Tag Archives: myspace

Buy a Failing Social Network!

News Corp. has finally decided to sell MySpace!

MySpace is Dead

In 2005 News Corp. purchased the social network for $580 million (£348 million).

In 2009 MySpace traffic took a big hit, plummeting as users left it for the now more preferred Facebook. It never managed to recover from that even after several revamps, added features and a whole new layout. Maybe now they’ve realised people are just fickle when it comes to their technological obsessions and if they’d invested in other more important parts of the site that would make it faster, less confusing and less spammy (I usually got 10 friend requests a day from random sleazy strangers).

Alas it is too late now for MySpace, they’ve now become the laughing stock of Social Media.  So now after axing over 500 jobs in January and investing some $275 million (£165 million) into restructuring the company Murdoch’s media giant has realised it’s just not worth it and is trying to get al least $100 million  (£60 million) for it.

The only way any one can turn a profit from a deal like that is to take the existing application, make it better and re-brand it because MySpace is most definitely dead.

Myspace Axing 500 Jobs

Despite having major redundancies last year which saw the Social Networking Company’s total employees drop by 700 to just 1,130 Myspace is having further redundancies across its US and International offices again.

There are currently only three offices outside the US in Sydney, Berlin and London which employ about 130 personnel.

While there nothing has been confirmed the UK offices which employs around 50 people, will be largely folded into Fox Networks, also a News Corporation-owned business, in a new partnership deal. The majority of UK employees will be leaving the company, with only a skeleton staff remaining to work with Fox on the commercial side of the site.

MySpace chief executive Mike Jones said: “Details about Australia and Germany are currently being finalized. MySpace will retain a core, dedicated international team to work with partners in order to ensure users, content partners and advertisers continue to be served.”

Employees in the US offices aren’t safe either about 400 jobs will be lost of their 1,000 current staff.

This set of cuts is most likely due to a loss of $US156 million (£99 million) in its most recent quarterly financial statement.