In an effort to save what he once saw as a savvy buy, Rupert Murdoch has shuffled through several executives. Where are they now?
Even the cofounders rarely visit their profile pages on MySpace these days, according to this week's Bloomberg Businessweek cover story, which is a lengthy look at the rise and fall of what was once considered the hottest social network. At one point, the site was adding about 300,000 new users every single day. That kind of growth was enough to attract Rupert Murdoch, who had a new News Corp. headquarters drawn up that would have placed, "front and center," a "gleaming MySpace pavilion." Had it been built, the new office, which was to be located on the far west side of Manhattan, would have placed Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and Murdoch's other properties behind the pavilion. Murdoch was sure that MySpace was the future of his company.
Until he wasn't. Only a few years after purchasing MySpace, the site started hemorrhaging users. For the last two years, it has lost, on average, more than one million users in the United States every month. Where the company once made about $470 million in advertising dollars every year, according to Businessweek staff writer Felix Gillette, it's now projecting just over $180 million for 2011.