Bids are expected to be received for social networking site MySpace by the end of the week, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. News Corp, which acquired the site in 2005 for $580 billion, is said to be seeking bids of at least $100 billion for the site.
At least a half-dozen companies are said to be considering bids, including several equity firms and Criterion Capital Partners LLC, owners of social networking site Bebo. The structures of the deals are not known although it is said that some include News Corp retaining a small stake.
The news confirms comments made in January by CEO Mike Jones that the company was considering a sale. What interested parties plan to do with the site is unknown: it may continue to operate as it currently has or be merged into an existing property.
Video site Vevo has also been rumored to have shown interest although it is believed to have backed away from making a deal, the WSJ reports. Either way, it appears that News Corp is set to take a major hit on its now six-year-old investment -- a victim of the meteoric rise of Facebook.
As usage of that social networking site exploded, interest among consumers in MySpace waned. Last month it had 36.1 million unique visitors, half of what it had just a year before and its lowest traffic total since shortly after the merger occurred. Even an attempted refocus was not the solution to MySpace's woes.
That effort, announced in October, switched the focus away from social networking among friends and turned MySpace into an entertainment hub. So far, there has been little evidence that the change has stopped the site's slide into irrelevancy, unfortunately.
In related news, another social networking site is also exiting the business. Friendster announced this week that it would delete most profile information after May 31, as it looks to transition into a gaming site. The company was one of the pioneers in the social networking space when it first launched in 2002, but found itself first trumped by the rise of MySpace and then later by Facebook.
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