MSN, MySpace China to cooperate

When China Web2.0 Review announced a merger between MySpace China and MSN China, denials appeared very fast. Now, a new partnership between both companies has been announced, not a merger, but interesting enough.

MSN China takes outsourcing strategy to build its Chinese portal, it cooperates with dozens of partners to provide various content and services to its users. Content and service providers have to pay for several millions Yuan a year to be a partner. However, because of MSN’s heavy traffic and extensive user base among Chinese white collar, they still regard MSN China as an effective way to quickly expand their user base.

MySpace, MSN Spaces merge in China

The China Web2.0 review reports on a merger between slugging MySpace and MSN Live Spaces. The current MySpace CEO Luo Chuan, former CEO of MSN Live Spaces in China, will be heading the merged business.
The move comes after early reports about the lackluster start of Rupert Murdoch's MySpace in China. The first comments are carefully positive:

What we can expect from this merge? At least, the merge shows that Myspace China is almost entirely autonomous from Myspace to make its own strategy, which is a good start to compete in Chinese market.

One of the problems Yahoo and other US-based internet companies had was that they were too dependent on their US bosses and could not develop according to the requirements of the China market.

Update: The story has been denied later today by Luo Chuan. See the comment.

An IM-service call "ASAP"

Business Week reports on the troublesome start of MySpace in China. Rupert Murdoch's social network site faces much domestic competition and has not yet much localized content to offer. A telling "miscommunication":

On June 13, Luo Chuan, chief executive of MySpace China, told reporters in Shanghai that the new Chinese version of News Corp.'s (NWS) popular social-etworking site aims to launch an instant messaging (IM) service "as soon as possible." Local scribes took him at his word. The Chinese media began reporting that MySpace China was calling its new IM product "ASAP." MySpace China quickly issued a clarification explaining that the company had not actually decided on a name yet and cited a communication failure for the mistake.

ASAP would be an excellent name, illustrating the urgency IM has over e-mail. It would be an English word game, that is true.

Rupert's history in China

Rupert and Wendi

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and his China ventures are the center of a decent piece of history writing at the International Herald Tribune, originally at the New York Times. While thorough and comprehensive, it hardly does offer any new insights, so we wonder why his News Corp. decided not to cooperate with the NYT and issued this statement:

“News Corp. has consistently cooperated with The New York Times in its coverage of the company. However, the agenda for this unprecedented series is so blatantly designed to further the Times’s commercial self interests — by undermining a direct competitor poised to become an even more formidable competitor — that it would be reckless of us to participate in their malicious assault. Ironically, The Times, by using its news pages to advance its own corporate business agenda, is doing the precise thing they accuse us of doing without any evidence.”

I could not see directly what triggered off that reaction. Anybody else?

Murdoch: No lackey of China

Rupert Murdoch

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has for the first time defended himself publicly against accusations that his is frequently bending over to the Chinese government so safeguard his business interest. The defense comes after Murdoch's bid for the news organization Dow Jones met fierce resistance, amongst others from the Beijing office of the Wall Street Journal, owned by Dow Jones, who won this year's Pulitzer price.
In an interview with the Financial Times (here summerized by Market Watch) he looks back at two specific incidents.

Murdoch rebutted the two cases most frequently cited: the decision by publishing arm HarperCollins to drop publication of a memoir by Chris Patten, the former Hong Kong governor; and the move by Hong Kong-based Star TV satellite channel to stop broadcasting BBC news in China, according to the FT.

Murdoch said the initially thought Patten's book would not sell and got into an argument when editors at his publishing house went ahead anyway. He said he kicked off the BBC and others, because they were costing too much (US$ 10 million per year) on a broadcasting stations that was losing US$ per year.