Less than a month after it announced its disbandment, notorious hacking group LulzSec returned on Monday to strike the website of the Sun, a UK paper owned by media (and phone hacking) baron Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. You can read more about Lulz Security’s latest caper after the jump.
It's official, News Corp. sold MySpace to advertising network Specific Media for around $35 million, and Rupert Murdoch can finally move on. That's far below the $100 million asking price, and even though News Corp. retains a less than five percent stake, if you crunch the numbers, like Arstechnica did, you come to the conclusion that Murdoch and Co. lost over $1 billion on this deal. How can that be when News Corp. bought the social networking site for $580 million?
We might finally be nearing the end of a grueling MySpace sale. News Corp started entertaining take over bids months ago, but no one wanted to pay the $100 million asking price for the faltering social network. As with all things, the true value of MySpace may have found its equilibrium at a rumored price of $30 million. The buyer is said to be a company you’ve never heard of, and likely won’t remember tomorrow.
As you are no doubt aware, MySpace has more or less fallen off most people’s radar. The once great site, acquired by News Corp in 2005, has been on the auction block for several months. The sticking point? No one seems to want it very much.
Frankly, if someone had told us that MySpace was just going to be shuttered, we would not have been surprised. But it looks like the sale is going ahead and bids from no fewer than half a dozen potential suitors are expected this week. If that wasn't shocking enough, the value News Corp. insists on getting out of the faltering social site is something else. 
It was just a few years ago in 2008 that MySpace was on the top of their game, pulling in $900 million in revenue. A year later, management started leaving as page views dipped. Now MySpace is up for sale, and the pitch book for prospective buyers has been leaked. It paints a pretty grim picture of the once great site's future. 
New numbers from Comscore indicate the demise of MySpace is happening faster than most had expected. Between January and February 2011, MySpace lost 14.4% of its monthly users. In raw numbers, that's a drop to 63 million from 73 million. They had twice this many users a year ago.
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