Last June, Specific Media paid just $35 million to acquire MySpace from News Corporation. It was a humbling price for the social networking web site that at one time was one of the biggest Internet properties. At the time Specific Media said that one of its investors, pop singer Justin Timberlake, would "play a major role in developing the creative direction and strategy for the company moving forward." While Specific Media was supposed to announce its specific plans for MySpace by now, The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that those plans have been pushed back.
Specific Media said back in June that they were looking to turn MySpace into a destination for original music, videos and other shows. But the new report now claims that those plans have taken longer than first anticipated to work out. Specific Media now plans to reveal its revamp plans for MySpace in October during Advertising Week, the annual get together for the ad industry in New York City.
Specific Media and Timberlake have their work cut out for them in order to bring MySpace back. Launched in 2003, it became the largest social networking web site by 2006. However, in 2008 MySpace was overtaken in terms of users by its biggest rival Facebook. It continued to see its audience drop as people abandoned the site for Facebook"s better features and user interface. Comscore now says that MySpace had just 33.1 million unique visitors in August 2011, a drop of 44 percent from the same period a year ago.