Fascinating tell-all book on MySpace, found via Tech Crunch. Worth noting that MySpace’s position on the matter is: “This book received zero participation, zero access, and zero fact-checking from MySpace.”
The major tidbit is that in February 2005, Facebook founder offered to sell his new social network to MySpace for $75M. As obvious as this “error” might be today, at the time, MySpace was a subsidiary of Intermix (formerly called eUniverse) with little cash on the books, so even if MySpace’s Chris DeWolfe wanted to pursue the offer, I doubt they could. More importantly, I’d say, was DeWolfe’s decision to cash out when the company raised $11.5M from Redpoint (thus limiting his upside) and mainly, his decision to cap the value of MySpace in any sale of Intermix to $125M. But, you know what they say about hindsight.
On my end, something else stood out:
June 2005: Viacom and News Corp vie for acquisition of MySpace. Viacom too slow, News Corp. does marathon weekend deal to buy company for $580 million. Ross Levinsohn from News Corp. leads deal from their side. Tom Freston leads from Viacom.
It’s interesting to see that companies don’t change or learn from mistakes. Months after News Corp. bought MySpace, it also bought IGN, which Viacom was also chasing.
At the time, I was VP of sales at AskMen, who was just acquired by IGN a few months before in June 2005. The day the deal was announced, I happened to be in NYC. You’d think that Viacom would have learned from losing MySpace and moved faster on IGN, but it didn’t. IGN had filed for an IPO, but ultimately, News Corp. paid $650M for IGN. IGN had given options to us at AskMen after they bought us in a cash deal, so I ended up making 50% more from the IGN/AskMen deal via that acquisition. I always had a soft spot for Rupert Murdoch, even when his leutenants piled on and sued me the next year.
Note: my new company WatchMojo.com currently supplies MySpace with videos, so it’s nothing but love now.
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WatchMojo NewsletterEric Jackson - who led the campaign to bring change to Yahoo - is looking for the next target. He’s looking at notable blue chips that have taken a recent hit, namely: Citigroup, Apple, GE, and many others.
Check out the list and vote for the company you think he should open a can of whoop ass on.
Personally, I am starting to think we’re in a deflationary period (and I don’t seem to be alone) and most of these stocks can be cheaper in the next few quarters relative to where they are now.
This is especially true when you consider:
- the actual stock market performances: the DJIA fell below 8,000 to 7,500, then crept back up to over 9,000 at 9,030 but has now tumbled back down to below 8,000 to 7,950 on Inauguration Day,
- recent real estate trends: I have never seen so many “reduced prices” on home “For Sale” signs,
- softness in so-called safe havens and growth markets, you are seeing a flight to quality evidenced by the drop in low-quality online advertising CPM rates.
I don’t know, but I think a lot of the projected earnings that companies are still touting over the next 2-6 quarters will be reduced, and obvioulsy that means stock prices remain shaky at best.
Despite recent layoffs and the shuttering of unrelated businesses, Google remains as ambitious as ever to replace Microsoft as the most valuable technology company and become the 21st century’s version of Standard Oil.
The Google Drive, or “GDrive”, could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user’s personal files and operating system could be stored on Google’s own servers and accessed via the internet.
But while Google has surely helped push the envelope with cloud computing (Lord knows running a startup is easier today than a mere five years ago due to easier online collaborative tools), sometimes I think we’re all drinking too much kool-aid bong water if we think the desktop will die anytime soon… I mean, Google, can you please make sure that our files are always available in Google Docs first and that I can log into to Gmail all the time? Thanks!
After all, Google has proven to have an Achilles Heel, too: a few years ago it was buying companies like Dodgeball and passing it off as pieces of the puzzle of a grand unifying theory… then a short time later, it was something that was not even worth the $50,000 in annual costs to maintain.
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