5 ms·

News Corp is still walking away from this in the money. Sure they bought the thing for $580m and now selling it for $100m, but they had many many good years of

by dotBen 15y ago

News Corp is still walking away from this in the money. Sure they bought the thing for $580m and now selling it for $100m, but they had many many good years of $750m-$1bn revenue (ok we don't know what profit looked like given Fox Interactive is a private company but I'm sure it was strong). It also put skin in the game for News Corp that was otherwise going to miss out on an entire generation of innovation. As someone who briefly worked for MySpace during the glory years, I'm not weeping any tears for Rupert.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jaredsohn 15y ago
I had similar thoughts when it was announced three months ago that MySpace would be put up for sale, but I now think otherwise after getting a response pointing out MySpace's massive losses in recent years. Take a look at this site: http://www.bnet.com/blog/advertising-business/news-corp-may-never-profit-from-myspace/5493 http://www.bnet.com/blog/advertising-business/news-corp-may-... It lists the (lack of) profitability of News Corp's "Other" category over the years (of which MySpace is a large part). Here is my own research from doing Google searches of when MySpace is mentioned in News Corp conference calls for quarterly reports: 2006: http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2006/04/myspace_revenue.html http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2006/04/myspace_rev... 2007: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/news-corp-myspace-on-track-to-top-annual-sales-of-500-million-post-modest-profit/4449?tag=rbxccnbzd1 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/news-corp-myspace-on-track-to-... 2008: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/fox-interactive-turns-annual-profit-myspace-revenue-to-top-800-million-in-fiscal-2008/5899 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/fox-interactive-turns-annual-p... 2009: ??? 2010Q1, 2011Q1: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372103,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372103,00.asp From these links, it seems like MySpace had total revenues of only $200 million in 2006 (not sure of the profit), netted "modest" profit in fiscal 2007 on $500 million and $10 million on $550 million revenue in fiscal 2008. Also, for at least two quarters over the past three years, MySpace has lost $100-$150 million (and likely lost similar amounts in at least some other quarters during this time).
- dotBen 15y ago
  Based on my knowledge those numbers are off. In terms of what we can talk about publicly, Google had a search deal with MySpace that was worth $900m over 3 years. Your quoted numbers combined over the three years the contract was in effect barely reflect that. And the Google deal was just for remnant advertising - MySpace made a solid income selling display advertising, 'take over homepages' (worth $$$), etc.
  - jaredsohn 15y ago
    >Your quoted numbers combined over the three years the contract was in effect barely reflect that. I don't know anything beyond the sources I listed in this post and have no idea if the quoted information is correct or not. (I could perhaps try to find transcriptions from the actual calls, but I'm not going to do that.) But just so we're on the page (you said the numbers barely reflect the $900 million), the revenue numbers I listed were for fiscal 2006-2008 while the contract was for fiscal 2007-2009 so looking at fiscal 2008 and 2009, this data suggests that Google provided only around 60% of their revenue during this time. I wouldn't call that 'barely', although it still might not properly reflect their revenue from other sources.

by dotBen 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jaredsohn 15y ago

I had similar thoughts when it was announced three months ago that MySpace would be put up for sale, but I now think otherwise after getting a response pointing out MySpace's massive losses in recent years. Take a look at this site: http://www.bnet.com/blog/advertising-business/news-corp-may-never-profit-from-myspace/5493 http://www.bnet.com/blog/advertising-business/news-corp-may-... It lists the (lack of) profitability of News Corp's "Other" category over the years (of which MySpace is a large part). Here is my own research from doing Google searches of when MySpace is mentioned in News Corp conference calls for quarterly reports: 2006: http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2006/04/myspace_revenue.html http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2006/04/myspace_rev... 2007: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/news-corp-myspace-on-track-to-top-annual-sales-of-500-million-post-modest-profit/4449?tag=rbxccnbzd1 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/news-corp-myspace-on-track-to-... 2008: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/fox-interactive-turns-annual-profit-myspace-revenue-to-top-800-million-in-fiscal-2008/5899 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/fox-interactive-turns-annual-p... 2009: ??? 2010Q1, 2011Q1: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372103,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372103,00.asp From these links, it seems like MySpace had total revenues of only $200 million in 2006 (not sure of the profit), netted "modest" profit in fiscal 2007 on $500 million and $10 million on $550 million revenue in fiscal 2008. Also, for at least two quarters over the past three years, MySpace has lost $100-$150 million (and likely lost similar amounts in at least some other quarters during this time).

dotBen 15y ago
Based on my knowledge those numbers are off. In terms of what we can talk about publicly, Google had a search deal with MySpace that was worth $900m over 3 years. Your quoted numbers combined over the three years the contract was in effect barely reflect that. And the Google deal was just for remnant advertising - MySpace made a solid income selling display advertising, 'take over homepages' (worth $$$), etc.
- jaredsohn 15y ago
  >Your quoted numbers combined over the three years the contract was in effect barely reflect that. I don't know anything beyond the sources I listed in this post and have no idea if the quoted information is correct or not. (I could perhaps try to find transcriptions from the actual calls, but I'm not going to do that.) But just so we're on the page (you said the numbers barely reflect the $900 million), the revenue numbers I listed were for fiscal 2006-2008 while the contract was for fiscal 2007-2009 so looking at fiscal 2008 and 2009, this data suggests that Google provided only around 60% of their revenue during this time. I wouldn't call that 'barely', although it still might not properly reflect their revenue from other sources.