Justin Timberlake compra Myspace y será su director creativo

Specific Media Acquires Myspace

IRVINE, Calif.–(EON: Enhanced Online News)–Specific Media, a digital media company, today announced its acquisition of Myspace, a leading social networking destination for consumers, celebrities and artists. As part of the deal, Emmy and Grammy winning artist Justin Timberlake will also take an ownership stake and play a major role in developing the creative direction and strategy for the company moving forward. Specific Media and Timberlake plan to unveil their vision for the site in an exclusive press conference later this summer.

«There’s a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect. Myspace has the potential to be that place», says Timberlake. «Art is inspired by people and vice versa, so there’s a natural social component to entertainment. I’m excited to help revitalize Myspace by using its social media platform to bring artists and fans together in one community».

Myspace has created a robust social networking infrastructure that connects people with the artists and content they love. Specific Media and Timberlake plan to evolve Myspace into the premiere digital destination for original shows, video content and music.

Specific Media will also leverage the Myspace social networking infrastructure to deploy socially-activated advertising campaigns, enabling brands to turn their campaigns viral by allowing users to share their favorite ads with friends.

Brothers Tim, Chris and Russell Vanderhook founded Specific Media in 1999 to address the needs of the burgeoning online advertising space. Since then, the company has developed into one of the world’s largest online advertising companies, with capabilities spanning addressable advertising, original programming and cross-media distribution. By bringing its advertising technology and Fortune 500 client base to Myspace, Specific Media is creating a digital hub where consumers, content and brands connect based on mutual interest and relevance.

«We’re thrilled about the opportunity to rebuild and reinvigorate Myspace», said Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media. «We look forward to partnering with someone as talented as Justin Timberlake, who will lead the business strategy with his creative ideas and vision for transforming Myspace. This is the next chapter of digital media, and we are excited to have a hand in writing the script».

As part of the agreement, News Corporation will take a minority equity stake in Specific Media. Additional terms of the agreement are confidential and will not be disclosed.

Specific Media CEO Talks Myspace and Justin Timberlake

Not only did little-known ad tech company Specific Media acquire the once-mighty Myspace from News Corp. for $35 million in cash and stock today, but it secured Justin Timberlake as an equity investor and creative player in the process.

As a condition of the sale, Myspace let go of half of its 500 employees; News Corp. will retain a 5% stake in the site.

We asked Specific Media CEO Tim Vanderhook what in particular he saw in Myspace, which lost close to $651 million in the 12 months ended in March; how he got Mr. Timberlake involved; and what the plan is now.

Ad Age: You said you will maintain the Myspace brand and that it will operate as a subsidiary within Specific Media. CEO Mike Jones said he’ll be leaving in a few months. Who’s going to be in charge of Myspace?

Tim Vanderhook: We don’t have that person today. The one thing we were looking for immediately was bringing Justin Timberlake in — we were looking for someone to drive creative strategy. But as for day-to-day, myself and my brother Chris will take over day-to-day.

Ad Age: So there won’t be a Myspace CEO anymore, but more of a general manager type?

Mr. Vanderhook: That’s correct. Specific is just going to handle the ad sales side, and Myspace will be focused on the community.

Ad Age:: How did Justin Timberlake get involved?

Mr. Vanderhook: As we started to recognize this transaction was going to happen, the one thing we wanted was help from the creative community. We thought, «Who is the most talented person for this?» And it was really Justin. We saw different groups of people, and he got incredibly passionate about it.

Ad Age: So, Justin Timberlake has a minority stake in the overall business. Did he put in his own money?

Mr. Vanderhook: Yes, his own money.

Ad Age: How much of his own money?

Mr. Vanderhook: I can’t tell you that.

Ad Age: What will be his role at Myspace? Will he be there day-to-day?

Mr. Vanderhook: Justin is a very busy person with many careers. He will have an office in Myspace, and he’ll have a team there. Probably not going to be there every day.

Ad Age: Do you think he was inspired by the role he played in the movie about Facebook, «The Social Network»?

Mr. Vanderhook: I don’t think it was so much that — that was just ironic. He’s really passionate about how can he create a better community.

Ad Age: Speaking of that, what are you going to do with Myspace? Will it be a music hub? Will it take on Facebook?

Mr. Vanderhook: We intend to make Myspace what it was supposed to be. We want to fulfill the original promise of Myspace — be a true home for content creators and artists.

Ad Age: Can you be more specific?

Mr. Vanderhook: We’re going to hold a press conference in 60 days with me and Chris and Justin, where we’ll unveil more of our strategy. But, basically, we want to build community tools that will help those individuals.

Ad Age: How are you going to manage the financials of the company? Shedding half the labor force will help, certainly, but it cost News Corp. over $600 million in the last year or so. How will you do better?

