When a once-mighty, once-popular company like Myspace falls from grace and winds up on the seller’s block, it’s going to become big news. And with big news comes no shortage people and companies that want to piggyback on that big news for the sake of a little attention.
So it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that mobile social networking service MocoSpace was kind enough to issue a statement letting us all know that it would be interested in acquiring Myspace once news broke that Myspace parent company NewsCorp retained investment bank Allen & Co to explore options.
Now MocoSpace is a pretty cool little company. It claims around 10 million registered users, and it has done some interesting things in promoting music to its membership base. More recently it’s focused on mobile gaming in a change of strategy.
But it’s hard not to see this as more of a PR stunt than anything else designed to get MocoSpace in the news.
MocoSpace CEO Jason Siegel said in an article published on Billboard.biz and on Bloomberg Business that News Corp is asking for between $50 and $200 million. The company also said it was open to a unique arrangement where it trades ownership in return for a cut of future revenues. What kind of buyer goes on the record with details of deal terms like that? This is a company that to date raised about $10.5 million in funding.
And Siegel also says that the “crown jewel” is Myspace’s mobile unit, noting the music part would either be sold or shut down should he acquire it. Excuse me? Since when has Myspace shown any real traction with any mobile product?
The music service is clearly the only unit within Myspace that has any traction and any clear use case or business model.
With the lack of any details coming from NewsCorp, stories like this will fill the void. But it’s hard to see how any of this passes the sniff test.