Claire Atkinson at Advertising Age Media Works writes in the “Watercooler” column that, since its July 2005 acquisition of MySpace, “the number of profiles on the social-networking site has zoomed to 130 million from 29 million in July 2005. Profile pages are growing globally at the pace of 8 million a month and are expected to hit 200 million by the end of 2006.”

Intermix Media sold MySpace.com to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $580 million. Atkinson asks:

What’s it worth now? (Cue Mike Myers’ Dr. Evil) SIX BILLION dollars. That kind of valuation makes YouTube’s Chad Hurley look like the Oliver Twist of new media.

This big-money estimate came from Murdoch himself, speaking this week as part of a Q&A session with Credit Suisse First Boston analyst William Drewry in Sydney, Australia. Other Wall Street analysts doubt the accuracy of that estimated value, but still pegged MySpace’s worth in the $3 billion to $4 billion range.

Additionally, we wonder how many of the 8 million new profiles/month are active MySpace users, how many are fuddy-dud businesses trying to be hip and cool, and how many are parents and teachers of adolescents and teens signing up to keep an eye on their kids’ online activities.