Obviously most every site relies on Facebook for traffic but in the case of MySpace a whopping 18% of the traffic comes from Facebook – the top upstream site in-fact according to Alexa. The next highest referral sites are Google at 14% and Yahoo at 5.5% making Facebook a crucial resource for MySpace in terms of traffic. What may be worse for MySpace is that once people are done visiting a MySpace page, Facebook is the #1 site they visit – 18.66% of the time in fact. The next highest site is Google at 13% and YouTube at 6%. See the Downstream Sites chart below to the right for more.

The company is taking a beating from Facebook in virtually every way and the graph of daily reach (farther below) of both Facebook and MySpace tells the story quite well. These lines show the global percentage of users who visit each site and Facebook is at around 38% while Myspace is hovering around 2%.

It’s worth pointing out MySpace still has an enviable position as the 46^th highest ranking site in the world. Still, negative press and departures of key execs paint a poor picture for the company under current management and a rumored sale is all the rage right online.

The most logical acquirer may in fact be Zynga the maker of FarmVille and CityVille – two mega-popular social networking games who make Facebook even more sticky. Another is Baidu – the “Google of China.” Then there is Microsoft, Yahoo and some combination of Twitter, MySpace and maybe even Skype rolled-up under into a single company – or at least to be owned by a single investment fund.

One has to wonder if Larry Ellison, Marc Benioff, Steve Jobs and John Chambers aren’t looking at this opportunity as a way of expanding their businesses. I get the sense the Feds wouldn’t be too happy if Google picks the company up but with Facebook growing so quickly it is unclear what their decision would be.

The good news for adrenaline junkies is it looks like tech in 2011 will be rocking and rolling like it’s done in 2010 – things will not be slowing down and it’s an eat or get eaten world. There will be lots of exciting times ahead and lots of opportunity. For now it seems Facebook is on top of the world and one can only assume the social networking juggernaut will continue to climb in the face of one of its largest rivals repeatedly hitting a brick wall.