Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

News Corp: MySpace for sale or another 'strategic alternative'

By | February 2, 2011, 2:09pm PST

Summary: Speaking on an earnings conference call, News Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said it’s time for MySpace to go.

News Corp.’s future is The Daily, the iPad newspaper. MySpace isn’t in News Corp.’s plans.

Speaking on an earnings conference call, News Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said about MySpace:

We recently completed a rebuild of the business for the focus of entertainment and restructured the organization to right size the company. With a new content focus and structure in place, we believe now is the right time for News Corp. to consider strategic options for this business. The new MySpace experience has been very well received by the market and we have some encouraging traffic metrics in the last several weeks. However, we recognize that the plan to allow MySpace to reach its full potential may be best developed under a new ownership structure and we’re evaluating those strategic alternatives.

A quick look at the financials reveals why News Corp. wants to shed MySpace. The company reported fiscal second quarter net income of $642 million, or 24 cents a share, on revenue of $8.76 billion.

The “other” line—also known as MySpace—highlighted an operating loss of $156 million for the December quarter. News Corp. signaled in November that the leash was short for MySpace.

Also see:
Is News Corp.’s iPad Daily a killer app?

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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Facebook vs MySpace
guihombre 2nd Feb 2011
Well this will give us an insight into the real value of Facebook, just my digging into the financials and multiplying by the monthly unique visitors.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/01/03/november-2010-facebook-traffic/

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