One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart - Montaigne
|
|
|
Murdoch tries to flog Myspace
RUPERT MURDOCH'S News Corp has put the unpopular social notworking website Myspace up for sale.
News Corp infamously bought Myspace at the height of its popularity in 2005 for $580 million, with Rupert Murdoch personally intervening to secure the deal. Since then the social networking website has lost tens of millions of users to its rival, Facebook, and now it is largely a sideshow in the social notworking market.
Despite Myspace's diminishing popularity, Reuters reports that News Corp has received early interest in buying it from 20 or so investor groups and is expecting to receive more. While there might be interest in the web property, it is highly unlikely that Murdoch will make any money from the sale, as Myspace's user base and influence on web users has waned significantly.
Back in 2005, firms like MTV and Viacom were keen to snap up Myspace due its popularity with musicians. Although many bands still maintain Myspace pages, the wider public has decided to use Facebook instead, taking Myspace's main selling point with them.
Murdoch's ability to take what was at the time the most popular social notworking website and turn it into a laughing stock should tell you what the master of the dark arts of media dominance knows about the world wide web. Murdoch's News Corp is currently beavering way to replicate the Myspace effect by erecting paywalls on the websites of its news outlets.
The huge loss Murdoch will realise on Myspace could well serve as an omen for what might happen to his other grasping and tone deaf online endeavors. µ
Share this:
Share
About 9 months ago I interviewed at Facebook and they were more interested in mean-spirited technical gotchas than in actually finding out what I could do for them.
My current employer seems satisfied about my technical capabilities, but more importantly, they gave me plenty of artistic / creative space to build some really great user interfaces for them.
I'm not sure what I could have done for Facebook, but I don't think my contributions would have mattered that much in such a unfriendly environment.
The guy is old and on his way out, all he know is Fox type business. Maybe he should have changed MySpace to MyAcidBath and it would have done better.
Either way this guy is on his way out the door into 6 feet under I don't think he will change much.
MySpace is worth less than Bebo and Bebo was reported to have been sold for less than 10 Million dollars.
MySpace Hits have dropped by 50% in one year and continue to drop.
MySpace users are leaving by the Millions because of how badly News Corp, Jonathan Miller, and Chase Carey destroyed it with their most recent upgrade 3.0. Anyone putting money up so the current president of MySpace can continue running it is an idiot. Mike Jones is the same guy with many of the ideas and concepts that destroyed MySpace.
THAT IS JUST TOO FUNNY. CHASE CAREY AND JONATHAN MILLER ARE TWO OF THE BIGGEST LIARS IN THE CORPORATE WORLD.
Here are the facts, Carey and Miller were given the opportunity to change the direction of MySpace last year with a proposal that would increase net profits of MySpace to 1.5 billion dollars by the third year.
Based on our experience with News Corp, Carey, and Miller no one should trust any of them.
They wanted us to disclose the plan to them without any written agreement in place. When that was refused, there were no further discussions.
I would venture to guess anyone they claim to be offering more than 10 million dollars for MySpace would be another one of their lies.
It is believed that the damage that Carey and Miller have done to MySpace has brought the value of MySpace down to nothing.
Anyone willing to pay the 50 to 200 million dollars MySpace alleges would mean one of two things. EITHER THEY LIED TO MYSPACE ABOUT WHAT THEY WERE WILLING TO PAY,,,,
OR MORE LIKELY IS NEWS CORP, CAREY, AND MILLER ARE LYING LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO IN AN EFFORT TO DRIVE THE PRICE UP.
News Corp should probably do a reality show called "MySpace" to recoup their losses. It will make more Money than MySpace ever will just showing how ignorant and stupid the people running MySpace are.
Murdoch if your reading this, think outside the Box. You need to innovate, come out with something new. You must be loaded to spend a half a billion on a gamble with no guarantees. It would be cheaper to start from the ground up. If you like to gamble be my guest. As long as you want to sit on your hands and think you can continue to buy your way to success, good luck you will need it. While your stagnating the rest of the world moves on.