Myspace, News Corp | featured news

MySpace, bought by the News Corporation six years ago for $580 million, has been sold to Specific Media for about $35 million, two executives with knowledge of the sale said Wednesday.

News Corp.'s talks to sell most of Myspace have narrowed to two leading bidders, the ad-targeting firm Specific Media and Golden Gate Capital. Any deal would include hundreds of job cuts at the struggling social-networking website.

An investor group has emerged as a frontrunner in negotiations with News Corp. to take control of Myspace, as the media company rushes to complete a transaction by June 30.

Most Internet analysts suggest that MySpace fell from grace because it crumbled in the face of stiff competition from Facebook. But a Reuters report suggests that it may have been Google that dealt the fatal blow by accident as long ago as 2006.

News Corp. isn’t ready to pull the plug on MySpace just yet, but it is prepared to cut the cord. CEO Mike Jones told employees yesterday that the media conglomerate is “exploring strategic options” for the past-its-prime social network. That could mean a sale, a merger (Yahoo could be a candidate) or a spinoff. The last scenario is the most likely, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Long-rumored layoffs at News Corp.'s Myspace social-networking site will be announced Tuesday. More than 500 jobs are expected to be cut.

The category of News Corp's business that includes MySpace lost $174 million in the fourth quarter, worse than the $136 million it lost in the same period last year, the parent company said on its earnings call this morning.

The social networking site plans to return to its roots by pushing entertainment content and jettisoning portal-like features. In a last-ditch effort to revive struggling MySpace, owner News Corp. has adopted a new strategy that it hopes will give the site's millions of users a reason to keep coming back.

The MySpace social media network’s traffic has dropped so much that it will fail to satisfy a minimum traffic level crucial to parent company News Corp’s three-year $900 million advertising deal with Google, inked in 2006, that made Google the exclusive search advertiser on MySpace — then the world’s most popular social network.