I pretty much chocked MySpace up for dead way back when. The social networking site has been bleeding visitors since 2008, when at its peak, it attracted 75.9 million unique visitors each month.
Things quickly went south for MySpace when Facebook debuted and users moved to the new, more popular, social network.
By the time News Corp. finally gave up and decided to sell, monthly unique visitors were only 33 million. When news Corp. purchased MySpace in 2005, it paid $580 million.
With traffic down so badly when the social network went back up for sale, it was purchased for a comparatively slight $35 million. The new buyers were Tim and Chris Vanderhook along with celebrity partner Justin Timberlake.
Interestingly enough, MySpace is set report the best news we’ve heard in a long time, at least according to the New York Times.
Indeed, the social network is poised to confirm that it has gained 1 million subscribers since December 2011. The growth in the number of users after so many months of user losses is attributed mostly to the new owners pushing MySpace as a music and entertainment hub.
“We went from zero signups per day to 40,000,” said Chris Vanderhook, the company’s chief operating officer.
Of course, a new music player isn’t the only reason for a million new subscribers. Vanderhook attributes some of the growth to the integration of MySpace with Facebook and Twitter. It’s more than a little ironic that MySpace is naming Facebook as one of the reasons for its growth. MySpace has amassed a library of 42 million audio tracks, which is several times more than its closest competitors boast. It’s easy to see why music fans would be moving to MySpace.