Mr. Vanderhook: This is about reinvigorating the brand of Myspace and making it successful. We’re going to make it grow.

Ad Age: Will there be any more layoffs?

Mr. Vanderhook: No. We’re about investment. We’ll take another look after 60 days and we’ll invest in the areas that are under-resourced.

Ad Age: Looking at it from the other angle, News Corp. accepted an equity stake in Specific as part of the $35 million deal. It appears you got a great price. Was Myspace a steal?

Mr. Vanderhook: No, I don’t think Myspace was a steal. There are some challenges with Myspace. What we’re going to bring is a ton of passion and energy. And with News Corp., they’re a top-notch organization, and we’re happy for them to be a shareholder.

Ad Age: How much of this deal was motivated by the great sea of data Myspace still has? Specific Media targets online ads based on people’s habits online.

Mr. Vanderhook: Honestly, zero. For Specific, we want to build a big digital media company. We have a great third-party network of publishers. With the acquisition of Myspace, Specific looks more like a Yahoo or a Google than it does just an ad network. Myspace is an iconic brand. They have 70 million to 100 million unique user-reach in any month. We’re a digital media company.

Ad Age: Specific has capitalized at over $100 million, and you’ve told me you’re profitable, and this Myspace deal appears to not have involved a lot of cash. Should we be looking out for more acquisitions from you guys?

Mr. Vanderhook: Absolutely. We’re in growth mode and going after this digital-media contest, we’re going to be active. So, yes, look out for more.

Justin Timberlake part of group buying Myspace

Justin Timberlake apparently wasn’t satisfied with just playing a social media impresario in the movies, so now he’s becoming one in real life.

The pop star, who played Napster co-founder Sean Parker in «The Social Network», a movie about Facebook, has joined Specific Media in buying its downtrodden rival, Myspace, from News Corp. in a deal that closed Wednesday.

Timberlake will have an office at Myspace’s Beverly Hills headquarters and a staff of about a half dozen people working for him «around the clock» developing his ideas for the site, said Specific Media CEO Tim Vanderhook.

The partners are set to unveil their plans for reviving the flagging site in a couple of months.

«When we met with Justin and we discussed what our strategy was, we hit a chord with him», Vanderhook told The Associated Press. «One of his passions is he really enjoys helping other artists and creating a community for people to really express themselves. I think we were blown away that we were able to get someone like Justin to be so excited about what we were doing».

The deal is for $35 million, mostly in Specific Media stock, according to a person familiar with the matter. That’s a small fraction of the $580 million that News Corp. paid for the site six years ago. The sale resulted in the layoff of about half of the site’s remaining 500 workers, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

As part of the exchange, News Corp. received a private equity stake in Specific Media and less than a 5 percent stake in Myspace.

With Timberlake’s help, the buyers hope to revitalize Myspace and transform it into a destination for original shows, as well as bolster its already available video content and music. Vanderhook said the revamp will include additional investment in technology and maintain the right to stream music through the joint venture it has with major recording companies, Myspace Music.

«There’s a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect», Timberlake, an Emmy and Grammy winning artist, said in a statement. «Myspace has the potential to be that place».

The sale closed a day before the end of News Corp’.s fiscal year, meaning it was able rid itself of about $250 million in losses, estimated Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente.

Over the last 11 quarters, News Corp. had cumulatively lost about $1.4 billion on the business segment that houses Myspace. It was a disastrous performance by a company that CEO Rupert Murdoch had predicted would reach $1 billion in annual revenue. It never reached that goal.

Walking away from the site was «the right decision», said Standard & Poor’s equity analyst Tuna Amobi. «It’s something that they should put behind them and kind of move on».

Myspace CEO Mike Jones, the last member of a three-member executive team appointed to fix the site in April 2009, said in a memo to staff Wednesday that he would help with the transition for two months before departing.

Myspace launched in 2003, founded by entrepreneurs Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, who is every Myspace user’s first friend. It became a popular Internet destination and a key way for little-known musicians to market themselves and interact with their fans.

But Myspace lost its footing over the years as the fun of customizing one’s profile began to bore its users and heavy use of banner advertisements slowed the speed at which pages load. Meanwhile, Facebook, founded in 2004, limited what users and advertisers could do, but kept pages clean, and freshened them with its «news feed» of updates, a feature that Myspace later copied.

Myspace peaked with 76 million monthly U.S. visitors in October 2008. Advertisers and musicians who once relied on it for promotion fled the site for other hotter social networks like Facebook and, more recently, Twitter.

When Facebook a few years ago began allowing apps, including music functions and addictive games like «FarmVille», Myspace was left in the dust.

Less than half of Myspace’s monthly visitors are now in the United States, where its visitor count dropped by half in May to 35 million, according to tracking firm comScore Inc. Facebook now has more than 700 million monthly visitors worldwide, it said.

