It’s the end of an era. This week Friendster announced that it’s finally giving up the ghost and will delete user photos and blog posts as it is shoved into the sepulture of old ventures. Now the owner of MySpace, News Corp, is seeking to auction off the site to the highest bidder to get it off their books. This doesn’t mean that the once flourishingly popular social networking site that’s well-known as the ghetto of the Internet is dying, but in light of the fall of Friendster it does raise questions about its future.

According to an article at ReadWriteWeb, the bidding starts at $100 million,

News Corp bought the one-time social media titan in 2005 for $580 million and it has been bleeding money for several years. The move by News Corp to accept bids is akin to a sports franchise that tries to trade an underperforming player to get some nominal value before it has to just cut its losses and release him from the team.

According to Reuters some of the bids are likely to come from Chinese Internet holding company Tencent; Criterion Capital, which is the owner of social networking site Bebo; and Myspace co-founder Chris De Wolf, among others. Back in February we reported that social networking and gaming platform MocoSpace was interested in Myspace but it looks like not much came out of those talks.

The ground started to shake for MySpace last year when it was discovered the site might be laying off workers as its userbase fell in significance against rivals like Facebook and Twitter. Then, January 2011 rolled around, and MySpace ended up making the aforementioned layoffs to the tune of 600 employees—about half their total staff. In February, MySpace cost News Corp $275 million in restructuring costs; however, that shot-in-the-arm apparently didn’t manage to put the ailing social networking site back on its feet.

As reported by ReadWriteWeb, there were rumors that social gaming company MocoSpace was interested in MySpace; but after several announcements on both sides, it turned out to be the industry jumping at shadows. As it’s been said before, MocoSpace and MySpace together do make a lot of sense when it comes to mobile gaming and community. As it’s always been fairly popular with teen culture and a great deal of apparent casual gamers, MySpace could still find its own through driving some of its in-site games to mobile. Facebook has certainly become a powerhouse in a very similar fashion and it attracts a far more mature and erudite crowd.

The timing of News Corp taking bids on MySpace in the light of Friendster’s falling star certainly does not bode well for the future of the social networking site. Unlike Friendster, however, Myspace maintains a certain amount of popularity—even if Twitter has surpassed it as the 3^rd most trafficked social media platform—it’s still way up there in the social consciousness of the Internet and for traffic in general.

Whatever company happens to take Myspace off of News Corp’s hands will have to keep this in mind when they look to growing the social networking site or build it into something that can survive in the post 2000’s era.