You remember the glittery backgrounds? The profile songs that blasted the second someone landed on your page? Honestly, it feels like a fever dream now, but for a solid minute, Myspace was the entire internet. Everyone was obsessed with their Top 8. If you weren't rearranging your best friends to send a subtle message of teenage angst, were you even online?
But then the money started moving. Huge, staggering amounts of cash that make today's tech deals look almost logical by comparison. When people ask how much did Myspace sell for, they usually expect one number. The reality is that Myspace was bought and sold in a series of deals that look like a car crash in slow motion. It went from being the king of the world to a "buy one, get one free" coupon at a garage sale.
The $580 Million Gamble
Back in 2005, the internet was a different beast. Mark Zuckerberg was still just a kid in a hoodie, and Facebook was mostly for college students. Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul behind News Corp, saw the meteoric rise of Myspace and decided he wanted in. He didn't just want in; he wanted to own it.
In July 2005, News Corp bought Myspace for $580 million.
At the time, this was a massive "wow" moment. People thought Murdoch was a genius. He beat out Viacom in a bidding war that felt like a heavyweight title fight. For $580 million, he got a site that was adding 16 million users a month. By 2006, it actually passed Google as the most visited site in the U.S.
Basically, Murdoch bought a rocket ship. The problem was, nobody knew how to fly it.
When Things Got Weird: The $12 Billion Peak
It’s easy to forget that for a split second, Myspace was actually "worth" more than some small countries. By 2007, analysts were throwing around valuations as high as $12 billion.
Think about that. $12 billion for a site where you could change your mouse cursor into a spinning skull.
News Corp signed a landmark deal with Google around that time too. Google guaranteed them $900 million over three years just to be the search provider on the site. On paper, it looked like Murdoch had pulled off the heist of the century. He’d paid $580 million and was already getting nearly a billion back just from one ad deal.
But then, the "Facebook effect" happened.
The Spectacular 2011 Fire Sale
By 2011, the glitter had faded. The site was clunky, the ads were annoying, and everyone’s younger siblings were moving to Facebook. News Corp was losing money—fast. We’re talking about a cumulative loss of roughly $1.4 billion over a few years just trying to keep the lights on.
They had to get out. They tried to sell it for $100 million, but nobody was buying.
In June 2011, Myspace sold for just $35 million to a company called Specific Media.
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The drop was sickening. From a $580 million purchase price (and a $12 billion theoretical peak) to $35 million. That is a 94% loss on the original investment. To make it even more "2011," Justin Timberlake was part of the buying group. He wanted to turn it into a music-focused social network, which sort of made sense given the site's history with indie bands, but the momentum was already gone.
Why Did the Price Tank So Hard?
You can’t just blame Facebook. Honestly, Myspace sort of broke itself.
- Corporate Red Tape: Once News Corp took over, every tiny change had to go through a million layers of management. The founders, Chris DeWolfe and "MySpace Tom" Anderson, suddenly had bosses who didn't understand the internet.
- The Ad Problem: News Corp treated it like a TV station. They crammed it with as many ads as possible to hit revenue targets. It became a "spaghetti-ball mess" of code and banners.
- Safety Concerns: There were constant headlines about "predators" on the site, which spooked parents and advertisers alike.
- Static Innovation: While Facebook was building a "platform" where other apps could live, Myspace was still just a place to customize your profile.
The Final Hand-off to Time Inc.
If you think the $35 million sale was the end, it gets weirder. In 2016, Time Inc. bought Viant (the parent company of Specific Media). Because Specific Media owned Myspace, Time Inc. effectively bought Myspace for about $87 million.
They didn’t buy it because they wanted to bring back the Top 8. They bought it for the data. Even after the site "died," it still had millions of registered users and a massive library of music data.
What We Can Learn From the Crash
The story of how much did Myspace sell for isn't just about bad math; it's a lesson in how fast the internet moves. In 2005, $580 million was a "record-breaking" price. Today, companies like Discord or Slack sell for $10 billion to $27 billion.
If you're looking at the history of tech, Myspace is the ultimate cautionary tale. It shows that being first doesn't mean being permanent. It also shows that if you buy a social network and try to run it like a 1950s newspaper company, you're going to have a bad time.
Quick Value Recap
- 2005: News Corp buys it for $580 million.
- 2007: Estimated valuation hits $12 billion.
- 2011: Specific Media (and Justin Timberlake) buys it for $35 million.
- 2016: Time Inc. acquires the parent company for $87 million.
If you’re still curious about the old days, you can actually still log in to Myspace. Most of the old photos from the "classic" era are gone—a server migration error in 2019 accidentally wiped out about 12 years of music and photos. It’s a ghost town now, but a ghost town that cost a lot of people a lot of money.
Actionable Insights for Today:
- Diversify your platform: Never rely on one social network for your brand; look at what happened to the bands who only had Myspace.
- User Experience (UX) is King: If your site becomes too hard to use because of ads, people will leave, no matter how "cool" you are.
- Data is the real asset: Even in its "death," Myspace was worth $87 million to Time Inc. solely because of user data and ad-targeting potential.