«Apps were the breaking point and Myspace could never recover from that», said Charlene Li, a social media analyst and founder of Altimeter Group.

Rohit Kulkarni, an 18-year-old member of the San Jose, Calif. pop punk band Four O’Clock Heroes, said his group once exclusively used Myspace to reach fans with their music, but they haven’t checked the site in months. They opened their Facebook band page last year.

«Most of our following was already on Facebook anyways», Kulkarni said. «Nowadays, people use Facebook over Myspace because it’s integrated into almost everything, like all your mobile phones. I’m guessing that’s why it became more popular».

Even «FarmVille» game-maker Zynga has taken a role promoting music, as shown recently when Lady Gaga unveiled her new album there.

Timberlake’s involvement is a clear sign that Myspace will try to reconnect with its musical roots. Tim Vanderhook said that the acquisition is about returning Myspace «to what it was supposed to be».

Specific Media, based in Irvine, Calif., brokers the sale of ads to websites and has dabbled in creating original programming and matching it with sponsors. The company was founded in 1999 by brothers Tim, Chris and Russell Vanderhook.

At $35 million, Specific Media gets an Internet property for a price that Altimeter’s Li called «ridiculously low» and values each monthly U.S. visitor at about $1 each. Its new owners should be able to recoup their investment if the company gets each user to click on about 20 ads over their lifetime, she said.

Justin Timberlake buys his own social network with Myspace investment

Justin Timberlake is to take a «major role» in the new direction of Myspace after he emerged as one of those behind a $35m deal for the ailing social network.

The singer turned actor, who starred as Facebook investor Sean Parker in the Hollywood hit The Social Network, took a stake in Myspace along with the online advertising company, Specific Media.

The unlikely entrepreneur will «lead the business strategy» for the fallen social network, the Specific Media chief executive Tim Vangerhook, said on announcing the $35m deal on Wednesday evening.

Myspace has shed billions of dollars from its price tag since it was dethroned as the dominant social network in 2008. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation agreed on Wednesday to sell Myspace for a fraction of the $100m it was seeking — a sign of the site’s dramatic fall from greatness.

News Corp will retain a minority stake in Myspace after putting the struggling social network up for sale earlier this year, engaging investment bank Allen & Co to find a buyer.

In an interview with AdAge, Vanderhook said Timberlake, 30, had put his own money into buying Myspace, but refused to disclose how much. He confirmed that the former N Sync singer will have an office in Myspace but that he was «probably not going to be there every day».

Asked whether he thought Timberlake had been inspired by his star turn in The Social Network, Vanderhook said: «I don’t think it was so much that — that was just ironic. He’s really passionate about how can he create a better community».

Timberlake said in a statement: «There’s a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect. Myspace has the potential to be that place.

«Art is inspired by people and vice versa, so there’s a natural social component to entertainment. I’m excited to help revitalise Myspace by using its social media platform to bring artists and fans together in one community».

Just this week, Parker said Myspace’s fall from grace was down to it being a «junkheap of bad design», while Facebook blossomed with lots of new features.

He told TV host Jimmy Fallon at the NExTWORK conference: «They weren’t successful in treating and evolving the product enough, it was basically this junkheap of bad design that persisted for many many years. There was a period of time where if they had just copied Facebook rapidly, they would have been Facebook. They were giant, the network effects, the scale effects were enormous».

Myspace is expected to shed more than half of its 500 remaining staff as part of the deal. The layoffs follow a 30% staff reduction in April last year, and a further 47% cut in January. Two years ago Myspace employed more than 1,400 people.

News Corp bought Myspace in 2005 for $580m. In 2006 Google signed a $900m deal to sell ads on Myspace; by 2007 it had 300m registered users worldwide and was being valued at $12bn. By November 2010 the user figure had fallen to 91m.

Facebook passed Myspace in terms of numbers of users two years ago and is now approaching 700m globally. As people dropped Myspace, so did advertisers. Market research firm eMarketer estimates that the site will earn about $183m in worldwide ad revenues this year, down from $605m at its peak.

Specific Media, a US digital advertising company founded by brothers Tim, Chris and Russell Vanderhook in 1999, said it planned to work with Timberlake to turn Myspace around by making it «the premiere digital destination for original shows, video content and music».

The company added it intended to use Myspace’s infrastructure to «deploy socially activated advertising», enabling brands to take their campaigns viral by allowing users to share ads with friends.

News Corp’s Myspace sale comes as a new generation of internet firms are attracting sky-high valuations. Zynga, the online games developer behind hits including CityVille and FarmVille, is planning an initial public offering that could value it at $20bn. LinkedIn, the business-focused social network, has already gone public and is valued at $8.6bn. Next year Facebook is expected to go public — analysts have estimated it could be worth $80bn or more.