Social Media Daily News – April 27, 2011

Good morning. The not so popular, slightly creepy social network MySpace is up for sale. News Corp. is poised to sell the site after it’s slow demise over the past few years. The sale is reportedly going to be around the $100 million mark, which is a huge drop from the $580 million they paid for the site in 2005. MySpace proves that even in the flourishing social landscape companies can fail if they don’t adapt and react to changing market conditions and trends. Perhaps the new owners of MySpace can bring it back from near death. The social IPO world seems to be able all the rage for investors these days. Facebook is offering up $1billion in private shares through SecondMarket as they get closer to an IPO. SecondMarket, a broker for venture-backed companies is a driving force behind the social IPO buzz with partnerships with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These companies are all looking to go public this year and the amount of excitement, energy and confusion around the legality of these companies shares have everyone talking. Enjoy.

I. MySpace For Sale: The Bidding Begins, mashable.com, April 26, 2011
II. Facebook Drives SecondMarket Broking $1 Billion Private Shares, bloomberg.com, April 27, 2011
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I. MySpace For Sale: The Bidding Begins, mashable.com, April 26, 2011
http://mashable.com/2011/04/26/myspace-bidding-begins/
A handful of venture capital firms and other companies are expected to make News Corp. offers for one of its most disappointing properties: MySpace. News Corp. declared it was ready to sell MySpace in an earnings call in February. At that time, in spite of significant layoffs and a massive redesign, the company “recorded a $275 million pre-tax charge for the impairment of goodwill related to the Digital Media Group and an organizational restructuring at MySpace.”

II. Facebook Drives SecondMarket Broking $1 Billion Private Shares, bloomberg.com, April 27, 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-27/facebook-drives-secondmarket-broking-1-billion-private-shares.html
By age 10, he was swapping baseball cards at collectors conventions. At 15, he plowed his savings into shares of Chromatics Color Sciences International Inc. — a penny stock that lost him $2,000. And as a 25-year-old banker for the creditors of Enron Corp., Silbert traveled the globe after the firm’s 2001 bankruptcy, flogging Enron assets, including fiber- optic cable and Bolivian pipelines. He’s been a registered broker since he was 17, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue