File this one under "What ever happened to..."

[randomness]

From http://allthingsd.com/20110629/exclusive-myspace-to-be-sold-to-specific-media-at-35-million/?refcat=social:

Myspace has been sold to to Specific Media, an advertising network, for $35 million.

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 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.

FT Alphaville adds:

Myspace’s value dropped roughly $174 a minute under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch.

Vanity Fair has A List of Things Worth More than MySpace.

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'd actually say that Facebook has been moving downmarket ever since it opened. Have you seen Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace? It's from 2007:

When MySpace launched in 2003, it was primarily used by 20/30-somethings (just like Friendster before it). The bands began populating the site by early 2004 and throughout 2004, the average age slowly declined. It wasn't until late 2004 that teens really started appearing en masse on MySpace and 2005 was the year that MySpace became the "in thing" for teens.

Facebook launched in 2004 as a Harvard-only site. It slowly expanded to welcome people with .edu accounts from a variety of different universities. In mid-2005, Facebook opened its doors to high school students, but it wasn't that easy to get an account because you needed to be invited. As a result, those who were in college tended to invite those high school students that they liked. Facebook was strongly framed as the "cool" thing that college students did. So, if you want to go to college (and particularly a top college), you wanted to get on Facebook badly. Even before high school networks were possible, the moment seniors were accepted to a college, they started hounding the college sysadmins for their .edu account. The message was clear: college was about Facebook.

For all of 2005 and most of 2006, MySpace was the cool thing for high school teens and Facebook was the cool thing for college students. This is not to say that MySpace was solely high school or Facebook solely college, but there was a dominating age division that played out in the cultural sphere.

When Facebook opened to everyone last September, it became relatively easy for any high school student to join (and then they simply had to get permission to join their high school network). This meant that many more high school teens did join, much to the chagrin and horror of college students who had already begun writing about their lack of interest in having HS students on "their" site. Still, even with the rise of high school students, Facebook was framed as being about college. This was what was in the press. This was what college students said. Facebook is what the college kids did. Not surprisingly, college-bound high schoolers desperately wanted in.

In addition to the college framing, the press coverage of MySpace as dangerous and sketchy alienated "good" kids. Facebook seemed to provide an ideal alternative. Parents weren't nearly as terrified of Facebook because it seemed "safe" thanks to the network-driven structure. (Of course, I've seen more half-naked, drink-carrying high school students on Facebook than on MySpace, but we won't go there.)

As this past school year progressed, the division around usage became clearer. In trying to look at it, I realized that it was primarily about class.