Friday, October 06, 2006

Was MySpace Sold Too Cheap?

About a year ago News Corp paid $580 million to purchase the parent company of MySpace, Intermix Media. At the time News Corp was considered to have overpaid - most thought the purchase of the site by a big name would drive the younger crowd away. Well they were wrong. And know Intermix shareholders are raising some flags - bringing the case to court feeling Intermix mgmt had a breach of fiduciary duty, as well as withholding information. Today the site is valued at about $1 billion dollars more than what they received last year - at approx $1.5 billion.

The main problem is that we will never know how much of the recent growth of MySpace is due from its acquisiton by New Corp and just from growth of the site itself. If the lawsuit goes forward that will have to be quantified. And it could just be sellers remorse - not being forward looking enough to see the potential of your own work when someone else did.

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