How Low Has MySpace Sunk? It's About To Be Sold For Less Than $30 Million

from the destruction-of-value dept

Tue, Jun 28th 2011 3:33pm — Mike Masnick

Way back in 2005, when News Corp. bought Intermix, which (believe it or not) was the parent company of MySpace, we focused on the fact that Intermix was big in the spyware/adware business, and didn't even pay that much attention to the MySpace part of the deal (silly us). Believe it or not, that was the point at which MySpace was just really starting to catch on. The whole thing cost $580 million, and a year later, one of the company's founders, Brad Greenspan, sued News Corp., claiming that there was fraud involved and MySpace should have been valued at $20 billion. Of course, the story since then has been one of a big downhill slope. While MySpace had always focused on music, over the last couple of years, at every music conference I've attended, people have joked about the fact that no one uses MySpace at all any more. And so it's come to this. Reports are now spreading that News Corp. is looking to unload what's left of MySpace for between $20 and $30 million. Oh, and in a bit of interesting timing, Facebook is preparing to launch its new music service next month. How quickly things change...

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Filed Under: social networks
Companies: myspace, news corp.

39 Comments

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Aaron deOliveira, 28 Jun 2011 @ 3:52pm

My [______]
I meet artists in Houston that use MySpace. They're working every angle they can to get their music heard. Their use of MySpace isn't exclusive, but they use it as a tool to promote.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2011 @ 3:56pm

A lot my musicians use myspace, even if almost nobody else does. That could change with facebook music, of course.

I'm curious to see if anyone bothers to buy the site. It's kind of like buying a cargo shit with a 100 foot wide hole in the hull...
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- Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:01pm
  
  Re:
  "cargo shit"
  
  Yep. That's MySpace alright.
  
  I honestly can't see why musicians would continue to use myspace with options like bandcamp.com out there. Sure, you've got a little more freedom to toss around animated gifs and slow-yer-compy-to-a-crawl plugins, but if you're serious about getting your music heard, there's a ton of better options.
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  - Urza9814, 28 Jun 2011 @ 8:39pm
    
    Re: Re:
    It depends on who they're targeting their music to, I suppose. Everyone knows Myspace, so it's easy to say "find us on Myspace". College students and organizations, when looking for bands, tend to immediately turn to Myspace. Nobody's ever heard of things alternatives like bandcamp.com. Maybe the labels are scouting talent there and such, maybe other artists know it, but most of their fans probably don't.
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    - PaulT (profile), 29 Jun 2011 @ 1:04am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      "Nobody's ever heard of things alternatives like bandcamp.com. "
      
      Hmmm... I'd say that a) "nobody" is clearly an exaggeration and b) maybe if they stopped defaulting to the easy option and say "find us on bandcamp.com" instead of MySpace then the fans would look there instead. New sites only get big due to public awareness of them - look at Facebook, nobody knew what that was when Myspace was at its height...
      
      If you think that's an exaggeration, consider, that I for one *never* follow a MySpace link because I know how horrible that site is on the eyes. If a band wants my attention, they have to be more imaginative.
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- Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2011 @ 8:25pm
  
  Re:
  Ok I admit this is a bit snarky.
  
  I would never buy a cargo shit, ever!
  Hole or not.
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Jay (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:01pm

Where did Myspace go wrong?
I can't quite figure it out...

They seemed to be doing rather well as Facebook was coming up, but in the end, they were uprooted by other social events. I've heard some people liked the easier on the eyes look of FB, others just the fact that all they have to do is use FB as a social medium.

So what's going to happen to MS now? It's lost so much ground to other sites, it's not funny. Could they ever make a comeback?
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- LegitTroll (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:21pm
  
  Re: Where did Myspace go wrong?
  If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it,... does anyone care?
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- Hephaestus (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 6:27pm
  
  Re: Where did Myspace go wrong?
  "So what's going to happen to MS now? It's lost so much ground to other sites, it's not funny. Could they ever make a comeback?"
  
