For this, Anderson will earn $500,000 a year for two years, Business Insider hears. He also needs to be an "ambassador," for MySpace, which sounds very much like a non-job:

As a part of the deal, [MySpace CEO] Owen [Van Natta] and new News Corp digital media boss Jon Miller asked Tom to stop coming to the office..."He'll have little decision or involvement with the product," says a source.

Of course, Anderson will continue to be everyone's default MySpace friend and will presumably continue to show up for all kinds of exciting parties. He's just not getting tens of millions of dollars for it anymore, having been demoted to six figures, and won't be mucking with MySpace's "strategy" of being a zombie social network. An economy like this requires certain sacrifices.

The official story will be that Jon Miller, the new broom from AOL, has swept aside MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and his team. But as always, Murdoch alone rules News Corp. And the decision must have been his.

Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, is the chair of MySpace China, and that professional relationship has spurred dangerous gossip which can't have helped DeWolfe's standing.

Four years after he bought MySpace, Murdoch has finally rid MySpace of the spammers and scammers who launched it. It is far past time — and yet probably the right moment. Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin's book, Stealing MySpace, has exposed MySpace's roots in porn, spam, and hacking. As the economic tide that boosted MySpace's advertising sales has receded, DeWolfe has been shown to be swimming naked. And Miller, as News Corp.'s newest Internet executive and the latest to have won Murdoch's ear, is in prime position to push out DeWolfe, whose contract expires this fall. (Just one question: If DeWolfe sidekick Tom Anderson is ousted, who will become every MySpace user's default first friend?)

DeWolfe always seemed more interested in throwing parties and dating celebrities than solving MySpace's hard problems. Growth has stagnated for the past year as Facebook has surged. The site's interface remains a shambolic wreck which fails at the most basic tasks, like remembering a user's login. Talented engineers, including COO Amit Kapur, have defected. Slingshot Labs, a MySpace spinoff meant to foster Silicon Valley-style innovation, is an industry laughingstock for launching a me-too celebrity gossip site rather than chasing genuinely new technologies. Given all this, it's possible that DeWolfe's friendship with Deng was the only thing that helped him last so long.

What now for the site? News Corp. is reportedly recruiting a new CEO already. Former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta would be an excellent choice, if he can be wrested away from the music startup he's currently running. Or the company might place an internal candidate from the News Corp. empire, to provide the closer eye MySpace has long needed.

Ah, but those are tiresomely sensible choices. Here are two that would maximize the Murdoch family drama everyone loves: Install prodigal son Lachlan Murdoch. Or put Deng in charge.

Rupert Murdoch's media empire, which stretches from MySpace to Fox to the Wall Street Journal and around the globe, is in turmoil after the departure of longtime COO Peter Chernin. Along with newspapers, TV shows, and websites, Murdochland manufactures drama and gossip. Here's what's been filtering out.

The expiration of two lucrative deals are setting a clock on DeWolfe's career. The first is his own employment contract, which he signed in 2007, along with his cohort Tom Anderson, for a reported $30 million over two years.

The second is a $900 million search-advertising deal with Google, which ends in 2010 and which all observers agree is unlikely to be renewed on the same rich terms. On top of that, MySpace's user growth has stalled out, as rival Facebook looks set to grow to twice its size this year. Without those guaranteed revenues from Google, DeWolfe will have a tough time meeting News Corp.'s demands for better earnings. That has led Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield to predict big layoffs at MySpace.

Amidst this backdrop comes Wall Street Journal editor Julia Angwin's Stealing MySpace. Most of the stories it tells, like Anderson's ties to an online porn business called TeamAsian.com and DeWolfe's creation of a spam empire, have been reported elsewhere (well, here, to be precise). But their appearance in an authoritative book written by a News Corp. employee gives them fresh currency.

The book surely delights DeWolfe's many enemies within News Corp., who may be behind the vicious (and apparently untrue) rumor of a dalliance with Wendi Deng, Murdoch's wife.

So how is Murdoch setting things up for DeWolfe's possible ouster? One perpetual source of friction has been MySpace's autonomous role within Fox Interactive Media, News Corp.'s internet unit which houses a collection of forgettably schlocky websites like IGN and Rotten Tomatoes. Peter Levinsohn, a longtime Fox executive, oversees FIM and MySpace.

One reshuffle scenario we've heard: Levinsohn heads back to the Fox TV and movies business, whose leadership was jumbled up after Chernin's departure. (Rumor has it that an overworked Murdoch has been reduced to setting Fox TV's primetime schedule himself.)

Fox Interactive Media would then be cleaved in twain, with MySpace running on its own under DeWolfe — for now — and darkly mordant Internet wunderkind Jeremy Philips, currently in an amorphous strategy role, taking over the grab-bag of other websites. That would put him in a position to take over MySpace if DeWolfe bolts.

