News Corp has sold MySpace to Specific Media for $35 million, according to AllThingsD. Just six years ago, it paid $580 million. That's a colossal loss both in percentage terms (-94 percent) and dollar terms (-$545 million).

What went so terribly wrong?

In the case of MySpace, you can't blame News Corp too much because it thought it was buying the leader in the social networking space. Judging by the growth of social networking since then, $580 million is actually a cheap price to pay.

However, the mistake News Corp made was betting on the wrong horse. The following telling figures provided by ABC, citing comScore, illustrate that Facebook came out as the top dog of social networking while MySpace has flopped:

Facebook MySpace

Visitors Per Month

2005 8 million 22 million

2011 157 million 35 million

There are many theories as to why MySpace lost, including inferior features and too much advertising. It's even more difficult to figure out if rigorous analysis back in 2005 could have yielded the conclusion of MySpace's eventual demise.

Whatever the case, News Corp's MySpace investment turned out horribly. Click 'Start' to view five more cases of Internet acquisitions gone wrong.

Microsofts Acquisition of aQuantive.
Microsoft bought aQuantive, an advertising services company, for $6 billion in 2007. In 2009, Microsoft sold Razorfish, the primary business/division of aQuantive, for $530 million. Reuters
Merger of AOL and Time Warner
In 2000, Time Warner’s merger with AOL valued AOL at $164 billion. The deal gave AOL shareholders 55 percent of the joint company and Time Warner shareholders 45 percent of the company.Eventually in 2009, Time Warner divested AOL at a valuation of $2.5 billion. REuters
AOLs Acquisition of Netscape
AOL bought Netscape in 1998 for $4.2 billion, even after it clearly lost the Internet browser fight to Internet Explorer. In 2008, AOL stopped supporting the Netscape browser.Currently, the Netscape browser is discontinued and the Netscape acquisition as a whole is providing very little value to AOL. Reuters
Microsofts Bid to Buy Yahoo
Microsoft Offered to by Yahoo for $45 billion in February 2008. Now, Yahoo is only worth $20 billion. This transaction never happened because like for Microsoft, Yahoo was foolish enough to reject the offer. Still, the offer was one of the most colossal blunders in dollars in corporate history. Reuters
Yahoos Acquisition of Broadcast.com
Yahoo acquired Broadcast.com, an Internet audio and video broadcasting company, for $5.7 billion. Today, it’s rebranded as Yahoo! Music Radio. It’s unclear how much this service makes per year. However, it’s safe to say that Yahoo! Music Radio’s worth is not even close to $5.7 billion. Reuters
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