Google launched a new social network today with the Google+ Project, all but overshadowing news that the former king of the social network hill is about to be sold off to, as one report puts it, a “buyer you never heard of.”
The report comes from Kara Swisher at All Things D, who cites “sources close to the situation” as saying the price range for MySpace is somewhere between $20 million and $30 million, though others are putting it slightly higher at $35 million.
Swisher reports that Specific Media and Golden Gate Capital are the frontrunners for the acquisition, and that News Corp. hopes to unload the site by Thursday, which is the end of its fiscal year. The former is an ad network, and the latter is a private equity firm.
Earlier this month, News Corp.’s Head of Digital Media Jonathan MIller said that it would know something about the sale in two weeks, and it appears that he was just slightly off. The media conglomerate had reportedly been asking $100 million, but it doesn’t sound like that or anything close to it is going to happen.
To be honest, MySpace is making Google+ look really good today as it is still pushing the Nick Cannon “hijack” it was the day we covered Miller’s remarks, weeks ago.
Even still, MySpace.com had over 30 million unique visitors in the U.S. in May. The number continues to nosedive, however. It was over 67 million in May 2010, and even that was well after the MySpace train began to derail.
It sounds like we’ll have something more solid to report on in a couple days.
