As we had noted, not long after Myspace announced 1/11 it was cutting some 500 jobs (nearly half its staff), the bare-bones cutting more move is most likely getting the company ready for a sale. And indeed, WSJ, which News Corp. also owns, reported Myspace CEO Mike Jones told remaining employees that News Corp. is exploring a sale, merger or spinoff of the social-media (now “social entertainment”) website.
Jones spoke of the plans in a companywide meeting on Wednesday, according to WSJ. “We are considering a number of strategic options for the business,” a News Corp. spokeswoman said.
Of the three options, a spinoff is viewed internally as the most logical outcome, the story noted. Jones told employees his hope is to enter into a deal in which employees would be eligible for equity in the company, the person said.
News Corp is in the early stages of the process and plans to conduct meetings with potential partners in the near future, a person familiar with the matter said. Jack Kennedy, executive vice president of operations for News Corp.’s digital unit, will be part of the team looking at potential deals, story said.
RBR-TVBR observation: As noted before, we assume Facebook may end up absorbing Myspace. They’ve already linked together, in fact. Seems when Facebook started out, it was mostly used by professionals and early adopters. Because of its very advanced social functionality and simple, no-nonsense visual appearance (many MySpace pages were too personalized and cluttered), adults gravitated toward it and found so many of their old friends were already there. Myspace was leaning toward younger demos at that time. Then the phrase, “Mom and Dad: Can I get a Facebook page?” became ubiquitous. Facebook became more “cool” than Myspace and it became a mission to link to as many friends as possible across the board in all demos. Ad dollars followed.
