News Corp may axe MySpace if not turned around
updated 06:45 pm EDT, Wed November 3, 2010
News Corp says MySpace may drop in months
News Corp might chop MySpace if it doesn't turn around within the next several months, the company's Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said during a quarterly fiscal results call today. After a $70 million drop in revenue and plummeting traffic, the executive said the results were "not acceptable or sustainable" and implied the site would shut down if it wasn't fixed. A timetable wasn't given, but MySpace's timeframe would be measured "in quarters, not in years," Carey said.
MySpace has been in decline for years since Facebook ultimately took the upper hand, but the company has made several unsuccessful attempts to reorganize the social network and pitch it to users. These included the exit of key founders but also focused heavily on MySpace Music. The streaming and per-track download service had at one time been thought big enough to challenge iTunes, but it failed to get traction and has been rumored in last-ditch subscription plans.
Just last month, MySpace previewed a major overhaul of its site that would both give it a more modern, polished look and focus much more on music, games and TV than pure social networking.
Sources for AllThingsD heard on Wednesday that News Corp's digital lead, Jon Miller, may be going beyond what Carey stated and could be getting MySpace into enough of a viable design to sell it off to another company.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jun 2007
Game over.
A complete overhaul isn't going to revive this site. These things need to grow and be nurtured. They need to evolve to stay alive. Drastic changes are a sign of certain death, as you're going to lose users faster than you'll gain them. Once you've lost that special feeling, it's not coming back. It never has.
Time to pull the plug and come up with a fresh new idea with a different URL.