News Corp. was able to rid itself of MySpace just before the end of its fiscal year. The new buyer for the ailing social network is Irvine, California-based Specific Media, an online ad network.
For Specific Media, MySpace’s 34.9 million monthly visitors provide an audience for its network of online ads.
You’ll likely recall that News Corp. paid $580 million for MySpace in 2005. Today’s sale price was $35 million, plus a 5% stake in Specific Media. That’s a whopping 94% drop in price.
“This shows how fast things change on the Web and how quickly $580 million in value can vanish,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner Inc.
One note of interest here is the fact that recording artist and Hollywood actor Justin Timberlake will take an unspecified stake in Specific Media and help develop a new Myspace strategy. That’s promising and interesting, especially since Timberlake recently portrayed the Napster dude, Sean Parker, in The Social Network. Now he’s going to play a version of him in real life. I like it.
Source: Bloomberg
