Murdoch Bought MySpace Then Paved the Path for Facebook

MySpace was the prototype for all social media, a place to share your taste in media and music, and it was also owned by one of the largest media empires in the world. After its initial debut in 2003, the site was the hottest thing on the web, so much so that company president Tom Anderson claimed in his book that Mark Zuckerberg tried to sell Facebook to them for $75 million in early 2004.

Then came the clincher, News Corp bought out MySpace for $580 million. The site continued to grow and under News Corp’s banner, it launched several localized versions across the world. It reached more than 300 million users, which at the time was a big number. It could have been worth billions, or Murdoch and his underlings at News Corp thought. Anderson and CEO Chris DeWolfe were brought into Murdoch’s inner circle.

You see, Murdoch wanted MySpace as an ad vehicle and a news distribution channel for all of Murdoch’s other media enterprises, as Bloomberg reported back in 2009. But that’s not what the site was designed to do. Then Facebook blew up. The social site left college campuses behind and tried to offer a real reality distortion machine. Facebook grew, and MySpace declined as it took too long to keep up and offer a competing service.

Murdoch unloaded MySpace in 2011 for just $35 million, losing out on around $545 million compared to its initial buying price. Six years in and all Murdoch had to show for his efforts was making Facebook, now Meta, the new face of online disinformation distribution.