Exclusive: Myspace to Be Sold to Specific Media for $35 Million
Closing another chapter on one of the Internet's most iconic properties, Myspace has been sold to to Specific Media, an advertising network, for $35 million. — Sources close to the situation said the deal is being completed today …
Context & Ripple Effects
The end was long signposted: a Washington Post piece flagged teens drifting away as far back as October 2006, Silicon Alley Insider documented the growth curve flattening by mid-2008 even as the business stayed cash-generative, and Myspace spent late 2010 reaching for relevance through products like its Music Romeo iPad app and a Facebook Mashup integration that leaned on its rival's graph. This year brought the formal wind-down: roughly 550–600 of just over 1,000 employees were laid off in January, and the company opened its books to prospective buyers in February.
Three weeks ago AllThingsD reported Myspace in advanced talks with an investor group possibly including Activision's Bobby Kotick; instead, the property lands with Specific Media, an advertising network, for $35 million — with TechCrunch reporting Justin Timberlake taking a stake as part of the deal. The buyer profile matters: this is an ad-network roll-up of audience inventory, not a media or gaming strategic.
First-order effects
- Specific Media takes control of a shrunken Myspace — post-January layoffs the staff sits near half its prior size — inheriting what remains a real if diminished ad business rather than a turnaround project.
- Mike Jones' tenure effectively ends at the close of the sale, with the CEO email to employees reported by TechCrunch marking the handover.
Second-order effects
- Specific Media now owns entertainment-focused audience inventory it can bundle into its existing ad-network offerings, putting a first-party social property inside a third-party targeting stack.
- Justin Timberlake's reported equity stake signals a content-and-celebrity relaunch angle aimed at the music vertical where Myspace retains brand equity — directly adjacent to Pandora-style discovery services its own Music Romeo app was positioned against.
Third-order effects
- If this becomes the template, iconic first-generation social platforms exit not to strategic media buyers but to ad networks buying audience at distressed prices, decoupling brand value from traffic value.
- A celebrity-equity rescue model — star investors fronting cheap acquisitions of fallen consumer brands — gains a high-profile proof point that later distressed web properties will be measured against.
The trend: Social networks that lose the engagement race are being absorbed by advertising intermediaries rather than revived as independent consumer brands, with celebrity equity replacing strategic capital as the rescue mechanism.