?
Given that News Corporation is a public company, there should be solid numbers
somewhere.

~~~
NoPiece
You are right, looking around some more, it looks like $1 billion was never
reached. News Corp didn't break MySpace financials out, so all I can find some
quotes from News Corp earnings calls. Looks like 2008 numbers were in the
~$200 million range per quarter, "FIM/MySpace: $225M, up 23% y/y, up
consecutively from $210M in Q3, but still not as high as $233M in Q2."

[http://www.techfeed24.com/2008/08/05/news-corp-q4-tv-
terribl...](http://www.techfeed24.com/2008/08/05/news-corp-q4-tv-terrible-as-
promised-myspace-revenues-up-profits-down-nws/)

~~~
ralfd
Interesting. Thats still around 800 Mio revenue in 2008. For 2010 I did find:

> "In its 2010 fiscal report, News Corp. said that revenues from its “Other”
> segment, where MySpace lives, were down 36 percent to $1.5 billion. The
> segment booked a loss of $575 million, greater than the year before when it
> lost $212 million."

Read more: [http://www.bnet.com/blog/advertising-business/news-corp-
may-...](http://www.bnet.com/blog/advertising-business/news-corp-may-never-
profit-from-myspace/5493#ixzz1QiAgOBKp)

------
Macha
> News Corp. bought Myspace for $580 in 2005,

Nice proof reading there.

On a more serious note, to lose $0.5bn in value pretty much shows how far
Myspace has fallen.

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akavi
Jesus, that's a markdown.

With the release of Google+, I have to wonder if we'll be seeing something
similar with Facebook five years from now.

~~~
danilocampos
We'll definitely see Facebook decline but not because of any clumsy product
Google offers. Facebook's decline will come from any of a number of new and
as-yet-unimagined products that are focused on helping users make new social
connections rather than rigidly codifying existing ones. A place for you to
chat with your weed buddies, another for your gaming pals, another for your
family. Something more analogous to how we socialize in reality. Google's
trying this with circles but their social blindspot doesn't leave me confident
they'll get anywhere. Everything they do feels contrived in this space.

Facebook has lots of a staying power, and a much better product leadership
than MySpace. So that buys Facebook plenty of time. But in the end, they're
too successful to risk doing anything interesting anymore.

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skarayan
I find it interesting that the founders bid on it.

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jmjerlecki
At $35 million I think you can make a number of arguments that this is a good
purchase – user data, page traffic, ad network. I am unsure how to factor in
brand value. Myspace has a huge brand awareness even if it is mostly negative.

~~~
thewordpainter
like you acknowledged, i'm not sure how much weight i'd put in brand awareness
when many view myspace as a laughingstock these days. plus, all that traffic
is ramping downward at a crazy high rate:
<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myspace.com/>

~~~
marcf
It is like social networks have both the power to grow fast and die fast.

Yahoo, even after its search engine sucked compared to Google, still held on
for a really long time.

But social networks seem to die really really quickly.

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horatiumocian
I think that MySpace was valued at $12 billion at some point; where there
where rumours that Yahoo! would merge with MySpace, and News Corp would
receive 25% of Yahoo's shares (they were valued at around $50Bn).

Here is the article: [http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/19/is-myspace-
worth-12-billion...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/19/is-myspace-
worth-12-billion/)

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KeyBoardG
Interesting to hear that NewsCorp made that money back with the Google deal. I
had no idea how much that was worth.

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headhuntermdk
Might as well as give it away for that price ( compared to how much Rupert
Murdoch paid for it )

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kprobst
Well, that's only a $545 million loss, considering Murdoch bought it for $580
million or so.

~~~
cowkingdeluxe
Wrong. Murdoch probably made a profit off the ads during that time. See above
comments.

~~~
ssharp
Revenues != profits. If you don't know, or even have a decent estimate of,
profits, it's hard to really judge the deal. However, I don't think Murdoch
went into this deal planning that he'd have a $540 million capital loss in
just five or six years.

