MySpace up for sale from Wednesday, says corporate sibling

The Wall Street Journal's All Things D reckons that, given that nobody is showing much interest, the process of dumping MySpace into the marketplace will start midweek.

In any case, whoever buys Myspace needs a lot of patience, which seems to have run out at News Corp., where top execs take turns bashing it to shareholders.

That’s no surprise. After a laudable though glacial redesign as a music and entertainment hub last fall, traffic has declined 44 percent in a recent month from a year ago, to 37.7 million unique visitors in the U.S.

Worse still, the News Corp. unit that houses Myspace showed an operating loss of $156 million in the recent quarter, mostly related to a severe drop-off of advertising revenue at the site.

That plunge in fortunes will surely have an impact on the price buyers are willing to pay for the once iconic brand.

It's possible that the end result will be a partnership with NewsCorp - which is like having joint ownership of a hungry but unlovable dog which used to be a really cute puppy.

Or they'll just give the site to the first person to renew their Times digital subscription. Anything could happen.