MySpace sold for just $35m toJustin Timberlake and friends

Thu 30th Jun, 2011 in International News

In another move to distract him from recording a new album Justin Timberlake has thrown down some chump change to invest in the black hole of social networking MySpace. Timberlake is one of the investors in Specific Media, a digital media company that has coughed up $35 million to buy what’s left of the business. It’s a bargain compared to the $580 million Rupert Murdoch paid for the business just six years ago, but is MySpace really still worth $35m?

The sale comes after a disastrous year for the site,, which axed nearly half of its global staff in January, closed its Australian office the following month and has become about as useful as a way to “discover cool stuff” as carrier pigeon, Sanskrit or semaphore.

According to a statement issued by Timberlake, which worryingly like the first draft for a sequel (prequel?) to The Social Network, “There’s a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect. I’m excited to help revitalize MySpace by using its social media platform to bring artists and fans together in one community.”

In a recent Bloomberg Television special on Rupert Murdoch, Michael Wolff, the author of the Murdoch biography The Man Who Owns the News, explained that “Rupert’s experience with the Internet is a comic one. MySpace, which he bought for, I don’t know I think somewhat more than $500 million, and, at one point they thought it was worth $25 billion. And it’s worth scrap now. Rupert doesn’t use a computer, doesn’t get e-mail and can’t really ever get a cell phone to work. This is not his medium.”