MySpace, the once-hot, now-not social networking site, will undergo a face-lift in response to Facebook and Twitter eroding its audience.

Owner News Corp. plans to turn the site into a gaming venue, one of the company’s executives told news services.

Jonathan Miller told a tech conference in Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday that games were the way to go now that Facebook had surpassed it in the number of visitors and Twitter had undermined its instant messaging market.

Market analyst comScore found in April that Facebook had more than 300 million visitors in April compared to MySpace’s 125 million or so during the same research period. Facebook first passed MySpace in number of users last October.

MySpace already lets users play games among themselves, and Facebook provides widgets for casual games on its site. But according to Miller, the idea of using games as a social networking medium hasn’t happened yet.

“None of the traditional media conglomerates are also significant video game players, so to speak,” Miller was quoted as saying to Reuters news service. “And I think that that’s the missing piece of the equation, particularly when you see how much time is spent playing games online.”

News Corp. is the parent for Fox TV and movies, as well as other media, but it has not yet jumped deeply into games. With a new emphasis on gaming through MySpace however, News Corp. could mine its TV and movie properties for unique gaming ideas.

Later, News Corp. could turn its gaming gains into collateral to purchase deals with Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony to include a MySpace portal on their console-only game networks.

Miller did not provide details regarding when and how MySpace would change. However, the folks at Facebook probably are raising glasses of bubbly today.