That's just one scenario, which has already gathered doubters. (If Philips has not gathered as many detractors as DeWolfe, it is only because he is not as well known.) But the unsettled leadership would certainly explain a mystery about MySpace's layoffs: Why they haven't happened yet. We've been hearing rumors of impending layoffs since last June, but instead, MySpace has just made minor cuts. The company's expensive, showy San Francisco outpost ought to be on the chopping block, but it's still open. Perhaps a soft-hearted DeWolfe is hoping to push back layoffs until after he's gone?

• Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China
• Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace
• Max Levchin, Slide
• Robin Li, Baidu
• Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
• Elon Musk, SpaceX
• Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike
• Mika Salmi, MTV
• Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh
• Quincy Smith, CBS
• Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
• Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital
• Evan Williams, Twitter
• Andrew Zolli, PopTech

DeWolfe and his MySpace cohort, Tom Anderson, renewed their contracts last fall with News Corp. last year for $15 million apiece, spread over two years. Paying that amount has, FIM executives believe, left nothing for them. "They're pissed," says our tipster.

Then again, do these puffed-up Fox executives deserve much more than they're getting? Pop quiz: Name a Fox Interactive property other than MySpace.

"I think Silicon Valley is the most exciting place in the world right now," says Murdoch, DeWolfe's boss for another two years.

"Looking back, it looks like you got a pretty good deal," observes Battelle. "What did you see?" he asks Murdoch. "Was it like, 'I hope this one works out,' or did you think you'd be sitting on a red couch at Web 2.0 two years out?"

"We thought there was a real opportunity, and [asked ourselves], 'What do we have to pay to shut the doors?'" replies Murdoch. "We never imagined it would do this well."

Murdoch says that Fox Interactive Media, the unit of which MySpace is the biggest part, could cross $750 to $800 million in revenues next year. And there's a hint, in the back-and-forth, that the rumored earnout provision in DeWolfe and Anderson's contract might be tied to MySpace and the rest of FIM hitting a target of $1 billion in revenues.

DeWolfe and Murdoch make nice-nice comments about Google, which has a $900 million contract to provide search and ads on MySpace. Battelle keeps probing them. It's almost like he wants Murdoch to call Google a "frenemy," but, alas, the wizened, megarich News Corp. mogul settles for "threat and friend." (Google executive Megan Smith, recently locked in negotiations with MySpace rival Facebook, sat next to DeWolfe at the dinner before the interview.)

Confirming Valleywag's scoop that the MySpace platform would not be ready for today, DeWolfe says that the company is, as we reported, compiling a directory of third-party widgets currently used on the site's profiles.

Battelle asks Murdoch, "What do you think of Facebook?" A pause. "I think it's pretty cool," says Murdoch. "It's more of a utility.... In spite of the hype, we seem to be growing faster."

"Is that a reference to the September ComScore numbers?" asks Battelle. (ComScore, controversially, showed a drop in Facebook's traffic last month.) "Yes," says Murdoch. A pause. "I love that Rupert Murdoch is referencing ComScore Internet numbers. I don't know why, but I love it."

Is MySpace a portal? "We're more like a connectivity engine," says DeWolfe. Apparently that's better than being a "utility."

Battelle asks Murdoch about the acquisition of Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal. "Well, I haven't paid for it yet," says Murdoch, alluding to the deal's expected closure in December. "Are you going to kill the New York Times?" asks Battelle. "That'd be nice," says Murdoch. Murdoch then says CNBC, rival to News Corp's newly launched Fox Business Network as "half-dead" — and then retracts the observation, noting that CNBC's still making hundreds of millions of dollars. As for FBN's future, "I'll stick with it for at least a few years."

Murdoch talks acquisitions for a bit, grousing that everything's too expensive and he doesn't want to pay 30 times earnings. He sounds like an old man complaining about the menu prices in a restaurant. DeWolfe talks a bit about the acquisition of SDC, an ad-targeting startup, and Photobucket, whose purchase Valleywag reported exclusively.

Intrepid special correspondent Paul Boutin steps up to the microphone and asks Murdoch, "With all the deals you do, how do you know when the price is right?"

"I don't," says Murdoch. "I just hope." More will be said, but for that, Murdoch deserves the last word.

Rumor has it that News Corp. COO Peter Chernin was against bringing Anderson and DeWolfe back. Good to know someone within Rupert Murdoch's empire is capable of reading a traffic chart.

(Photo by AP)

What BusinessWeek should have focused on is Eisner's attempt to ride the MySpace wave with his Web-only production company Vuguru. Its first show, Prom Queen, which was distributed over the social network, is considered a mild success — landing sponsors like the Hairspray remake, Verizon, and Elle Girl. What would make sense is the exact opposite of what BusinessWeek proposes. Instead of ransacking trading-card licensees for online-video ideas, Eisner should think about using Topps to print trading cards for the MySpace set. We can't wait to see the Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe cards.

You are e-mailing Customer Service, not Tom [MySpace]