Rupert Murdoch has spent just over $770 million to snap up the internet site Myspace.com (here) In typical Murdoch style, it’s a complex deal: News is buying a company called Intermix Media Inc. Intermix in turn has exercised an option to acquire the 47% of Myspace.com that it doesn’t already own. Another shareholder will vote their stake in favour of the News deal.

Myspace is the sort of site Rupe might’ve been told about but it’s doubtful he would have come across it in his time at a computer. James might have been a visitor though, and Lachie as well – they’re in the right demographic for its mix of blogging, chatrooms, social networking, music, entertainment and lifestyle sites.

We understand that Intermix is a group of websites that incorporate social networking (online dating and relationship building), self publishing (blogs, creative) and viral marketing tools. The key Intermix property is MySpace.com, which generates of 6.5m page views a month, ranking it ahead of Google and just behind Hotmail on this metric.

What’s less clear is what sort of money it makes and what sort of revenues it generates. There wasn’t much in the News statement. Myspace is supposed to be fifth in the ranking of page views in US and in June. Rupe says Myspace had 8% of all ads on the internet! 27 million unique visitors are said to visit each month and after the purchase News Ltd’s total number of unique visitors will reach 45 million a month.

We can depend on News to start pushing the brand across the empire, so stand by for some strong marketing in the local Murdoch papers.