  If you want to know the history of what happened to MySpace it's pretty simple. Someone started a whisper campaign saying there were people taking advantage of children on Myspace. It was picked up and hyped by the media. People fled to FaceBook. Recently FaceBook tried this same tactic against Google. It back fired and FaceBook got caught. Recently Google began limited external testing of its new social media site Google+. So you can expect more BS smear campaigns, against google, from facebook in the near future.
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  - Hephaestus (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 6:41pm
    
    Re: Re: Where did Myspace go wrong?
    To answer you question. If mySpace starts picking up steam again, facebook will probably accuse people on the site of Cryo Necro Bestiality ... ie sex with frozen hot dogs.
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Nicedoggy, 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:23pm

When you start dealing with music your company will sunk.

Seriously though the first time I saw MySpace the thing that struck me was that the pages were a mess, everything goes and it reminded me of AOL webpages in the 90's.

Also it was a paradise for account hijacking.

Maybe people just got tired of the crappy tastes others have.
God why are people so fascinated with blurry photos(shinning faces using photoshop) and stars everywhere? why?
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- Tblount, 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:50pm
  
  Re: myspace = aol
  Yep... I hated AOL trying to push crap down my throat... and seems myspace thinks it's a good idea. Google has proven the way to success is to leave users alone. When will eBay get knocked off by a better service? I can't wait. I hate eBay but I have to use it.
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Pitabred (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:25pm

News Corp. took a bath?
Couldn't have happened to a nicer group
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Nicedoggy, 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:37pm

Quote:
the product of the greatest minds of a generation working together with the express purpose of building the dumbest moron who ever lived

Source: Portal 2

That quote should read:

the product of the greatest minds of a generation working together with the express purpose of building the dumbest moronic scheme ever devised
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- Nicedoggy, 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:38pm
  
  Re:
  Oops! wrong thread.
  Sorry.
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out_of_the_blue, 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:44pm

People eventually catch on that there's NO substance!
Let me be the first to predict this end will come to Facebook. Making your own content is exhausting, not entertaining -- that's why Mike rarely does it -- and most of it is crap. I've seen many personal websites started with big plans on the first page, which lead to pages blank except for some variant of "this is where I'll put my neat projects", and nothing else ever, soon as they reckon up how much /work/ those projects will actually require. Facebook is about the same, only in one place, and with obnoxious advertising -- that'll soon be found ineffective, too.

The whole American society is winding down for lack of interest, not least because of the visible example of The Rich who are able to make demands without the least exchange of actual labor in return. What's needed, as ever, is to take away /money/ as the sole goal in society, and that's easy to do merely by reducing the manifold excesses that The Rich get. Rest of us would actually be fairly happy to do even farm labor if PAID in proportion to the actual value of food. -- That's an "economics" tip for you, Mike.
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- Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2011 @ 4:57pm
  
  Re: People eventually catch on that there's NO substance!
  Please, use the doll to show the court where the Internet touched you.
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- Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 5:59pm
  
  Re: People eventually catch on that there's NO substance!
  I enjoy "economics." So much easier to understand than actual economics.
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- PaulT (profile), 29 Jun 2011 @ 1:10am
  
  Re: People eventually catch on that there's NO substance!
  "Making your own content is exhausting, not entertaining -- that's why Mike rarely does it"
  
  So the content he posts on the blog in the form of written articles have been a fiction of my imagination? Who knew...
  
  "I've seen many personal websites started with big plans on the first page, which lead to pages blank except for some variant of "this is where I'll put my neat projects", and nothing else ever, soon as they reckon up how much /work/ those projects will actually require."
  
  I've seen plenty of projects posted on the likes of Kickstarter that have gone to fruition and rewarded both fans and the authors with exactly what they demanded. Your point?
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- Ta-kun, 29 Jun 2011 @ 12:26pm
  
  Re: People eventually catch on that there's NO substance!
  Then we will all move to Google+
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Tween, 28 Jun 2011 @ 5:22pm

Umm...
What's MySpace? Is that like Facebook, or YouTube, or what?
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- Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2011 @ 5:29pm
  
  Re: Umm...
  What is Facebook, is that like Myspace, AOL, or what?
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  - Casey Bouch (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 5:54pm
    
    Re: Re: Umm...
    I remember AOL. They were the Frisbee company that sent out free products in the mail.
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    - Hephaestus (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 6:32pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Umm...
      I thought they where coasters for drinks. Thanks for showing me the error of my ways. ;)
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      - Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2011 @ 7:13pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Umm...
        I used them to side my house.
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        Richard (profile), 29 Jun 2011 @ 5:46am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Umm...
        They made great bird-scarers
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        Joe Publius (profile), 29 Jun 2011 @ 6:55am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Umm...
        And to think I threw them away! That wasn't very green of me.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2011 @ 8:39pm
    
    Re: Re: Umm...
    Places for attention whores to go "ohh, look at how awesome I am!!!!!one".
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Paul`, 28 Jun 2011 @ 9:01pm

I can tell you exactly where they went wrong: Glitter.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2011 @ 9:02pm

It makes the incredible stock market valuations for many .com version 2 companies look stupid.
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A Guy, 28 Jun 2011 @ 9:11pm

It's almost as if Rupert Murdoch doesn't know what the fuck he's doing in the online space.

