June 30, 2010 Internet company Specific Media was acquired social networking site MySpace for $ 35 million . The former owner of MySpace Corporation News Corp. media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Sales amount to 10 times less than the amount you paid for MySpace News Corp in 2005. And such “unfavorable stories” are not enough, MySpace, ICQ, Bebo and other successful projects in the old days, which brought the state in the past one and a headache in the future to others. 8 will reveal some of the failed trades in the history of IT-industry.

Buying MySpace

Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp.

Buyer : News Corp. Purchase Price : $ 327 million Price : $ 35 million In summer 2005, the Corporation Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. become very popular at that time, the site in the world of MySpace, paying for it $ 327 million . As early as 2006 mu site led the world in terms of page views and has dominated the segment of social networks (75% of visits). But in 2008, Facebook is not only caught up with him in popularity (it has since MySpace started to lose an average of 1 million unique monthly visitors), but leave the competition far behind: By 2010, Facebook has 640 million registered users compared to 100 million from MySpace. In October last year, MySpace, acknowledging his defeat, officially re-classified into an entertainment portal. Unfortunately, this does not help, and MySpace continues to plummet. In 2010 MySpace will record a loss of $ 165 million on a turnover of $ 109 million, Yes, with indicators such News Corp. It was not easy to find a Buyer on MySpace. But in the end they all still did it, and the owner was a little-known company Specific Media. While nothing is known about the plans with respect to Specific Media MySpace, while News Corp. (Obviously, just in case) retained 5% in MySpace.

Buying ICQ

CEO AOL Steve Case

Buyer : AOL Purchase Price : $ 407 million Price : $ 187 million Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996, has developed ICQ. And in 1998, AOL pays for services around Instant Messaging $ 400 million (including a bonus for developers $ 120 million). At that time, the Israeli technology sector that has become the biggest deal. Unfortunately, since then ICQ was not able to achieve more substantial progress, and even gave way in the face of rivals MSN, and later, Skype, Google Talks and other services. In 2010 the world used about 33 ICQ million people, nearly a third of users were from Russia. This explains the interest to the Russian Fund ICQ DST (or Mail.ru Group), paid in the last year for the service $ 187 million . By the way, the deal could prevent the U.S. intelligence agencies, who feared losing access to transcripts of negotiations Eastern European criminal gruppv relocation ICQ servers in Russia. Purchase

MP3.com

CEO Vivendi, Jean-Marie Messier

Buyer : Vivendi Purchase Price : $ 372 million Price : $ 2,5 млн In 2001, the French media corporations Vivendi International, which among other things owns one of the largest majors Universal Music, for $ 372 million purchased music service MP3.com. Michael Robertson and Greg Flores (makers of MP3.com) wanted to change the world, allowing the musicians to sell their music, bypassing the record labels. But since Vivendi pursuing opposite goals, Jean-Marie Messier (CEO Vivendi), commented on the acquisition, calling MP3.com «advanced technology”, which should make the purchase of Vivendi into a leading distributor of digital music. By the year 2003 Vivendi sells service media company CNET Networks, which immediately closes it, leaving only his domain name.

Buy Broadcast.com

Founders Jerry Yang and Yahoo! David Filo

Buyer : Yahoo! Purchase Price : $ 5,04 млрд Price : the service is closed 1999. Yahoo! Acquires $ 5,04 per млрд site Broadcast.com (a primitive prototype of Youtube). And for several years been trying to incorporate Broadcast.com in its structure, but all in vain – Yahoo! and could not turn it into a hit. “Dotcom bubble” burst, Broadcast.com depreciated along with the other companies of that era. And today, Broadcast.com no longer exists. But its founders – Mark and Todd Wagner Kyubana selling Broadcast.com made ??billionaires. Kyuban saved his fortune and now he owns the club’s NBA Dallas Mavericks. Recently won the Dallas Cup title NBA (for the first time in 30 years). Last year, Forbes richest people in the world put Kyubana the state $ 2.5 mlrd.na 459th place.

Buy Skype

eBay founder Pierre Omidyar

Buyer : eBay Price : $ 3,1 млрд Price : $ 2 billion In 2005, eBay purchased Skype, created in 2003, a total of $ 3,1 billion Integrate Skype into its core eBay business is not managed, as well as monetize the popular auction. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar has written off its value more than $ 900 million, “How many free calls I need to do to justify the purchase of Skype?» – Lamented the spring of 2008 in a Twitter-account Pierre Omidyar. But a year later, in 2009, eBay sells Skype controlling group of private investors for $ 2 billion , but it retains the 30% stake, it is possible to earn good money (as a group after the acquisition of Skype private investors to resell it to Microsoft for $ 8.5 billion). It should be noted the quality of management, that for the period since the joint-stock outswing selling it on eBay and buy Microsoft Skype has not undergone any major changes.

Buying Bebo

Randy Falco CEO AOL

Buyer : AOL Purchase Price : $ 850 million Price : $ 10 million In 2008, Facebook is rapidly gaining popularity among users of social networks (the number of Facebook users increased 150% on a monthly basis and by the end of the summer has reached the 100 million people). AOL decides to get its own network and acquires Bebo, Michael Birch and Hochi. However, AOL does not create a serious competition of Mark Zuckerberg. Alas, two years the number of unique visitors to Bebo was reduced from 22 million to 14.6 million per month, and subsequently continued to fall. Already in 2009, AOL began to look for Buyers of Bebo. And in the summer of 2010 it bought a private foundation Criterion Capital Partners in 85 times cheaper deal with Birch. Now Bebo – a small company with a staff of 50 people.

Purchase Flip

John Chambers CEO Cisco

Buyer : Cisco Purchase Price : $ 590 million Price : the company is closed Cisco acquired Pure Digital за $590 million, Flip pocket camcorders manufactured in 2009. Earnings Cisco, whose core business is the production of networking equipment for enterprises in the period declined and the company was looking to enter new markets for themselves of their equipment, and cameras Flip to the point were a sensation. The reason for their popularity was able to instantly send captured video on Youtube and other video hosting. But this year the developers of mobile phones reached a significant improvement of quality shots. Because of this camera Flip lose potential customers. In early 2010, Cisco announced the departure of the consumer market with handheld video cameras, cameras for the production department is fully closes and fires the entire staff.

Merger of AOL and Time Warner

CEO AOL Steve Case and CEO Time Warner Gerard Levin

The world’s largest media conglomerates Time Warner and the world’s largest Internet company in 1999, AOL announced a merger. The amount of “deal of the century” was about $ 350 billion market capitalization by the time AOL was about $ 240 billion, company has a joint venture 55% of the shares. “Dotcom bubble” burst soon and AOL assets are rapidly losing in value. AOL Time Warner was forced to fix the 2002 record in the history of American companies damage – $ 99 billion in ten years after the merger in late 2009, Time Warner and AOL put a point in the relationship and finally separated. Today, the market value of AOL is not more than 2 billion $ .