MySpace Heads to Japan, Korean Portal Courting Google
According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a Japanese business newspaper, News Corp. and Japanese technology giant Softbank Corp. will participate in a 50-50 joint venture to launch MySpace Japan, which hopes to be the Godzilla to the nation’s local social networks, including Mixi Inc., currently the country’s biggest social network site. Shares of Mixi dropped 5% after the joint venture was announced.
Mixi, which began in 2004, currently has about 5 million users, which pales considerably to MySpace’s 100 million users worldwide, but some think that established local social network sites will make it difficult for MySpace to gain a strong foothold.
Government data indicates that there were about 7.16 million social network users in March of this year, and that figure is expected to increase to 7.51 million by March 2007.
MySpace Japan will first offer the standard services for personal computers, and looks to branch out into the mobile realm to enable users to post pictures and blog posts with their cell phones in the future.
The Japanese paper indicated that the joint venture will start with about $8.5 million in capital.
Softbank helped Yahoo! to launch Yahoo! Japan, which also offers an online social network.
On the other side of the Sea of Japan, South Korea’s second largest Internet portal, Daum Communications, is discussing a possible deal with Google and another U.S. company with the hopes of notching a pay-per-click (PPC) ad deal.
“We are in talks with Google and another U.S. company on establishing ties in the PPC market. Our partner could be decided by the end of this year,” an official at Daum said.
Google launched its Korean-language search engine site in 2000, but has failed to gather a strong following in South Korea, due to citizens’ preference for local resources.
Lee Jae-Woong, Daum president, indicated that the South Korean portal would keep its ears open to merger opportunities, but that nothing was currently on the table.
When the possible partnership was mentioned last Monday, October 30, shares of Daum jumped 9.28%. The company responded by saying that investors had reacted too strongly to the word “Google.”
Sources:
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=19580&hed=
MySpace+to+Open+Japan+Service
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=
businessNews&storyID=2006-11-06T084838Z_01_T173550_
RTRUKOC_0_US-TELECOMS-JAPAN-MYSPACE.xml
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061106/tc_afp/
skoreaitdaumgoogle
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/
200610/200610310024.html
