Justin Timberlake buys ownership stake in MySpace

By Andrew Couts June 29, 2011

Justin-Timberlake-MySpace-Facebook — Image used with permission by copyright holder

It’s not often that you hear of someone switching from Facebook to Myspace. But in a surprising instance of life imitating art (that imitates life), Justin Timberlake did just that: The actor and singer has reportedly purchased an ownership stake in MySpace, along with fellow buyer Specific Media. The former N’SNYC member, who played Facebook president and Napster co-founder Sean Parker in The Social Network, will help revamp the diminished website, which the pair just purchased for a mere $35 million from News Corp.

According to the Associated Press, Timberlake will take an office at the MySpace headquarters in Beverly Hills, and have a staff of about six people working for him “around the clock,” as Specific Media CEO Tim Vanderhook put it.

Specific Media hopes that Timberlake’s celebrity and sway in the music community can help MySpace build upon its success with musicians.

“When we met with Justin and we discussed what our strategy was, we hit a chord with him,” Vanderhook told the AP. “One of his passions is he really enjoys helping other artists and creating a community for people to really express themselves. I think we were blown away that we were able to get someone like Justin to be so excited about what we were doing.”

MySpace has been on a downward spiral for years, driven deeper as Facebook skyrocketed in popularity. The $35 million deal is a bargain compared to the $580 million News Corp paid for the site in 2005. (Facebook first launched in 2004.) That’s a loss of $545 million, or 94 percent of the company’s investment. Despite this, News Corp will retain a 5 percent stake in MySpace.

Vanderhook says that, with Timberlake’s help, they can breath new life into the website by focusing on video content, including original shows. The new MySpace will also involve a major upgrade in technology, as well as the an effort to maintain the rights to music that was posted to the site through its partnership venture with major record labels, MySpace Music.

“There’s a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect,” said Timberlake in a statement. “MySpace has the potential to be that place.”

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Features Editor for Digital Trends, Andrew Couts covers a wide swath of consumer technology topics, with particular focus on…

Entertainment

3 Netflix shows we can’t wait to see in May 2024

Three people stand in the countryside in Bodkin.

Netflix killed it in April. From artsy thrillers like Ripley to supernatural fare like Dead Boy Detectives to the stalker drama Baby Reindeer, the streamer produced enough original content to justify its ever-increasing subscription rates ... for now, at least.

Netflix's May programming slate doesn't appear to be as packed as April, but there are a few shows on our radar that are worth checking out. There's a big-budget adaptation of an acclaimed novel, a low-key comic mystery set on the Emerald Isle coast, and a show about a man and his puppet on a quest to find a missing child.
A Man in Full (May 2)

Entertainment

Check out this great movie before it leaves Amazon Prime Video next week

Multiple actors as Mr. Blue, Green, Grey, & Brown discuss how to leave the subway tunnels in The Taking of Pelham 123.

Among the many frustrating things about the modern streaming landscape is that, in addition to not knowing what to watch, it's also difficult to know when you'll actually be able to see it. Although Amazon Prime Video has plenty of great movies, those movies come to the streamer and leave it seemingly at random because of complicated rights agreements that no regular person should ever care about or understand.

It can be hard to make sure you catch a great movie before it leaves, which is why you should definitely make time to watch The Taking of Pelham One Two Three before it leaves Prime Video at the end of April. The movie, which tells the story of a MTA train heist in 1970s New York, holds up remarkably well 50 years later. Here are three reasons you should check it out.
It's a perfectly paced heist movie

Entertainment

We need to stop taking Guy Ritchie for granted

Guy Ritchie looks at a monitor on set of The Gentlemen.

Few directors have had a more prolific past five years than Guy Ritchie. The filmmaker, once known best for his late 1990s/early 2000s British gangster movies, has fully completed his transition from scrappy upstart to reliable studio director. He began that journey in the late 2000s and continued it throughout the 2010s when he agreed to direct films like Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and — in one of the strangest creative decisions in Hollywood history — Disney's live-action Aladdin. There were multiyear gaps between a few of those movies, though, and all four of his 2010s titles (including 2015's The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) were connected, in some form or another, to a preexisting piece of intellectual property.

This decade, Ritchie's already released five movies: The Gentlemen, Wrath of Man, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, The Covenant, and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. On top of that, he's already made a sixth (2025's In the Grey) and written and directed multiple episodes of The Gentlemen, a Netflix series he created based on his 2019 film of the same name. After spending 10 years floating through the world of high-budget IP filmmaking, Ritchie has turned himself into his own industry that produces at least one action movie a year.