News Corp. today agreed to acquire Intermix Media for approximately $580 million - a deal that would nearly double News Corp.'s web traffic to more than 45 million unique monthly visitors, reports Internet News. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

Intermix will become part of News Corp.'s new Fox Interactive Media unit. Under the transaction, News Corp. will acquire Intermix common stock at $12 a share in cash, writes the Los Angeles Times.

Intermix's best-known property is the social networking website MySpace.com, the fifth-ranked site in terms of pageviews, according to comScore - and the highest-ranking website in June in terms of ad impressions, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

In a separate deal, Intermix exercised its option to acquire the 47 percent of MySpace.com that it did not own. MySpace offers profiles, blogs, instant messaging, email, music downloads, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, chat rooms and user forums

"Intermix is an important acquisition for News Corp….providing an ideal foundation on which to meaningfully increase our Internet presence," News Corp.'s Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said in a statement.

In April, Murdoch told the American Society of Newspaper Editors, "The threat of losing print advertising dollars to online media is very real. In fact, it's already happening."

Last month, Intermix paid $7.5 million to settle charges with the state of New York, without admitting wrongdoing, that it installed spyware on users' computers.