And so this is the end of MySpace. Reuters reports that Rupert Murdoch has finally officially put the unloved social networking site on the auction block. He bought it in 2005 for $580 million. He is going to lose a fortune, he will get nowhere near that amount back. Who would buy it?
Reuters says most of the interest will come from private equity and venture capital. But it says there could be some interest from little known mobile social networking site MocoSpace and gaming site Zynga, producers of Farmville. Zynga is not in in talks with News Corp about Myspace.
If nothing else, the MySpace debacle tells us that Murdoch struggles when it comes to understanding technology and new media. With that sort of track record, we know the pay walls he is setting up on papers like The Times will be a disaster. As will his IPad newspaper, The Daily. Lawrence Latif in The Inquirer spells it out bluntly.
" Murdoch's ability to take what was at the time the most popular social notworking website and turn it into a laughing stock should tell you what the master of the dark arts of media dominance knows about the world wide web. Murdoch's News Corp is currently beavering way to replicate the Myspace effect by erecting paywalls on the websites of its news outlets. The huge loss Murdoch will realise on Myspace could well serve as an omen for what might happen to his other grasping and tone deaf online endeavors."
no comment untill now