Is MySpace For Sale?

Want to buy MySpace? Do you even remember MySpace?

If a Wall Street Journal blog that appeared today is to be believed, MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., and its chief, Rupert Murdoch, may soon to be on the block. News Corp. COO Chase Carey told the Wall Street Journal that the company is “open to all options for Myspace pending an overhaul of the struggling social-networking website.”

“Struggling” is certainly the word for it. The once popular site has fallen to its knees in front of its larger, better run and more profitable competitor Facebook. At this point, MySpace has tried to carve a small niche for itself, functioning largely as a place where young people (the site's demographics are much younger than those of Facebook) can share music, video and games. The site saw 58.1 million unique visitors in October of this year, which is down almost 10 percent from the same period last year, said comScore, Inc. Advertising spending on MySpace is has been predicted to decline 37 percent this year to $347 million, according to research firm eMarketer.

“There are opportunities here to do 20 things [with MySpace] but that doesn’t mean you’re going to do any of the 20. If there’s something there that makes sense you ought to think about it,” Carey said at the Reuters Global Media Summit conference yesterday when asked whether the site was up for sale.

Granted, the response doesn't exactly affirm that MySpace will be sold, but it also doesn't sound like News Corp. has a lot of enthusiasm for the site. On a recent earnings call, Carey stated that MySpace’s losses are “not acceptable or sustainable” and that “We need to make real headway in the coming quarters to get this business to a sustainable level.”