For sale: One out-dated social media site
STEVE CHIOTAKIS: There’s an open-house of sorts today for Myspace. Its owner, NewsCorp, will give about a dozen interested parties a closer look at the books there. And what they’ll see is a social network site that’s losing a lot of money and web hits.
Henry Blodget runs Business Insider and he’s with us from New York. Good morning.
HENRY BLODGET: Hi there.
CHIOTAKIS: What kind of company is going to want to buy Myspace?
BLODGET: I think that’s a very good question. There’s no obvious buyer. This is a company, Myspace, that is just cratered in the last few years and it’s cratering shows no sign of slowing. So there are probably portals, like Yahoo or game companies or entertainment networks that see some value in it, but it’s certainly not obvious from the outside.
CHIOTAKIS: What happened to Myspace?
BLODGET: Myspace was an early leader in social networking. I think they took too long to realize the Facebook threat, and the site became very much entertainment oriented and very young. And once Facebook had blown past them they didn’t have an answer for that.
CHIOTAKIS: Is the global attention span, Henry, coupled with the technology advances making sort of a website shelf life much short these days?
BLODGET: There’s no question that in this industry there have been extraordinary lead changes over the past 15 years. And I wonder if that will ever settle down because we’ve seen AOL and then Yahoo and then Amazon and then Google and now Facebook have just taken over the lead in the industry. I don’t think that will be permanent. I think there will be some leaders that eventually emerge and build great, long-term businesses but they certainly have been few and far between thus far.
CHIOTAKIS: Henry Blodget from Business Insider in New York. Henry thanks.
BLODGET: Thank you.
Stories You Might Like
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
