Even MySpace Founders No Longer Using Site

Site's decline blamed in part on Rupert Murdoch's loss of interest
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 25, 2011 3:17 PM CDT
Even MySpace Founders No Longer Using Site
Rupert Murdoch and Chris DeWolfe listen to questions during a talk at Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco in this Oct. 17, 2007 file photo.   (AP Photo/Tony Avelar, file)

MySpace has fallen so far that its own founders no longer bother updating their profiles, BusinessWeek finds in a detailed look at the rapid decline of the former juggernaut of social networking. Former CEO Chris DeWolfe, who founded the company with Tom Anderson in 2003, says he cringes on the rare occasions he visits his page, while Anderson's last update was in March of 2010. The site, bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in 2005, has shed an average of a million users a month since its December 2008 peak.

MySpace stumbled because of mismanagement, technological and strategic blunders, and a loss of interest on the part of Murdoch, BusinessWeek finds, warning that social networking appears to be a volatile business "in which companies might serially rise, fall, and disappear." News Corp is expected to sell off MySpace soon, at a fraction of the $580 million it paid for it. "MySpace can be something again, but I think you have to have someone that can really reimagine what it is," DeWolfe says. "The direction it's going right now is not the right answer." (More social media stories.)

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