2005: Myspace Bought for $580M -- 2011: Myspace Sells for $35M

From DailyTech: For a lot of people, Myspace was their first introduction to modern social networking. News Corp. saw great potential in the site and in 2005 acquired it for a whopping $580M. However, Myspace did little to innovate and keep up with competitors like Facebook in the past six years. Myspace even tried to pivot and transform itself into a media portal, but that transition hasn't exactly been a fruitful one.

As a result, Facebook grew to become the dominant force in social networking (the site now has 750 million active users per month) while Myspace fell further and further behind into irrelevancy.

The next chapter in the Myspace saga begins today, as the site was just purchased by Specific Media for $35 million. That figure is above the $20 million to $30 million figure that was thrown around by Kara Swisher yesterday. However $35 million is well below the price News Corp. paid and a third of the $100 million price that the company was hoping to get for its faltering online property.

According to today's report by Swisher, Myspace will see its staff cut in half to around 200 employees, and the executives responsible for running the ship aground will be tossed overboard once the transition phase is completed.

"I wanted to take a minute to thank you all for the incredible experience it has been to lead this company and to work closely with all of you over the past several years," said current Myspace CEO Mike Jones in a memo today to current Myspace employees. “While I regret we won’t be working together at Myspace any longer, I am very proud of the work we have done here and believe we have performed with excellence — even under extremely difficult circumstances."

View: Article @ Source Site