Congratulations, you've bought MySpace and its 77 million users.
Now what do you do with it?
That depends greatly on whether you're advertising network Specific Media, private equity firm Golden Gate Capital, or MySpace co-founders Chris DeWolfe or Tom Anderson, each of whom is putting together a group of bidders for the failed social network.
News Corp. is expected to make the deal by Wednesday morning for $35 million, making the price per user some 45 cents.
Also read: MySpace Expected to Sell for $35M By Wednesday
That 77 million users is quite a large customer base, presuming they are real people. All those eyeballs make even a sickly tech company an attractive target for buyers hoping to launch digital games or sell online ads, according to industry experts.
“It’s definitely lost its edge, but if you have an active audience on it, it’s worth something,” said Mike Hickey, an analyst with investment firm Janco Partners.
But turning MySpace around will take nothing short of a miracle. From AOL to Napster, the Internet is littered with once-hot brands that are now desperately uncool. And it’s hard to find an Internet company that has successfully reinvented itself after peaking, and losing, its mojo.
"If they are going to bring it back, they will have to do something that's never happened before," Anil Dash, a social media consultant and director of Expert Labs, told TheWrap. "In the history of the web, a lot of sites have come and gone, but not once has anybody ever brought a site back to its peak."
The various parties looking to snap up MySpace declined to comment to TheWrap, but a look at their track records gives some notion of their plans:
>> Golden Gate Capital has a knack for picking up distressed properties that have high upsides, such as J. Jill and Lawson Software, but can also be liquidated if the gamble doesn't pay off.
>> Specific Media is clearly hoping to use MySpace as a platform to sell ads. The online ad broker currently reaches 170 million users through various outlets and could pad its numbers and its rates by adding MySpace members to the pile.
>> DeWolfe and Anderson, who are launching separate bids with private equity backers, have a personal stake in rescuing their brainchild from the rubbish heap of history. It is unclear if they want to reinvigorate their original vision for the site, or use the database as a platform for yet another social media venture.
Also read: News Corp.'s Failed Social Experiment: Why MySpace Didn't Deliver
"Everybody's second startup is a chance to atone for their first startup," Dash told TheWrap. "When you succeed you want to prove you can do it again and it's not a fluke. When you have something that's failed, that becomes even more acute."
