Murdoch buys Myspace.com
Cait says…
The news that Mr Murdoch has invested $580 million basically to purchase myspace.com highlights once again that this is the space to be playing in.
Murdoch’s advisors have been wise enough to recognise that the riches here are to be made in purchasing an existing community, with a proven track record of sticky, oft returning behaviour (the quality of the product’s not too bad either).
It will be fascinating to see where the TV angle takes the network. I’ve had many thoughts in terms of how to utilise the cross-media arena (mostly ripped off from other proven and beautiful concepts, it has to be said 😉 and the average conversation with Imran here at FT/Orange/Wanadoo tends to throw up extraordinary, bonkers and rather beautiful concepts (pop up video style Flickr notes for online shows?). If Murdoch’s advisors are still who I think they are, then that kind of thinking will be at the forefront of what they will want to achieve.
A sign of the times also that *at last* Murdoch has officially set up an intenet division, instead of trying ad-hoc investments in this and that over the years.
Will it spread to Europe and Sky? Will they launch the Myspace community strongly in the UK? It’s a strong moneymaking market for Murdoch. It makes sense to.
Murdoch and News Corp have had many ‘internet divisions’ over the years, and many grand strategies… from Delphi to the MCI/NewsCorp JV, Revolver (which Mr. C. Shirky was involved in) to the internet divisions of the individual properties (Sun, Times, Fox etc, etc)
The investments have been large, and definately not ad-hoc but also not that successful.
Hey i’m a loser
Rupert Murdoch is a fool, MySpace isn’t worth near that. Consider it from an advertising standpoint with pageviews at 17m a month. What revenues can it generate? Then consider the quality of the service itself- it’s clunky and unuseable in many cases, with *constant* outtages. For example, the Instant Messenger *never* works, you must *stay* on a users page to continue to hear their music (no independant playlist) and at least half of the users are commercial entities, spammers, webcam services trying to market to the other half.
Go check out a community like Path.com to see an active USER community and real flexability & scalability in the interface.
What’s he gonna do next? Buy Friendster, Tagworld & LiveDigital for 1 Billion a piece? Feeling generous Rupert?
p.s.
Path.com is NOT for sale you limp sausage.