901am

New Media News Every Morning

MySpace for 30% of Yahoo?

By

Times Online (UK) reports that “News Corporation has discussed swapping MySpace, its internet social networking unit, with Yahoo! in return for a 30 per cent stake in the enlarged group.”

BloggingStocks is saying that this is a favorable deal for Rupert Murdoch and a questionable one for Yahoo.

If Murdoch could complete this deal, he would realize a 21x increase in the value of his $580 million investment back in the summer of 2005. Yahoo was worth $37 billion yesterday, 25% of which would be worth $12.3 billion. And the nice thing for Murdoch about getting stock would be that he would not need to pay tax on the gain until he cashed out the Yahoo shares.

But for Yahoo, the deal would be of questionable value. As Murdoch pointed out in a recent interview, Facebook is grabbing share from MySpace. From this comment, I infer that Murdoch is not eager to or does not know how to adapt MySpace to regain the competitive initiative. Moreover, Yahoo is so stressed out trying to compete with Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), that it will not be able to devote the resources needed to keep up with Facebook.

Editor’s question: If you’re Yahoo, would you go for this deal?

Originally posted on June 20, 2007 @ 10:18 am

MySpace officially launches beta version of IM service

By

MySpaceIMMySpace officially launches beta version of MySpaceIM, the social network’s instant messaging service. With over 17M MySpaceIM users all over the world to date, the beta service has been circulating in MySpace since its soft launch a year ago, growing more than 250% in the last 6 months.

“This is a product with personality,” said Tom Anderson, president and co-founder of MySpace. “MySpaceIM was born out of user feedback and we’ve spent the last year listening to our community and tweaking it to match their needs. MySpace will continue to build an open, unique feature set that’s as creative and expressive as our users.”

MySpaceIM can be downloaded directly to the user’s computer, allowing them to add their Myspace friends in one easy step. Aside from instant messaging, they can also use this to send comments, view friends’ videos and pictures and read blogs.

Originally posted on June 20, 2007 @ 9:06 am

Sony teams up with Myspace, launches Minisodes Network

By

The Minisode NetworkMyspace launches Sony Pictures Television‘s Minisode Network, featuring a bunch of classic TV shows condensed into 3-5 minute episodes available for viewing online.

These minisodes follow the same plot of the full TV show episodes from 15 classic series: Partridge Family, Starsky & Hutch, TJ Hooker, Charlie’s Angels, Diff’rent Strokes, Facts of Life, Silver Spoons, Who’s the Boss?, What’s Happening!!, Dilbert, Sheena, Fantasy Island, Police Woman, VIP and Ricki Lake.

“Now MySpace users can discover classic TV shows in a stylized, modern format,” said Chris DeWolfe, MySpace’s CEO. “Teaming with Sony to debut The Minisode Network exclusively on MySpace gives our millions of users yet another reason to make MySpace Video a daily destination.”

“This is exactly the kind of content that resonates with our audience,” said Jeff Berman, MySpace’s general manager of video. “We’re turning old school TV dinners into Internet video snacks and I think MySpace viewers will eat it up.”

Honda signed as the Minisode Network’s exclusive sponsor to launch. You can view The Minisodes Network at www.myspace.com/minisodesnetwork.

Originally posted on June 20, 2007 @ 7:59 am