News Corp. may start a Chinese MySpace

Murdoch’s wife in China to launch version of social networking site

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updated 9:28 p.m. ET Sept. 20, 2006

NEW YORK - Rupert Murdoch told an investor conference Tuesday that he didn’t see a need to distribute programming or other media content from his News Corp. conglomerate through Internet portals.

Murdoch, asked why he hadn’t made deal with large aggregators of online content like Yahoo Inc. or Microsoft Corp.’s MSN portal, said he didn’t see that strategy as necessary for building Internet traffic.

“We’re not sure the portal model is the way of the future at all,” Murdoch told a conference sponsored by Goldman Sachs. “We think people are going straight to the sites.”

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Murdoch, whose acquisition of the hugely popular social networking site MySpace.com has inspired envy among other media moguls, cited the example of Yahoo’s HotJobs employment site, but noted that Internet users might go to any number of other Web destinations that also carry job listings.

The Times newspaper in London, which is owned by News Corp., has a site that is far smaller than the BBC’s, Murdoch said, but he noted that it still has 6 million monthly visitors that didn’t necessarily have to get there through a portal site.

“I don’t think you have to say you have to go to Fox online to find The Times online,” Murdoch said. Fox is another News Corp. property.

Murdoch also said that since the Chinese advertising market is smaller than that in the United States, the Chinese version of MySpace would have to seek other ways of generating revenues. Murdoch’s Chinese-born wife Wendi Deng is in China helping with the launch, he said.