News Corp.: We Don’t Know What To Do With MySpace

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The potential of MySpace may be limitless – as long as it survives the next few months, it seems. Talking at the Reuters Global Media Summit conference earlier this week, the COO of MySpace parent News Corp., Chase Carey, said that that the company was open to all options concerning the site’s future, including selling it:

There are opportunities here to do twenty things [with MySpace] but that doesn’t mean you’re going to do any of the twenty. If there’s something there that makes sense you ought to think about it.

With ad revenue expected to fall 37% this year – and the site already operating at a loss – it’s no surprise that News Corp. wants to do something with MySpace. The recent recasting of it as a “Social Entertainment Destination” rather than a social networking site (including a link-up with Facebook) may have been triggered by any potential sale, he admitted:

I think [without the upgrade] those options would have been pretty limited and I think probably would have undervalued it against what we think it can be.

Comments like that make it sound as if someone at News Corp. thinks there’s still some potential left in MySpace, although I admit to some curiosity what that would be at this point, without an even more widescale overhaul or repurposing. Maybe it would be easier just to sell, after all…

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