Hey, I love the Interweb as much as anyone, and how it makes it easy for people who feel they’ve been wronged to take their story to the people, etc. etc., but seriously — why would anyone in their right mind believe Brad Greenspan, who claims to be the rightful founder of MySpace, when he says that other executives conspired to defraud shareholders of $20-billion when they sold the company to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.?
Maybe if Brad had picked a slightly less ridiculous number, like say, $2-billion it would have been easier to buy into his story, which comes complete with detailed accusations against Richard Rosenblatt of Intermix Media — the company that bought another company that later morphed into MySpace, if you remember the tale that freelance writer Trent Lepinski told awhile back (the one that he said he was ready to publish until News Corp. allegedly put some heat on).
Brad’s story is that Rosenblatt and others conspired to keep the real information about MySpace’s phenomenal growth away from shareholders so that they would only think the company was worth half a billion dollars instead of $20-billion, which he keeps saying is the company’s real value, without really providing any coherent argument other than a phenomenal growth rate (and a reference to analysts like Jordan Rohan of RBC). Joe at Techdirt makes the same point.
Oh yes, and he has some totally incriminating emails from Rosenblatt, in which he says he thinks MySpace will be worth $20-billion some day. I guess that proves it then. If I email someone and tell them my house will be worth $8-million some day, can I then sue the guy who bought it because he only paid me $500,000? As my friend Rob likes to say, Brad should put down the bong. Here’s some more background on Brad and his various grievances, and details on why he was forced out of Intermix here.