DEAD & GONE: Myspace sold for $35 Million
Closing another chapter on one of the Internet’s most iconic properties, Myspace has been sold to Specific Media, an advertising network, for $35 million.
Sources close to the situation said the deal is being completed today, although it has not been officially signed. Myspace’s owner, News Corp. will hold onto a very small stake of less than five percent.
AllThingsD.com broke news of Specific’s interest in Myspace yesterday.
The price is well below the $100 million that News Corp. had been hoping for and a chasm away from Myspace’s one-time billion valuation.
The deal includes a halfing of Myspace’s staff of 400, as well as other cost cuts. It’s likely Myspace CEO Mike Jones and other top staff will remain only for an interim period.
News Corp. bought Myspace for $580 Million in 2005, and made that back via a lucrative advertising deal with Google when the social networking site was flying high.
But that was another time–the media giant has been trying to sell the site before the end of its fiscal year, which falls on Thursday, in order to get it off the books.
There were several other bidders, in the process, including separate efforts by the two Co-founders of Myspace, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson.
More recently, the preferred acquirer was a group that included Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, but it fell apart over a number of issues.
This week, it came down to Specific and also a private equity firm, Golden Gate Capital.
According to a report yesterday in The Wall Street Journal:
Founded in 1999 by Tim Vanderhook and his brothers Chris and Russell, Specific Media helps marketers buy digital ads across the Web, online video, mobile and even the TV. The Irvine, Calif., company got its start brokering ad space for websites and quickly moved into the fast-growing business of collecting and using Web browsing, demographic, geographic and other profile information about consumers to target ads. The company now ranks among the largest online advertising networks in the country, reaching 170.9 million unique U.S. visitors in May, or about 79% of the U.S. Internet users, according to comScore Inc.
A Myspace deal would give the company access to data about Myspace users to be used for ad targeting. It also would transform the firm into a media company with its own ad space to sell instead of simply an online ad technology firm that brokers ad space on behalf of other websites.
Specific Media’s executive team includes knowledge of the inner-workings at Myspace, with two executives who previously worked at Fox Audience Network, News Corp.’s online advertising unit that sold ads for Myspace.
Specific Media has raised more than $110 million in funding, closing a $100 million round of financing from private-equity firm Francisco Partners in 2007. Since then, the company has acquired a couple of digital advertising companies, including online video company Broadband Enterprises and an Amsterdam ad technology company.
Posted By: @JRSuriel