FB sucks btw.
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Drew (profile), 28 Jun 2011 @ 9:25pm

what killed My__
Myspace was a great idea. However, like so many things, the media decided it would make great fodder for a sensationalized scare-campaign (think swine flu, bird flu, West Nile Virus, teen killed because she 'met a guy from the internet', etc). Every time something bad happened and could be linked back to My__, the news ran with it. Before too long, schools were recommending strongly that parents keep their kids off of it, and some even expelled kids who held My__ accounts. The website didn't have long left after that. Facebook was the same thing (except with less customizability, and way more creepy-stalker-features, and it simply rose up to fill the gap as the 'safe alternative', since it didn't facilitate meeting people you don't already know in real life.
Personally I hate Faceblah with a passion, but it has become the de facto social networking interface. My wish is that some day social networking would be done across a platform that any company could tap into -- My__ profiles could 'friend' Facebook profiles, which could share pictures with people on Friendster, etc. Kinda like IRC. Then this whole issue would go away. If you wanted to draw people to your service, you'd have to offer better service, and if your friends wanted something lamer, that's fine, you could still use the service of your choice.
But I digress.
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67comet, 28 Jun 2011 @ 10:16pm

MS = OldSchool
Maybe it is because MySpace was the first one I used regularly but I really didn't like FB at all (still don't really). FB seemed harder to make your own and seemed less user friendly. MS seemed to theme easily, move things where you wanted them easily and at the time you could find everyone on either one.

I've got FB now because everyone else does (Like why Windows is so popular; it's not the best, it's just the one every one uses).

I feel bad for MS since that's the old school link to some serious Internet history; but it didn't change and grow in the right directions. That's the way of social media.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jun 2011 @ 2:25am

Wow, a website that is basically non-functionable is supposedly worth 30 million dollars? What an awesome fantasy.

Welcome to the 21st century internet: a trash heap of worthless and trendy ways of communicating or selling something.
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- PaulT (profile), 29 Jun 2011 @ 2:40am
  
  Re:
  I think that at this point, the "value" of MySpace is purely in its assets (read: customer database) and brand name.
  
  In other words, welcome to the 21st century internet, same as the 20th century internet.
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CilyPudi (profile), 29 Jun 2011 @ 2:57am

MySpace Sunk
Back in the day Myspace was the bomb for letting you use HTML to construct your page and create interesting comments. I had NO USE for Faceblah considering you can only chat. Then slowly Myspace started changing the site code to become exactly like Faceblah, and as they changed, I stopped visiting. Now Myspace is hardly recognizable, the page doesn't load correctly and it's a jumbled up eyesore. Somebody dropped a billion dollar ball, and I still hate Faceblah. I wish we had some site like the old Myspace was (where you could code your pages). It was really creative and fun. Faceblah is nothing but a heavily censored chatroom and has become an intelligence tool for the FBI. It stinks.
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- Richard (profile), 29 Jun 2011 @ 5:57am
  
  Re: MySpace Sunk
  I wish we had some site like the old Myspace was (where you could code your pages).
  
  It's just called your own homepage on the web - many ISPs offer it for free with your connection. Most people seem to have forgotten that this exists!
  
  If you want to host larger files for download then you can use Dropbox (or similar) and avoid your ISP's storage/bandwidth limits...
  
  As for the future of Myspace - see Geocities...
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John Gardner (profile), 29 Jun 2011 @ 1:52pm

I'm shocked MySpace is worth even that much... what of value do they have to offer? A few million dormant accounts?
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DandonTRJ (profile), 29 Jun 2011 @ 9:15pm

And one day later, Justin Timberlake has become part-owner of MySpace. Didn't see that coming!
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