I remember when NewsCorp bought MySpace and I was already on Facebook at the time. I knew that NewsCorp had been taken for suckers because it was plain as day that young people would all move to Facebook.
Of course, I no longer use Facebook, but it’s a lesson for business people. If you’re making an investment in something young people use, maybe ask young people something about it first.
As you get older, you really just lose touch with that kind of thing, so it’s understandable how a bunch of suits missed that and flushed half a billion dollars down the toilet.
In 2005, two years after launching the site, Anderson and DeWolfe sold Myspace to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $580 million. Afterward, Anderson continued working as the company’s president. He retired from active involvement with Myspace in 2009 or 2010 as its popularity waned and Facebook usurped it as the most popular social networking site.
He then went to burning man and traveled and got into travel photography. Lives between Hawaii, LA, and vegas
Ummm… when he sold MySpace he literally sold our data to NewsCorp?
I remember when NewsCorp bought MySpace and I was already on Facebook at the time. I knew that NewsCorp had been taken for suckers because it was plain as day that young people would all move to Facebook.
Of course, I no longer use Facebook, but it’s a lesson for business people. If you’re making an investment in something young people use, maybe ask young people something about it first.
As you get older, you really just lose touch with that kind of thing, so it’s understandable how a bunch of suits missed that and flushed half a billion dollars down the toilet.
The data they got continued to be valuable to advertisers for decades
Memes never lie!
Hello, cyber police? Yeah, this person is lying on the information super highway!
“Oh, they done goof’d! Thanks for reporting this. We’re going to backtrace them immediately.”
Are you gonna hack their IP and spoof their firewall so you can bypass the defense algorithms?
Whaaaat TIL
He then went to burning man and traveled and got into travel photography. Lives between Hawaii, LA, and vegas
it cost 'em $580 million… they got back, six years later, a whole $35 million when they unloaded it.
The data and connections were what’s important, algorithms need data, and that was as true back then as it is now.