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LookSmart, a San Francisco-based online-ad company, signed a long-term deal on a South of Market office building in its 1999 dotcom heyday. Since then, it has struggled to fill the brick fortress located at 2nd and Brannan. The first answer was to set up the empty space into a startup incubator, attracting tenants with bubbly names like Mashery, Twistage, and LicketyShip. But it appears those startups are about to lose their space. As rumored, the San Francisco office of MySpace will be heading into the building, and LookSmart is using the chance to shuffle the startups out. A tipster tells us:

Everyone has to be gone by 11/14 to make room for Murdoch's crew. Startups are scrambling for new homes. LookSmart is "restructuring/downsizing" and moving into the space the startups were in, while MySpace will move into the posh digs LookSmart previously occupied.

But there might be another reason why Looksmart wants to kick out the startups:

Funny enough, as LookSmart downsizes, all the startups are growing. LookSmart employees looking to jump ship are being snatched up left and right by the startups on our floor. Easy enough for them, they only have to move their stuff down a flight of stairs ;)

With LookSmart's atrocious earnings report and a recent trend of selling off pieces of the company (like yesterday's all-cash sale of FindArticles to CNET), we don't blame LookSmart employees for jumping to up-and-coming businesses. Perhaps the LookSmart execs think that Rupert Murdoch won't be as likely to poach whoever's left. Ha!