Murdoch has made his first big online purchase, Intermix; the people behind the ever-growing myspace.com.
At a number of speeches recently Murdoch has spoken about the need to embrace the Internet, and has commented that the sections of his existing empire had not yet done this.
So far myspace.com has become a place for users to blog, chat, share music and pictures and do much more, so will the new owner make any changes? A quote from the NewsCorp press release seems to suggest that it might:
“Intermix brands, such as Myspace.com, are some of the Web’s hottest properties and resonate with the same audiences that are most attracted to Fox’s news, sports and entertainment offerings.”
I’m not sure where they figure that one from, but the singling out of Fox would suggest to me that they see some kind of link up potential here. To what degree? Fox banner ad’s? Fox headlines slapped across peoples blogs? Fox workers each having their own Myspace.com site? Who knows, but I’d be surprised if the place is left un-touched.
Saying that it is a big money spinner already and while Murdoch loves to push his own ideals he probably realises that a place like Myspace.com doesn’t work quite the same as a Newspaper/station (in the sense that content is not created by a centralised source but instead by the audience itself).
This may well just be NewsCorp buying into a successful company after the work is done so it can make some more money while also getting an easy foot in the online door, or this could just be a small expense to fool people into thinking that the company gives a crap about new media. One thing is for sure, this type of website is very different to anything else NewsCorp owns and is sure to be hard to control with the same rigidity.