This was brought up yesterday, with Rupert Murdoch acting all coy and saying it could be something he’d discuss when he visited Softbank — now it’s official. “The 50-50 joint venture MySpace KK will be run mostly separately from News Corp., the site’s New York-based parent company, the two companies said…Each company will invest 590 million yen ($5.09 million) in the new company, which adds to MySpace’s international operations in Britain, Germany, France, Australia and Ireland.” Softbank seems to have a strategy of partnering with big-name brands, Yahoo for an internet portal and now MySpace for a social networking site.
It’s probably also a very good move for MySpace. NYT has a piece on MySpace and how it’s having trouble in foreign markets because people don’t like the site. “People outside the United States already have different habits about socializing online…And many do so by using cellphones rather than computers.” Most of MySpace’s users are in the United States, and I think getting significant take-up overseas is going to be difficult, at least in those markets with a significantly different culture. And so it’s significant that Reuters is reporting Softbank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son as saying “Softbank will help add functions and services to MySpace that would meet the needs of Japanese users.” Softbank knows the Japanese market, to the extent that it seems to have turned around the ailing Vodafone business it bought, and it should be able to do something good for MySpace in Japan. It should also be noted that Softbank isn’t just mobile, it pretty much covers the telecommunications industry.
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