myspace bought for 580 million Options

[*basick*]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp. on Monday said it would buy Intermix Media Inc., owner of the popular MySpace.com social networking site, for $580 million in a move to expand the media conglomerate's Internet offerings.

The deal comes after News Corp., home to the Fox television network, Fox News and 20th Century Fox film studios, announced on Friday the creation of an Internet division to hold the company's sports, news and entertainment sites.

News Corp. will pay $12 a share, a 12 percent premium over Intermix's closing price on the American Stock Exchange on Friday. Intermix shares rose 9.5 percent to $11.74 in Monday trading.

"For a company with a market capitalization of over $50 billion and $6 billion in cash on their balance sheet, to pay $580 million for the fifth most widely viewed domain, that strikes me as reasonable," said Natexis Bleichroeder analyst Alan Gould.

"With a significant amount of advertising dollars moving from traditional outlets to online, News Corp., like most media companies, is looking to boost its Internet assets," Gould added.

Online advertising is expected to be the fastest growing category for national advertisers, up 15 percent to $7.9 billion this year, according to media buying firm Universal McCann.

MySpace.com is the most popular of the once-trendy social networking sites, which allow people with common interests to seek dates, friendship and professional relationships.

Google Inc., for its part, has a social networking site called Orkut. Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) has made social networking a part of its Yahoo 360 networking tool.

"The thing about MySpace is that it's a growing audience," said Jupiter Research analyst David Card. "Its users are pretty loyal. They get a lot of time spent on their pages. And the personal information they get from users is pretty reliable because they want to meet people. One would think this information would be pretty useful to advertisers."

Intermix, which had $24.1 million in revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter, will become part of News Corp.'s newly created Fox Interactive Media.

News Corp. had said on Friday it plans to make "strategic investments" in this area. The creation of the Internet unit comes three months after News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch's exhortation to the newspaper industry that it was too slow to respond to the Internet.

Intermix was the target of a lawsuit by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who accused the company of false advertising and deceptive business practices in bundling hidden spyware that delivered pop-up advertising and redirected Web traffic to an Intermix search engine.

The company agreed to pay $7.9 million to settle suit without admitting wrongdoing. It had previously stopped distributing such programs.

The News Corp. deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of calendar 2005.

Intermix's largest shareholder, VantagePoint Venture Partners, which holds 22.4 percent of the company, has agreed to vote its shares in favor of the deal, News Corp. said.

News Corp. shares closed down 2 cents to $17.45 in midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

tom is filthy rich now

[*danielle_x3*]

Ah yes, I saw that in one of my bulletins. That's some crazy stuff.

[Tom From Myspace]

thank you for notifying createblog of that basick. i think 580 million was well deserved after years of hard word and dedication. i look forward to enjoying the 580 million. i will be pursuing a music career and adding to my collection of yachts. thank you.

- tom from myspace

[katssso]

thank you for notifying createblog of that basick. i think 580 million was well deserved after years of hard word and dedication. i look forward to enjoying the 580 million. i will be pursuing a music career and adding to my collection of yachts. thank you.

- tom from myspace

congrats tom

[*anubis*]

WOW

lucky, lucky man.

[KELLYYY]

OH. MY. GOD. Whoa.

I'm still mad about him deleting my MySpace, though. >:(

[..:loveee.NuTTii]

Damn...that's a lot of money.
Well, congratulations to Tom. Mind lending me a yacht?

[SMiLEEFORMEE]

wowwww.

[pyrochick19770]

Holy Trousers...
Tom, mind sharing the wealth? (: j/k

[Looow]

thank you for notifying createblog of that basick. i think 580 million was well deserved after years of hard word and dedication. i look forward to enjoying the 580 million. i will be pursuing a music career and adding to my collection of yachts. thank you.

- tom from myspace

Hahahahaha
------

Yeah wow 580 million? Hmm

[iheartjohn]

I knew MySpace was big when the radio stations over in VA Beach spent a whole hour talking about it.

[whomps]

$580,000,000... Wow.

[william]

i saw this when jordan posted that link to http://www.myspacesoldout.com in tracy's thread about her page being deleted.

yeah. whoa.

[*incoherent*]

holy $h!+

id never pay that much.

thank you for notifying createblog of that basick. i think 580 million was well deserved after years of hard word and dedication. i look forward to enjoying the 580 million. i will be pursuing a music career and adding to my collection of yachts. thank you.

- tom from myspace

youre a douche bag anyways and sometimes a d**k. im glad to see youre leaving.
hopefully you leave cB too.

edit://2



hmm. i reckon you said youre pursuing a music career...in what? opera? i mean honestly...without these "emo fags" you wouldnt have gotten nearly enough attention and MONEY out of this deal. be happy they supported you and good luck with your opera career, you opera fag.

again, im glad you're leaving

This post has been edited by anovation: Jul 21 2005, 05:13 PM

[jordanriane]

LOL to those that believed tom would post at CB.

[D1SMANTLED]

...Tom from Myspace sold out.

But thank goodness it's not under his hands anymore.

I'm quite happy, really.

[*incoherent*]

...and tom, again im back.

i went to your new site and found a list of your "friends"

beloved

big d and the kids table

boys night out

comeback kid

coheed & cambria

fall out boy

less than jake

matchbook romance

moments in grace

no trigger

motion city soundtrack

rise against

thursday

trophy scars

underminded

american fear

tanktheory

monkey vs. robot

threadless

ascend apparel

rockett

obeygiant

merchdirect

contagious graphics

dieselfuel prints

busy beaver

mammoth print shop

absolutepunk

punkrocks

punknews

mickey mccranor

the web guy

rob dobi

dan dobi

jason oda

ten minute media

shiftcore

derek hess

angry blue

tim harmon

metrosea

drew heffron

surfstation

emogame

yourscenesucks

last time i checked...most of those bands were into the emo scene. so do us all a favor, get into one of your yachts and get lost near antarctica.

[*mzkandi*]

*sigh* I wish I was Mrs. Tom.......

[sadolakced acid]

ahaha.

i'd marry tom.

and i'm (unfortuanley) a straight guy (bi would be much more fun)

[EmmalieV]

Wow , Tom can get it now.

[*kryogenix*]

thank you for notifying createblog of that basick. i think 580 million was well deserved after years of hard word and dedication. i look forward to enjoying the 580 million. i will be pursuing a music career and adding to my collection of yachts. thank you.

- tom from myspace

basick, that's pretty lame of you to pretend you're him.

[*x____duckii*]

thank you for notifying createblog of that basick. i think 580 million was well deserved after years of hard word and dedication. i look forward to enjoying the 580 million. i will be pursuing a music career and adding to my collection of yachts. thank you.

- tom from myspace

Umm... guys, that isn't really Tom.

Tom must be filthy rich now.

[Im So Vain]

basick, that's pretty lame of you to pretend you're him.

^that is lame if it is true .
thats good for tom i guess, i just cancelled my myspace so dosent affect me.

[heyyfrankie]

thank you for notifying createblog of that basick. i think 580 million was well deserved after years of hard word and dedication. i look forward to enjoying the 580 million. i will be pursuing a music career and adding to my collection of yachts. thank you.

- tom from myspace

okay, it's final. you're a stupid retard.

[william]

just because myspace got bought out, doesn't mean tom's leaving. at least that's what he said in the most recent bulletin:

Latest Update: 11:07PM PST, Monday, July 18th. don't worry myspace isn't going to change or shut down, and no one's profiles are going to get deleted. we are not charging and i'm not leaving myspace... things are going good !

um, yeah .