News Corp, the world’s third-largest media conglomerate behind The Walt Disney Company and the Time Warner Company (as of 2008), announced that it is selling MySpace, its struggling social networking site. Chase Carey, News Corp Chief Operating Officer, said that it if MySpace is to “reach its full potential”, then it would be better for MySpace to enter new ownership.
The problem is that MySpace is struggling for some time now on the social networking scene. It may have been incredibly popular back in 2006, but this is no longer the case. In 2008, it was overtaken by Facebook, which is now the top dog in the social networking world. Facebook has some 600 million users while MySpace has some 66 million users.
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Another sign that MySpace isn’t doing very well is the fact that since 2009 MySpace has let go about half of its workforce. At this moment MySpace employs 1,000 people.
Yet another sigh that MySpace isn’t doing well is the fact that Owen Van Natta stepped down as MySpace CEO after only 10 months. Van Natta said that everything is okay, that “MySpace is an incredibly unique place” and that he’s proud of the work he’s done. Rumor on the web had it otherwise. The rumor had it that Van Natta was frustrated with his job, frustrated with the lack of a quick turnaround for MySpace.
Back in October 2010 the MySpace site was redesigned. Chase Carey said “the new MySpace has been very well received by the market and we have some very encouraging metrics.” If the metrics are encouraging, why is News Corp trying to sell the social networking site? The simple truth of the matter is that MySpace is steadily losing users, it has become a big pain in the unmentionables for News Corp.
The big question here is not why News Corp wants to sell MySpace. The big question is who wants to buy it?
News Corp, the world’s third-largest media conglomerate behind The Walt Disney Company and the Time Warner Company (as of 2008), announced that it is selling MySpace, its struggling social networking site. Chase Carey, News Corp Chief Operating Officer, said that it if MySpace is to “reach its full potential”, then it would be better for MySpace to enter new ownership. 