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Murdoch: MySpace Massive Screw-Up
- PC Magazine, Friday, January 13, 2012 12:19 PM
It’s not the first time, but Rupert Murdoch is fessing up to screwing up with MySpace. "Many questions and jokes about My Space.simple answer -- we screwed up in every way possible, learned lots of valuable expensive lessons," the News Corp. CEO tweeted, this week. (Yes, tweeted -- the media mogul recently joined the twitterati.) As PCMag.com reminds us, News Corp. bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million, then eventually sold the social network for just $35 million.
“The company's August earnings report showed that News Corp. lost about $254 million on MySpace and losses from the once-top social networking site drove News Corp.'s overall net income down 22 percent,” PCMag reports. Suggesting even more staggering losses, Ars Technica has calculated that MySpace easily cost the Murdoch empire at least $1 billion.
Along with the MySpace debacle, News Corp. has been streamlining its Web properties over the past few years. Last year, for instance, it decided to spin off IGN.com. Unlike MySpace, however, IGN was in good standing, in 2011. That year, IGN expected to earn more than $10 million on revenues of around $100 million.
