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View Full Version : My Space sells for $35 million after being purchased for $580 million



Harold Mansfield
07-01-2011, 03:43 PM
As part of the deal, Swisher says MySpace's staff of 400 will be cut in half, corroborating murmurs from yesterday that more layoffs were on the way. In a memo sent to employees, MySpace CEO Mike Jones made note of additional "restructuring initiatives" while also announcing that he's departing the company after a two-month transition period.
As part of the deal, Swisher says MySpace's staff of 400 will be cut in half, corroborating murmurs from yesterday that more layoffs were on the way. In a memo sent to employees, MySpace CEO Mike Jones made note of additional "restructuring initiatives" while also announcing that he's departing the company after a two-month transition period.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-20075451-2/myspace-sells-to-specific-media-for-$35-million/


I will say that I have always hated My Space. It is a design and user friendly nightmare. The only thing it had going for it was that it was first, but if it ever had any competition at it's onset, it would ahve never made it out of the gate.

This is a good lesson in knowing when to get out and take the money. When Newscorp purchased My Space for $580 million, I knew that they had no idea what they were doing and could NEVER compete with Facebook or any other social platform because the layout is so horrible.
It must suck to loose $545 million.

vangogh
07-01-2011, 04:30 PM
I saw this the other day. Remember when MySpace was the social network. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Shows though how fast things can change, especially on the internet and where social sites are concerned. Digg is another example. Remember when everything social was about Digg?

tylerhutchinson
07-01-2011, 04:42 PM
I think that Myspace may make a decent comeback if marketed correctly. It is still big for entertainment industry. Justin Timberlake (who was the one who bought it) has a decent chance of using his name and hiring people to re-design the site and target it for entertainers to promote their music.

I have to clients in the entertainment industry that I plan on using myspace to a point to promote them.

Business Attorney
07-01-2011, 05:41 PM
Like Harold, I remember thinking Newscorp was crazy when they bought MySpace at that price. I understand that there is something about it that seems to work for musicians but to me it was just an awful mess.

Maybe Justin Timberlake will do something with MySpace, like he did with Facebook. Oh, wait - that was just his character in a movie. Well, perhaps he learned something about running a social network from working on "The Social Network."

I wonder if he would be interested in LimitedLiabilityCompanyCenter.com. I'd sell that for somewhat less than $35 million. I'm expecting his call any day now.

vangogh
07-01-2011, 05:50 PM
Maybe Justin Timberlake's partial ownership can help turn MySpace into something more than it is now. MySpace still seems to be the network for music and musicians and you'd think Justin Timberlake has some connections where the music industry is concerned. I can see it doing well as a niche network.


Oh, wait - that was just his character in a movie.

Now we know the real reason for his involvement in the MySpace purchase. He'll be able to play himself in the movie.

Harold Mansfield
07-02-2011, 11:54 AM
My Space's problem has always been it's design. It's not easy to use and It's not easy to customize. If they redesign it, maybe.
But that should have been done years ago. I think it missed it's window to correct it's problems and keep a market share.
But then again, I love a good comeback.

vangogh
07-02-2011, 10:44 PM
I think even more than nor being easy to use and customize is that the site inevitably suffered from very poor design. No consistency across all the self-designed pages. It turned into an endless see of flashing lights and generally awful looking pages. They could have let people customize within a well designed range of options, but they chose the easy approach, which in the end cost them many millions of dollars.

I think it still has potential and it will be interesting to see if the new group of owners puts more into it than the last.

C0ldf1re
07-03-2011, 04:15 AM
... Remember when MySpace was the social network... Remember when everything social was about Digg?

Yes. Yes. I am starting to feel old. (Perhaps soon we will be saying, "Remember how we used to talk about Googling things?")

vangogh
07-03-2011, 12:57 PM
You kids are lucky. When we were kids we didn't have social networks. If you wanted to find something you googled it. 20 miles. In the snow. Barefoot.