It’s easy to write off MySpace, it being shit and all, and it’s true that the flagging social network style service is still haemorrhaging users, with unique visitors down 7% over the summer. That said, according to ComScore, it still has 30.5million unique visitors monthly in the US making it the 35th biggest website in America. A long way off Facebook, which sits at number four in the websites chart behind the search engine and webmail providers, but only 1.8 million users behind Twitter. Which is possibly why new owners Specific Media, the ad agency which plans to relaunch MySpace as a music destination site next year, remain optimistic.
Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch, while fighting off critics at a rather tricky AGM of News Corp shareholders on Friday, was more candid about his company’s handling of MySpace than most of the media conglom’s other perceived failings (News Of The World phone hacking aside, of course). According to The Guardian, he said News Corp was right to pay $580 million for MySpace in 2005 (they sold it for about $35 million earlier this year), but admitted that his people had then mismanaged the asset at every turn. Murdoch: “We then proceeded to mismanage it in every possible way and all the people involved with it are no longer with the company”. Ouch.