MySpace Gives Up the Fight: Facebook Partnership Expected Shortly

Well, seems like that questionable logo design didn’t help anyone figure out a purpose for MySpace.

TechCrunch is reporting that in just a few minutes, MySpace CEO Mike Jones will announce a partnership with Facebook that’s closer to “a formal surrender ceremony.”

MySpace, which once defined social networking, has lost considerable ground to Facebook in recent years. Users followed their friends away from glitter gif encrusted profiles, to a more streamlined experience at Facebook. Under heavy pressure from parent company NewsCorp, MySpace has had something of a revolving door for CEOs after pushing co-founder Chris DeWolfe out. On a recent earnings call, NewsCorp announced that MySpace had “quarters, not years” to turn things around before facing the risk of being unloaded. {ClickZ}

Judging from today’s “partnership” announcement, which will let users login to MySpace via Facebook Connect and publish Facebook status updates to MySpace, they didn’t even get very many quarters.

MySpace’s success was largely tied to the music and entertainment acts who set up pages to connect with their fans, and that’s one area where Facebook’s cleaner, standardized look hasn’t always been able to compete. It hasn’t proven to be a detriment to growth though, as gaming companies have helped to satisfy the entertainment cravings of Facebook users, so there’s no question as to who will benefit most from this deal.

It doesn’t seem like it will be long before MySpace is relegated to Facebook Pages for Entertainment, but with a gun to their head, perhaps that’s really all that can be expected.