Myspace has time for Time

NEW YORK — Myspace still exists?

It does, and the company that owns the onceubiquitous social network is being bought by Time Inc. to help the magazine publisher target ads.

Time did not say Thursday what it paid. The publisher of People, Sports Illustrated and Time magazines was spun off from entertainment company Time Warner in 2014. It is facing a decline in print ad dollars.

Myspace’s parent company is Viant, which says it provides marketers with access to over 1.2 billion registered users. That’s the number of people who have signed in to Myspace since it was created in 2003.

Myspace peaked in 2008 with some 76 million U.S. visitors before losing ground to Facebook. News Corp. sold it in 2011 to Justin Timberlake and digital ad company Specific Media for $35 million, a fraction of News Corp.’s $580 million purchase.

Today, Myspace is an entertainment-focused site that plays music videos and songs. A Viant executive says the site gets about 20 million to 50 million unique views a month.

As a comparison, Facebook has more than a billion monthly active users.

Viant has used Myspace’s data files to attract marketers who want demographic information.

And Timberlake? Tim Vanderhook, Viant’s CEO, said the pop star has “been an equity owner the whole time” but declined to say whether he still is after the deal with Time.