News Corp.'s MySpace.com plans to tap Microsoft, Google or Yahoo to provide its search-based advertising and plans to solicit bids from them, reports Reuters. (Google receives a plurality of its traffic - e.g., 8.2 percent for the week ended May 6 - from social-networking site MySpace, according to Hitwise data.) "We will auction off our search business to Google, Yahoo, or MSN," News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin said at a Deutsche Bank Media & Telecom conference broadcast online.

Despite being the second most popular website, with about 85 million members, MySpace has not yet exploited advertising opportunities. And as a social-networking site, it's being viewed as a testing ground for monetizing the recently emerged online phenomenon.

Some 80 percent of MySpaces advertising sales come from remnant sales - bulk sales of unused inventory - and about 20 percent comes from display ads, which cost 7-8 time more; Chernin said he expects MySpace to eventually reverse that ratio.