The move comes a week after the company formed a new internet division called Fox Interactive Media to manage its web sites and generate new revenues. As part of the agreement, Intermix Media’s lifestyle portal MySpace.com and its other 30 sites, including flowgo.com, will become part of this new unit.
News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch said the Intermix online entertainment network will appeal to the same audiences that are attracted to its own offerings, such as The Sun and The Times newspapers and 20th Century Fox film studios. The firm is also hopeful that the acquisition will double its US web traffic to over 45 million users a month.
Intermix is an important acquisition for News Corp, instantly doubling the number of visitors to our sites and providing an ideal foundation on which to meaningfully increase our internet presence, said News Corporation’s CEO Rupert Murdoch. We see a great opportunity to combine the popularity of Intermix’s sites, particularly MySpace, with our existing online assets to provide a richer experience for today’s internet users.
The main attraction of Intermix is its MySpace.com site, which offers social networking features such as chat rooms, music sharing and blogs. It is thought the portal will enable News Corp to dip into the online advertising market, which has increased of late with various acquisitions by advertisers looking to exploit the potential for extra revenue. Media companies like News Corp have also begun to get tin on the act, with Time Warner buying online marketing firm Advertising.com last summer and the New York Times Company acquiring About.com, a research site.
