Report: MySpace sold for $35 million. Did that include Tila Tequila?

All Things D reports that News Corp has sold MySpace to advertising network Specific Media for $35 million.

The price is well below the $100 million that News Corp. had been hoping for and a chasm away from its one-time billion valuation.
The deal includes a halfing of Myspace's staff of 400, as well as other cost cuts. It's likely Myspace CEO Mike Jones and other top staff will remain only for an interim period.
News Corp. bought Myspace for $580 in 2005, and made that back via a lucrative advertising deal with Google when the social networking site was flying high.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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petsounds

Myspace is still the best social network for bands and music. Their streaming player is awesome.

Umm…no? Perhaps in 2003. But there’s several sites for bands now, the best one being Bandcamp.

I would encourage anyone that still has a Myspace account to delete it ASAP, before the ad firm that bought it has its way with your data.
- travtastic
  
  I highly doubt that they ever actually delete a byte of data. They just de-public it.
Anonymous

Choke on that you NewsCorp buggers.
boo

My heart bleeds for them: glad I have not now or ever played along. (Did you read the sign up?!)
Anonymous

Message to Mark Zuckerberg:

Sell, Baby, Sell!

(timing is everything)
Misty Fowler

I know you’re just quoting the article, but they have a typo – News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 *million* – they left the million part off.
Anonymous

Tila Tequila sold separately…

Batteries not included…

seriously I could do this all day..
Anonymous

MySpace is a terrible website and has been for a long time. My band uses it to cull email addresses for our mailing list via the offer of a free download of our most current release. We also use Facebook of course. Personally I am looking forward to the day when MySpace no longer exists and I don’t have to spend time every day navigating one of the worst sites ever designed.
Kosmoid

breaking news:

Timberlake will take an ownership role in MySpace and will help develop the site’s creative direction and strategy, Specific Media announced on Wednesday shortly after buying the company from News Corp.

http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/justin-timberlake-lead-myspaces-creative-strategy-28694
richsamuels

Also not Xeni’s fault but “halfing”, seriously?
- rekoil
  
  She actually meant to type “halfling”; from now on MySpace will be only hiring hobbits.
Kosmoid

Halfing!

http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/English/half.html

I am, you are, he, she, it are “halfing” a good time.

How much is BB worth? I’ve heard that it is a “million dollar blog.” How many unique visits per month?
Halloween Jack

Tila Tequila was included as a prize in this box of cornflakes that I bought. I immediately threw away the entire box.
- Teller
  
  I don’t know, Tila Teller sounds good to me.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Wouldn’t that put a crimp in your Juggalo lifestyle?
    - Teller
      
      I’m tired of the morning-after Noxema.
      Plus I love her.
snakedart

News Corp. bought Myspace for $580 in 2005, and made that back via a lucrative advertising deal with Google when the social networking site was flying high.

It was worth $580 when it was “flying high”?
Anonymous

$35 million is way too much. The brand (as a brand name) has negative equity at this point.
redstarr

I think if the right people bought it they could make a good deal out of that. If they decided to capitalize on what myspace is still good for, rather than just struggling to keep up being much clunkier messier version of facebook, there’s hope to revitalize it enough to make a decent profit.

Myspace is still the best social network for bands and music. Their streaming player is awesome. I loved myspace when I was a musician and I still used it a lot longer than most of the people I know for music related stuff.

Also, the greater anonymity and freedom to customize could be a real asset. The people I know that still use myspace use it as their “fun” social network. They use facebook as their public face to the internet world. It’s the one they friend their Mother on. They are careful to not post party pics on there because they friend clients and co-workers. They in general reign themselves in a little on facebook. But they still maintain a myspace page with a fake screen name that they use for trying to hook up(a lot of the folks I know that use myspace especially use that site for the site that they’re openly swingers or bi-sexuals etc. looking for some action on, while they maintain on their face book that they’re married or straight or don’t say anything about their private preferences at all) or for posting party pics and racy pics. They’ll have the tame family vacation pics on their facebook, but the flirty pics that are mainly “look at my boobs!”, on the myspace.

Also, it seems to me that myspace skews younger than facebook. Why not embrace that? Make it the place where you’re mom’s not on your friends anymore?

They should embrace how people are really still using it. If I bought it, I’d turn it around like hip folks have turned a lot of abandoned downtowns into some place cool. A downtown that was once hustling and bustling with shops and offices its heyday, then it got abandoned as folks fled the city for the suburbs and strip malls, then people saw that there were still lots of lovely buildings and infrastructure that with a little work could still accommodate a lot of people, and they saw the potential to make the district cool again and re-invented it as home to clubs and a vibrant restaurant scene and off-beat shops. It wasn’t the center of upstanding high class culture anymore, but it was cool again and lively again. A place where folks that had emigrated to the outlying areas could slip away to to party all weekend.

Heck, make it the Vegas of the internet. Facebook and Twitter can be New York and LA and Middle America. They can be business and boring homelife, but myspace could be all fun and glitz and sex and letting loose. What happens on myspace, stays on myspace?
Anonymous

I thought that News Corp didn’t get as much as they wanted from Google due to not providing enough traffic?
Editz

Ah, the good old days.

http://www.2008tshirts.com/Assets/ProductImages/AG_0038_1227_MYPLACE.jpg
pKp

Depending on the team these guy put on it, it could be really good news, focusing it on the only people who still use the POS : musicians.
Of course, as it was an ad network that bought it, I fully expect it to become worse than it already is and finally shut down with a whimper.

I’m gonna go check out Bandcamp roght now, actually.
- travtastic
  
  Breaking news: Yahoo! buys MySpace for $800 million, shuts it down the next day.
pidg

Guys it says $580 – I’m not sure this is right, but am struggling to figure out what the real figure might be! Any ideas?
- Charlie Lesoine
  
  It was $580,000,000
Anonymous

kind of fits in:
http://letterstospock.blogspot.com/2011/06/google-is-online-google-launched-its.html