Murdoch: Yeah, I get this Internet thing - and here is a $580M check to buy a place for my friends
A few weeks back, there were reports of Rupert Murdoch “getting the Internet” (at least now) and being ready to make some major acquisitions. Here is the first one: MySpace, the “music+social network+cool features+tons of page views and users” company that was started less about two years ago. For how much ? Well, its parent, Intermix Media, was just picked up for $580M – and Intermix bought back for $125M the shares they had sold/granted to Redpoint and MySpace management back in February (that is – 5 months ago).
As discussed with friends at the last SuperNova, MySpace not being a mainstream blogging phenomena – unlike Flickr – did not generate a buzz commensurate to their hypergrowth and stunning numbers (as shown on this blogpulse chart) but the magnitude of the exit consideration surely is!
I am sure that Accel partners felt even better about their investment in Thefacebook this morning.
Check out:
- PaidContent for details and comments of NewsCorp execs about the deal
- Bill Burnham’s great piece on the engineering of the deal, and the returns of VantagePoint and Redpoint, the two VCs involved
- Bambi Francisco’s analysis of the deal (sub req’d), that can be summarized: “If next-generation media is about user-generated content, then MySpace.com may be the perfect centerpiece for tomorrow's media conglomerates“
- SiliconBeat’s question: “Could this represent the peak of the current Web 2.0 wave?” Answer: No, IMHO.
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