News Corp. to sell MySpace for $700 million?
March 29th, 2010 | by Jen |Rumours about News Corp. trying to find a buyer for MySpace have recently emerged. Rupert Murdoch, head of the company, is believed to desperately look for an opportunity to sell MySpace and has been contacting equity firms as potential candidates. The evaluation of the social network is going somewhere around $700 million. Although contacted, MySpace did not want to take the opportunity of commenting on this topic.
The relative decline of the service within the past two years could be the triggering reason of this still unverified and perhaps inaccurate deal. MySpace has largely been overtaken by Facebook, which in the past days has passed Google itself in sheer traffic volume. It has intended to put itself in the position of a media service including MySpace Music as well as iLike and iMeem, but the effect was almost insignificant as visitors use either services on Facebook or conventional services for pay-to-download like iTunes. The firm has been censured for its relatively poor mobile strategy too, while Facebook was appreciated for its significant presence on certain smartphone platforms like iPhone and Android.
These issues compounded would be the possible cause for the forced leave of Owen van Natta, former CEO of MySpace, and other executives, all of them having left the company to focus on stabilizing its leadership instead of trying to improve the site.
A News Corp. representative has said the rumour is false and stated that the company is still committed to MySpace and is not at all intending to find a buyer for it.