MySpace bought for mere £22m by Justin Timberlake and pals

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has finally had enough of the ailing MySpace social network and flogged it for a mere $35m (£22m). Who to? Why, Justin Timberlake and a small ad agency, of course.

News Corp bought MySpace for $580m (£362m) in 2005. Now, we're no financial experts, but we're pretty sure that old Murdoch's made a pretty substantial loss there.

MySpace was once king of the social-networking realm, with an estimated 300 million active users between 2006 and 2008, all of whom thoroughly enjoyed slapping annoying, flashing graphics onto their profile pages.

Once the Facebook craze kicked in, however, active-user figures gradually dropped until they reached today's miserable figure of around 35 million. MySpace has also had to cut its staff down from more than 1,400 to around 250 at the moment. At least that'll make the Christmas party cheaper.

Of late, MySpace has become even more focused on music than it was before. Now Timberlake and ad agency Specific Media hope to bring sexy back to the site.

"There's a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favourite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect," Timberlake said in a statement. "MySpace has the potential to be that place."

We wish Timberlake and MySpace good luck, but we can't help feeling that they're fighting a battle that's already been lost. MySpace's recent figures speak for themselves and social giant Facebook isn't going to let its users leave without a fight.

Mind you, at least MySpace is beating Google+ at the moment, even if Google's new social-networking site has just been unveiled.