The following is an excerpt from Erik Sherman | January 4, 2012 | cbsnews.com |
COMMENTARY It’s been a busy social network week for News Corp (NWS) CEO and chairman Rupert Murdoch. First, he joined Twitter. Then he piled up the controversy by tweeting, “Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!” And then he deleted that tweet.
However, even as Murdoch tried to catch up to the 21st century, the century caught up with him. News Corp-backed music downloading service Beyond Oblivion just shut down — even before it had a finished product, though the company still had enough time to chew up $87 million in investor money. It’s not surprising and shows a problem that many established companies have in dealing with new technology: Executive visions of the future need major corrective lenses.
Beyond Oblivion’s plan was to get flat-price music downloading tied to a single mobile device for the lifespan of that device. Putting money into the company — with its fate-tempting name — should have been an obviously bad idea to Murdoch and anyone else at News Corp for two main reasons:
To read more: cbsnews.com
