News Corp ready to sell MySpace
updated 06:40 pm EST, Wed February 2, 2011
News Corp says MySpace best sold off
News Corp while talking about its latest results confirmed that it was effectively ready to sell MySpace. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey thought that the major redesign and music focus showed "very encouraging metrics" but weren't enough by themselves. Real growth "may be best achieved under a new owner," he said.
The reasoning wasn't directly given, but MySpace was a drag on News Corp as a whole. Its losses grew five times larger to $156 million due almost exclusively to worsening ad payouts at MySpace. Its parent company spent over $275 million restructuring the site in what's been interpreted as a way of polishing the site for prospective buyers.
Carey explained to paidContent that all options were still on the table, but he thought a sale would give a "fresh perspective" to MySpace's team. Interest from buyers has ranged from anyone in the same business to financial groups and hasn't been limited to the US.
MySpace was at one time the largest social network in the world but gradually lost that position to Facebook. Most of the downfall was blamed on a reluctance to modernize the site with new features and clean up what was often considered a disorganized layout. News Corp after buying MySpace often tried to focus on music services for recovery and at one point thought its MP3 music store could beat iTunes, but none of its options proved successful in any significant way.
