News Corp paid $580M for MySpace — and sold it six years later for $35M

In 2005, News Corp, Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate, acquired MySpace for $580 million. MySpace was the world's largest social networking site at the time, with over 100 million users, and Murdoch saw it as the future of media distribution.

But under News Corp's ownership, MySpace was mismanaged. The platform was loaded with advertising to meet revenue targets, degrading the user experience. Technical infrastructure was neglected, and the site became slow and cluttered. Meanwhile, Facebook, launched in 2004, was growing rapidly with a cleaner, more focused product.

By 2008, Facebook had surpassed MySpace in global traffic. MySpace's user base collapsed, and News Corp took a $545 million writedown. In 2011, MySpace was sold to Specific Media (with Justin Timberlake as a partial owner) for just $35 million — a 94% loss. The case illustrated how a media company's advertising-first mindset can destroy a social platform that depends on user experience.