Andre Yoskowitz
29 Jun 2011 15:06
MySpace has been sold to Specific Media for $35 million, ending the failed News Corp. era for the social networking site.
Specific Media is a large Ad-targeting firm that should make use of MySpace's remaining traffic.
As part of the deal, News Corp will keep a small equity stake and CEO Mike Jones will step down within the month.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. purchased the company for $580 million in 2005 and quickly saw it disintegrate. From 2010 to 2011 alone, MySpace traffic fell 48 percent to 35 million unique U.S. visitors. The company had an operating loss of $165 million last year.
Initial reports had News Corp. wanting to keep a 20 percent stake but it appears now that Murdoch wants the struggling social network off his books by the end of the year and will keep a much smaller stake, perhaps under 5 percent.
The company put itself up for sale earlier this year asking for $100 million.