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MySpace up for sale

venturebeat.com

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Re: MySpace up for sale

#21

Post by dotBen »

shortlived wrote: post #18
dotBen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Myspace could have been Facebook I disagree, and I spent a year working with MySpace in the relative hay-days of 2007-2008. You could write a book on why Facebook has succeeded and MySpace hasn't... but the two headline thoughts for me are that: 1) MySpace was generational, Facebook is pan-generational. MySpace took everything that was current and popular in the early to mid 2000's and fashioned it into a web-based p…

Is there any argument to be made regarding the quality of UX/engineering at facebook vs. myspace. I love using FB and cringe everytime I need to go onto myspace.

Yes there is an argument (not the one you are alluding to, however) that MySpace's UX was what attracted so many 'normal' folks to it.

Show a boring blue + white Facebook page and a crazy green-pink-orange MySpace page to a 17 year old emo goth in Ohio and they probably will prefer the MySpace page.

Those are the people that click on ads, those are the people that want to friend Burger King. IE, those are the people that generate money.

Re: MySpace up for sale

#22

Post by jhamburger »

dotBen wrote: post #21
shortlived wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any argument to be made regarding the quality of UX/engineering at facebook vs. myspace. I love using FB and cringe everytime I need to go onto myspace.

Yes there is an argument (not the one you are alluding to, however) that MySpace's UX was what attracted so many 'normal' folks to it. Show a boring blue + white Facebook page and a crazy green-pink-orange MySpace page to a 17 year old emo goth in Ohio and they probably will prefer the MySpace page. Those are the people that click on ads, those are the people that want to friend Burger King. IE, those are the people…

It's still a double-edged sword though. The 17 year old loves being able to skin their own page with a unique design, add their favorite song, etc...but then when they view someone elses unique page and have no idea where all the buttons went and have a song they hate autoplay on page load, the UX still sucks and drives people away.

Re: MySpace up for sale

#23

Post by rmason »

These things usually start quietly. Truth is MySpace has probably been shopped around for quite a while. They didn't find any takers so only now do they publicly announce it in the hope that someone, anyone steps up.

  DST?? How about Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal?  He led the group that invested in Citibank and surely MySpace isn't that big a white elephant.

Re: MySpace up for sale

#24

Post by zepolen »

shasta wrote: post #6
yakto wrote: post #3

No matter who's steering the ship, it's going to be hard to stop this downward momentum: http://i.imgur.com/lD4go.png

It looks like downward momentum on that graph has already been mostly stopped by the x axis.

Taken in context: http://i.imgur.com/BTGz8.png

Reddit recently posted their traffic stats, http://blog.reddit.com/2011/02/reddit-billions-served.html which shows they have ~14 million visitors.

Point is, a lot of people still know and use myspace.

I could see it coming back if they set their goals straight and concentrate on being the place for artists/bands in the music industry to promote their stuff.

Re: MySpace up for sale

#25

Post by drgath »

jaredsohn wrote: post #12
jhamburger wrote: post #7

News Corp's acquisition for $500m will probably be remembered as a collossal blunder, but considering Facebook's current valuation, and that Myspace could have been Facebook if it were better executed, it wasn't a bad gamble really.

>News Corp's acquisition for $500m will probably be remembered as a collossal blunder Didn't they have a $900 million search deal from Google, though? (Granted, my understanding is they didn't hit their numbers so they made slightly less than that, but still I think this makes it likely that News Corp's acquisition of MySpace was profitable and not a collossal blunder.) Here's an older TechCrunch article talking abou…

News Corp as a whole, brings in about a billion in revenue / quarter. MySpace loses $150 million+ / quarter, and that's a number that is continually increasing. So if they don't sell it, a few years from now it could seriously threaten the entire company.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372103,00.asp

Re: MySpace up for sale

#26

Post by gscott »

bitskits wrote: post #15

Is there any value for a company (probably not a startup, since they are still pretty expensive from that perspective) to buy MySpace as a "pick n pull" of sorts, to repackage as a new social product? I am not a software engineer, is this kind of thing feasible?

I would buy it just to change the terrible logo.

Re: MySpace up for sale

#27

Post by trafficlight »

marquis wrote: post #14
saturdaysaint wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the domain and brand name would have any value to Google. As distasteful as we view it, more non-techies that I talk to know what Myspace is than know what Gmail or most non-search Google products (Chrome, Buzz, Reader, possibly even Android, etc.) are. I'd find a well engineered Google social network with a Myspace brand attached to it novel to say the least. Not that I can see it happening.

I have to agree with you. Every musician I know still has a myspace page, and many still use yahoo or hotmail. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea just to get the domain name and content..

I actively avoid bands that use myspace as their primary website. Do they not care about their image? They should be actively looking for new and better places to show off their music.

Re: MySpace up for sale

#28

Post by jaredsohn »

drgath wrote: post #25
jaredsohn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>News Corp's acquisition for $500m will probably be remembered as a collossal blunder Didn't they have a $900 million search deal from Google, though? (Granted, my understanding is they didn't hit their numbers so they made slightly less than that, but still I think this makes it likely that News Corp's acquisition of MySpace was profitable and not a collossal blunder.) Here's an older TechCrunch article talking abou…

News Corp as a whole, brings in about a billion in revenue / quarter. MySpace loses $150 million+ / quarter, and that's a number that is continually increasing. So if they don't sell it, a few years from now it could seriously threaten the entire company. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372103,00.asp

This is a good point and I take back my conclusions from the previous post.

Before I was assuming that 1) MySpace at least was profitable a few years ago and 2) they also received a bunch of money from Google which could be applied against what News Corp paid for it. But most likely, MySpace was only profitable because they received a huge amount of money from Google, so you can't apply most of that Google money against what News Corp paid for it.

This means that 1) MySpace's overall return for News Corp should be roughly thought of as ((current value of MySpace) - $500 million) + net profit since News Corp bought it. The first term should be significantly negative and the second term was positive for awhile but as the parent's link indicates is quite negative recently.

Re: MySpace up for sale

#29

Post by elithrar »

trafficlight wrote: post #27
marquis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree with you. Every musician I know still has a myspace page, and many still use yahoo or hotmail. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea just to get the domain name and content..

I actively avoid bands that use myspace as their primary website. Do they not care about their image? They should be actively looking for new and better places to show off their music.

That's a lot of bands. MySpace is still popular with musicians because it's easily templatable, it allows them to easily showcase their work (songs), detail upcoming shows and their fan-bases are typically familiar with it already.

Yes, MySpace is far from ideal, but is there a competing service that checks all of these boxes?

Re: MySpace up for sale

#30

Post by trafficlight »

elithrar wrote: post #29
trafficlight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actively avoid bands that use myspace as their primary website. Do they not care about their image? They should be actively looking for new and better places to show off their music.

That's a lot of bands. MySpace is still popular with musicians because it's easily templatable, it allows them to easily showcase their work (songs), detail upcoming shows and their fan-bases are typically familiar with it already. Yes, MySpace is far from ideal, but is there a competing service that checks all of these boxes?

http://bandcamp.com does an excellent job.
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