Declining popularity of MySpace and Bebo
June 11, 2009 |12:17 | Free MySpace,blogs stuff By : Team X
Rupert Murdoch's purchase of Intermix Media and its MySpace website in July 2005 was arguably the moment the world started to take social networking seriously. Despite the astonishment of his old media rivals at the $580m price tag, the acquisition was vindicated by a deal with Google beginning in October 2006, which guaranteed News Corp $900m in advertising revenue over the next three and a half years, providing certain traffic targets were met.
Come the end of June 2010, the Google deal dies, and with it nearly half of MySpace's revenue. Google has already intimated it isn't benefiting from the deal, though MySpace's new chief executive, Owen van Natta, played down the importance of the agreement at the recent All Things Digital conference, saying improving user experience was the priority.
But he may want to think again. Murdoch is known to dislike pouring money down the drain, especially online: he is already mooting the creation of paywalls for the London Sunday Times, and has reversed an earlier suggestion that he would tear them down at the Wall Street Journal after acquiring it. Thus the latest data from web metrics companies will have given Van Natta shivers.
