MySpace has been having a rough time. They were bought by News Corp. for $580 million back in 2005. A couple months ago they were sold for $35 million, meaning they shed over a half a billion dollars in value over six years. Ouch. They did generate revenue for News Corp. during that time, but the revenue has also fallen off a precipice ($605 million per year in its heyday versus an estimate of $183 million this year). New owners Specific Media are trying to turn it around, and they’ve even teamed up with Justin Timberlake to do something they’ll announce later this month (I hope it’s a new Justin Timberlake album).
If there were any doubts MySpace’s web traffic has taken a huge hit, yesterday’s events should make it clear. The site was down for a few hours yesterday, with this message appearing on the page: “We messed up our code so bad that even puppies and kittens may be in danger. Please turn back …now.” The long outage registered barely a blip on Twitter, with only a very small number of tech sites, like CNET, speculating on whether it was a hack. It wasn’t a hack, and we know this because the “puppies and kittens” message has been a common MySpace error message since 2009. We also know this because nobody cares about MySpace enough to hack it.
Speaking of people who don’t have to care about MySpace anymore, let’s check up on what Tom is doing now:
(Well, truth be told, he’s actually dealing real estate in Las Vegas.)