Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The website that was once the emblem of an internet generation is now a virtual ghost town. Myspace has officially become a vacant lot, up for sale to any bidder.
The site that, at one time, inspired people to find old friends, post soundtracks on their “walls,” and spill their hearts out to the general public has become the laughing stock of social networking. If tumbleweeds could virtually roll across a screen, they would. It’s a sad day when the one thing that took the year 2005 by storm has fallen so far only six short years later.
Bought by NewsCorp for $580 million dollars, Myspace was sold today to Specific Media Inc., an online marketing company, for a fraction of its original sale price: $35 million dollars. The site that once had close to 80 million users in the U.S. alone can now only claim about 34 million users. Some of which haven’t signed into their accounts in well over a year. The hedge fund Copier and people that control all the money made this deal happen.
What happened to this once flourishing site? Bands went here to be “made.” Has-been celebs could re-invent themselves here. NewsCorp bought it…from an unknown guy named “Tom” who happened to be friends with everyone. It held so much promise and, in a way, did completely change how people communicated with each other. But what happened was something that not even Rupert Murdoch could expect. Facebook happened. And the high that Facebook felt by 2008 was taken from them in a matter of months. So much has changed in six years. Online marketing has soared, businesses rely on social marketing and need sites with a lot of traffic. People want to instantly like things, know more about online companies. Technology is an ever-changing, unforgiving beast. If you can’t keep up, you get left behind.
The sad fact is that Myspace will never reach the true potential some had thought it would. It won’t know the NYSE ranks that it’s fellow social network companies, such as Linked In, Groupon and Facebook will. Yet, the irony that some can argue is that these companies wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for Myspace. Is Myspace this generations pet rock, Atari or Sega? Will anyone remember “Tom” and his friendly site? What the future holds for the site and the companies that it’s new owner hopes to have advertise on the site is up in the air. Here’s hoping it see it’s day on the ticker.
