Photobucket, a popular site for storing, sharing, and publishing visual digital media, has concluded terms of a sale to Myspace, News Corporation's social network, according to the tech gossip rag Valleywag. If the deal is for real, it will be an interesting resolution to a quarrelsome but symbiotic relationship between the two companies.

After final negotiations at the end of last week, Photobucket has called an all-hands staff meeting for 10am PST this morning, according to Valleywag:

“Lehman Brothers — seeking a valuation over $300m for a venture that only made $6.3m in revenues last year — talked up the likelihood of a bidding war for Photobucket. But Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the parent of Myspace, was always the most likely buyer. And the jostling between the two companies — Myspace's bullying, and Photobucket's public protest — were always part of the negotiations.”

Photobucket, founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal, has thirty-three million users with an average two and a half million more joining monthly. The site is linking billions of personal photos, graphics, slideshows and videos daily to hundreds of thousands of web sites, including: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, eBay, Craigslist, Blogger and Xanga.

News Corp.’s stock was up 1.10% on Monday and the DMW100 Index was up 0.26%.

On a side note, Photobucket's CEO and Co-Founder Alex Welch is going to hold a key note address at Digital Media Wire and Potomac Tech Wire’s Digital Media Conference on June 22, 2007 in Washington DC.

Joakim Baage