MySpace

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 6:56pm on Thursday, November 5th, 2009

News Corp: MySpace Has Fallen Significantly Short of Expectations; $900 Million Google Deal At Risk

The Financial Times online reported on November 4, 2009:

"Weaker traffic means the News Corp division is now expected to receive about $100m less from a deal that had underpinned investors confidence in the MySpace acquisition, executives revealed.

Google agreed in 2006 to pay News Corp $900m for the exclusive right to provide search advertising to the once-thriving site over three years if MySpace could guarantee a minimum volume of traffic."

“We’re still losing traffic,” said Chase Carey, chief operating officer of News Corp. “It’s a business in transition.”

The full story: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c30be14a-c983-11de-a071-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 10:17pm on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

The new CEO of MySpace, Owen van Natta, sent an email to staff on June 15, 2009, announcing that MySpace is laying off 420 of the company’s 1,420 employees:

"Everyone,

Today we are making a number of changes to MySpace’s domestic organizational structure. For the long-term health of the company we are making some very tough, but unfortunately very necessary decisions.

We are reducing our workforce from 1,420 employees to 1,000 – all divisions within the company are affected by this restructure.

These decisions are difficult for everyone, but especially for our friends and colleagues who contributed to MySpace’s success and are directly affected by the changes. Through no fault of theirs our company’s size became unsustainable. The future success of MySpace is dependent upon us operating as a nimble and entrepreneurial company with the adaptive mentality of a start-up."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 2:01pm on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

MySpace is clearing out the executive suite, TechCrunch reported on April 21, 2009:

"News Corp., under new CEO of Digital Media Jonathan Miller, is looking to replace MySpace CEO and cofounder Chris DeWolfe. We’ve confirmed that things are actually moving much faster than we first understood, and that a decision has already been made to terminate Chris DeWolfe’s employment with MySpace. We’ve also been told that the core MySpace executive team will follow.

MySpace has a dozen or so “execs,” but our guess is that it’s the very senior team that will be terminated: cofounders Chris DeWolfe (CEO), Tom Anderson (President) and Aber Whitcomb (CTO). Removing any more of the team would be much more than a morale blow to the company - it would also bring operations to a screaming halt."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 4:27pm on Thursday, December 4th, 2008

Speaking of MySpace: Michael Wolff, the author of a new book about Rupert Murdoch called "The Man Who Owns The News," from an interview with Jon Fine published by Business Week magazine on 12/1/08:

"...if you are in a band, you are on MySpace. You have to be on MySpace. That’s a powerful driver. And second of all, as the success of [News Corp’s British tabloid] The Sun will tell you, there are lot of cretins out there and you can make a lot of money off cretins."