Big news in terms of the expansion of social networking empire MySpace beyond US borders. Japanese company Softbank, which owns Yahoo Japan and Vodafone Japan (branded as Softbank), has partnered with News Corp’s Fox Interactive, the parent company of MySpace.com, to launch MySpace Japan.
MySpace Japan will be a 50-50 venture between Fox and Softbank, which will concentrate on both mobile and web versions of MySpace Japan networking and blogging.
Japanese business newspaper Nihon Keizai reports that the venture is expected to be formally announced this week.
Social networking and social blogging is very hot in Japan right now, especially with Yahoo Japan and Mixi, a Japan based invite only social networking site.
This does raise a rather large question; will MySpace Japan use Yahoo Search to power its search engine and Overture Japan for search & contextual advertising?
It will be quite exciting to see how Softbank spins Yahoo Japan and Vodafone into the MySpace mix.
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Update : The Japanese Cameron Diaz Softbank / Yahoo Commercial:
Wow! Sayonara Mixi!
Both Yahoo! and Softbank do a LOT of traditional advertising in Japan. Every train station has lots of signs, billboards and other ads everywhere. Cameron Diaz is featured in Softbank TV commercials as well as billboards. I would be very surprised if they didn’t do a big traditional ad campaign to launch the new service.
Yeah Dave, the Cameron Diaz Softbank commercials are amazing. I could totally see a tie-in and even new Softbank customers encouraged to create their MySpace Japan profile while purchasing their phone plan in the Softbank shops.
I have seen the Cameron Diaz Softbank commercials as well and they are incredible.
I’ve updated the posts with one of the Cameron Diaz Softbank / Yahoo commercials, courtesy of YouTube.
have you got any myspace proxyies for this stupid school??
thanks :)