Los Angeles — News Corp.’s MySpace, the struggling social-networking site, attempting to make a reappearance has finalized a deal to acquire certain, unspecified assets of social messaging platform Threadbox. whose real-time messaging application has been branded as a more useful Google Wave, VentureBeat reported.
VentureBeat first broke the news in July that negotiations are in progress between MySpace and Threadbox. The Threadbox service was shuttered in early August, and co-founder and chief executive Michael Cerda just released a blog post talking about the deal and apologizing to users for not explaining the shutdown earlier. He wrote:
Now that the transaction is finalized, I can talk more openly. We sold certain Threadbox assets to MySpace and several “key members” of the Threadbox team have moved over to MySpace and are now excited to be part of that team… “We plan to apply our expertise there in a variety of ways,” writes Cerda. “Those of you that were using Threadbox socially may even find what we are building at Myspace interesting!”
Venturebeat says CEO Michael Cerda has joined MySpace as vice president of product, communications.
Threadbox launched in March 2009, offers a social messaging platform that combines elements of email, instant messaging and file-sharing — similar to Google’s Wave. Like an instant message box, the service make visible to users who among their list of friends was available online, and let them post and receive messages, files, images. It is possible that the technology is being applied in the “major overhaul” of MySpace that News Corp. has promised is coming within months.
MySpace has yet to disclose complete details of its revamp, but it seems messaging will be a key ingredient, along with content (including music) and a focus on user privacy to tempt people back from Facebook.
Threadbox had raised $2 million in funding, from backers including Venrock, Hillsven Capital and Seraph Group.