He brought Sexy Back, he invested to bring the Memphis Grizzlies back and then he thought he could bring MySpace back. By all accounts, pop megastar, actor and entrepreneur Justin Timberlake’s investment into the failing social network MySpace, seems to be doing well. They’ve reported record growth that the company hadn’t seen since the pre-Fox days.
MySpace was created in 2003 as a spinoff from e-Universe and a more feature packed version of Friendster. The company’s first President, Tom Anderson, was everyone’s first friend. MySpace speeded up the charts becoming insanely popular. Two years later it was sold to Fox for $580 million dollars, a price unheard of at the time.
Between the Fox days and today, and with the rise of Facebook, MySpace faltered end eventually lost most of it’s users to Facebook which started out as an exclusive social network for college students. When Facebook made the move to allow anyone 13 and over to join the network it was just about over for MySpace.
On it’s last legs, a group of investors called Specific Media, and led by Justin Timberlake purchased MySpace from Fox for $35 million dollars. They had plans, which they’ve since implemented, to become a music network. In September of 2012 Timberlake tweeted out a video on the new MySpace and since then the social network has made a rebound of sorts.
Business Insider reports that last month Myspace says they hit 36 million users up from the 24 million it reported before relaunch. They also say that Compete.com validated that claim. So it may come as a surprise that MySpace also announced it was laying off 5%of it’s work force. The company didn’t reveal how many employees that would be but Business Insider reports there are 284 current MySpace employees on LinkedIN.
MySpace Chief Operating Officer, Chris Vanderhook gave Business Insider this statement:
“We’re implementing changes at Myspace to support continued innovation and growth by streamlining operations to achieve profitability. We appreciate our team’s contributions to Myspace over the years, and are offering outplacement services and severance packages to assist impacted employees.”
