Would Nixon Take MySpace to China? Murdoch Is.

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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MySpace is apparently close to launching a MySpace.com venture in China.  Private equity firm IDG looks to be a partner and News Corp. (NWS-NYSE) is expected to own less than 50% of the venture.  The IDG-Accel China Growth Fund, managed by venture firmInternational Data Group Technology Venture Investment, willalso own a stake.

This would mark another huge win for Murdoch & Co, and it would make his acquisition of MySpace.com even a better win for the company.  There is one potential problem that will have to be overcome, and you can’t imagine how difficult it would be to monitor.  The regulation of media and free speech limitations imposed in China will probably be an ongoing battle and an ongoing issue.  Who is responsible if an anonymous poster on MySpace.com was making critical comments about human rights issues or about a local issue that is deemed sensitive?   Is it MySpace.com for having the conduit, or is it the poster?  The real winner will be the Chinese media partner, and you know investors and traders are hoping it is one of the public Chinese web companies.

Reuters ran a story on this early this morning and there are many other comments out there.  If this works out, you’ll know why Rupert Murdoch was deemed one of our highly entrenched CEO’s that you wouldn’t be able to get rid of no matter how hard you tried.

Jon C. Ogg
January 26, 2007

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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