How MySpace Blew It
by Lloyd Grove
DailyBeast
Last week, as Iranian reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was blasting out messages through Facebook—and Twitter was becoming a tool of the revolution—MySpace took a different tack: It slashed nearly a third of its staff. Today the site announced the elimination of two-thirds of its international staff and the closing of four offices outside of the United States.
The move represents a remarkable reversal of fortune since the titanic struggle between Viacom and News Corp., barely four years ago, over who would win ownership of MySpace, then considered a glittering prize.
Barely four years later, it looks like Viacom dodged a bullet—and News Corp. seems to be hemorrhaging money from the deal.
In the summer of 2005, News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch, the victor, was hailed as a swashbuckling visionary for stealing this supposed diamond in the rough from under the nose of Viacom’s controlling stockholder, Sumner Redstone. The $580 million price tag was aggressive but entirely justified, so went the conventional wisdom, as the deal gave Murdoch’s media conglomerate a valuable foothold in the brave new world of online monetization.
(More here.)
DailyBeast
Last week, as Iranian reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was blasting out messages through Facebook—and Twitter was becoming a tool of the revolution—MySpace took a different tack: It slashed nearly a third of its staff. Today the site announced the elimination of two-thirds of its international staff and the closing of four offices outside of the United States.
The move represents a remarkable reversal of fortune since the titanic struggle between Viacom and News Corp., barely four years ago, over who would win ownership of MySpace, then considered a glittering prize.
Barely four years later, it looks like Viacom dodged a bullet—and News Corp. seems to be hemorrhaging money from the deal.
In the summer of 2005, News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch, the victor, was hailed as a swashbuckling visionary for stealing this supposed diamond in the rough from under the nose of Viacom’s controlling stockholder, Sumner Redstone. The $580 million price tag was aggressive but entirely justified, so went the conventional wisdom, as the deal gave Murdoch’s media conglomerate a valuable foothold in the brave new world of online monetization.
(More here.)
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