News Corp: 'Now Is The Right Time' To Sell MySpace

It looks as if the torturous MySpace saga is headed for an end: NewsCorp finally seems ready to sell the suffering company off to whoever might be interested.

After massive layoffs, enormous ex-employee vitriol and weeks of speculation, COO Chase Carey finally admitted that a sale was in the works.

"With a new structure in place, now is the right time to consider strategic options for this business," Carey told analysts on a conference call. "The new MySpace has been very well received by the market and we have some very encouraging metrics. But the plan to allow MySpace to reach it's full potential may be best achieved under a new owner."

The statement comes on the heels of NewsCorp's latest earning report, which included the news the company has had to spend $275 million dollars in restructuring MySpace, potentially to spruce it up for buyers.

MySpace, which has undergone heavy losses in the wake of Facebook's domination in the social networking space, rebranded as a entertainment-oriented site, but to no avail.

Carey expanded on the sale to PaidContent, saying the site was fielding "a lot of interest" but hedged on admitting the sale would definitely occur by mentioning that "it could be an investor coming in to it, it could be us staying in with a restructured ownership structure with management."

Nevertheless, the message was clear. "We think a fresh perspective would give them flexibility and an opportunity to get a new life consistent with the right-sizing of the product and the costs," he said.

Comments

[jrakansas]

10:07 AM on 02/06/2011

The "right time" to sell myspace was about three years ago. Y'know, back when people still used it.

[billyzazen]

05:53 PM on 02/05/2011

"The new MySpace has been very well received by the market and we have some very encouraging metrics. But the plan to allow MySpace to reach it's full potential may be best achieved under a new owner."

that whole statement is just unbelievably dishonest and unethical

[jagrmeister721]

10:18 PM on 02/05/2011

Dishonest, unethical, and incompetent seem to characterize MySpace management: Hirschorn, Jones, Jon Miller.  They are completely out to lunch when it comes to what's needed to make an Internet property succeed.  They know nothing about technology.  The MySpace app API is plagued with problems and limitations; the platform last I checked restricted app makers from profiting from within their app, unlike Facebook. This guy talks about how well the redesign was adopted; but a simple glance at Compete.com shows that MySpace lost 3M users in the month following the new MySpace release.

[slackgeek]

10:04 PM on 02/04/2011

will it still be a place for friends :(

[UberdanSounds]

03:43 PM on 02/04/2011

I say let it die, it was they had fun while it lasted but I never liked it. I never check it & people who I don't know are constantly trying to message me & promote their stuff with ads which gets annoying. The site has always been super slow because of the Customizable backgrounds. Half of the designs people create make me wanna have a seizure! Good riddance, I say.

[jagrmeister721]

10:19 PM on 02/05/2011

Its losing about 3M users per month.  In two years, it will be history, if that long.

[Rajamanickam]

01:58 AM on 02/04/2011

I am just wondering how the new buyer of the myspace can increase the revenue while the current owner (creater?) is not able to do it.

Anyway, there are lot of demands available for music related social websites. So, recently we had developed ArtsPoint.Net and planning to sell the new Music related social portal.

I would like to know the worth of this site. Is there Any way to find the worth of the site? According to you how much you will be willing to make for getting artspoint.net

[JaxReader]

05:02 PM on 02/03/2011

I think the right time to have sold Myspace was a few years ago when people actually used it.

[Lapis 29]

04:55 PM on 02/03/2011

so he spent $275 million upgrading a product for sale on the marketplace that probably isn't worth $275 million in the first place?

Genius!

seriously, who is really going to give him a lot of money for this?

[brklynivn]

04:51 PM on 02/03/2011

Wouldn't it be funny if right after Newscorp sells it, membership skyrockets again....

[winebuyer]

04:22 PM on 02/03/2011

what is this MySpace thingy? Is there some kind of revenue/user model?

[ThinkCreeps]

04:19 PM on 02/03/2011

Is there a dumpster out there with change for a ten?

[ThinkCreeps]

04:18 PM on 02/03/2011

Well, sure.

It certainly isn't going to get any more valuable.

[Shagz2001]

03:51 PM on 02/03/2011

Actually... the right time to sell MySpace was in July of 2005...

[hypnotoad72]

12:50 PM on 02/03/2011

I'll buy it.  But can I borrow two cents first?

[iisguy]

11:39 AM on 02/03/2011

Why did facebook win over Myspace?

[ProfGiles]

12:21 PM on 02/03/2011

My guess is that Facebook shrewdly targeted college students, while MySpace seemed to target and soon became dominated by middle school students. Many businesses, mine included, had presences on both sites, but I, like others, basically abandoned MySpace awhile back because there are so few people over the age of 16 on MySpace.

[Adam Nicholas Hurst]

01:15 PM on 02/03/2011

I think another aspect is that while MySpace was sitting comfortably on top and focusing more on things like becoming a great resource for bands and fans, Facebook was developing more interesting social tools, like their picture sharing & tagging, the users' feeds, and integration with other sites like Twitter and social media (for instance, I'm logged in here with my FB account). MySpace also got really old with all the requests from bands and organizations I'd never heard of, based solely on search criteria. They were too comfortable and they got left in the dust. Plus, just like The Social Network stated - the hype surrounding a site does dictate their success or failure. Once all my friends left MySpace for FB, as much as I hated myself for following suit, that's exactly what I did. I don't go to social networking sites for music or customizable backgrounds. I use them to interact with friends who I don't get to see often, so if they're not there, neither am I.

[Larry West]

12:33 PM on 02/03/2011

Simple: Look at how I'm posting this comment. I'm using my Facebook account.

Facebook won the race because they made it possible to simply use one account to connect to everything without having to create a new account on another site. Not only that, but the profile layouts and apps made it easier for users. It worked well because of how incredibly simple it was, focusing more on the social networking part instead of everything else.

MySpace is great for bands, but that's really is it. At the same time, that was the reason MySpace was invented, anyway; to help bands. And it's doing a great job at that! :)

[hypnotoad72]

12:53 PM on 02/03/2011

All eggs in one basket.  Hack Facebook and one password will enter them all. 

Thankfully they're (finally) enabling HTTPS, but it'll still be interesting to find out how effective the security ultimately is...

[dmorris311]

01:09 PM on 02/03/2011

it WAS doing a great job of of helping bands. i preferred myspace before news corp bought it. if you loved the music over being "poked", myspace was for you. then news corp stepped in, and suddenly it was about ads, and money, and viruses. sucks that they bought it, destroyed it, and tossed it out the window. it had nothing to do with age demographic, many of my "thirtysomething" friends who love music and were in bands stayed loyal up until the very end.

[Johann Q]

09:48 AM on 02/03/2011

Well, I imagine every owner to be better for a social site then NewsCorp, unless your target group explicitly are Tea Party-people and conservative Australians, pretty much.