News Corp has acquired New York based religious community site Beliefnet, according to a report at FishbowlNY. Beliefnet was founded in 1999 and provides a service that offers commentary and community discussion on various religious beliefs. The company has a checkered history, having declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2002, then restructuring and emerging from bankruptcy in October the same year. According to earlier reports, around 70% of the sites traffic is related to Christian interests, with around 70% of users being females, and the most popular age group being 35 to 45. Beliefnet raised $7 million from Softbank Capital in 2005. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. In related news, a “source fimilar with the matter” has told Reuters that News Corp is not in negotiations to buy LinkedIn, rumors of which first surfaced on TechCrunch UK in November. The source claimed that News Corp was in talks with LinkedIn, but the two companies had been discussing future partnerships, not a takeover. With the Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal) acquisition being finalized a partnership between News Corp and LinkedIn would make a lot of sense; the premium business sites from Dow Jones provide a high-wealth business focused demographic that would sit well with LinkedIn’s business networking product. Update: sources at Fox Interactive are saying they know nothing about the deal; this isn’t to say that its not happening but it is a little strange. The site may have been purchased by another part of News Corp. Editor’s Update: More scrounging around has confirmed that the deal indeed is about to be officially announced. Editor’s Update 2: The deal is official. Beliefnet was bought by the Fox Entertainment Group, News Corp’s cable arm, to distribute content from its faith-based programming initiative and from its religious/spiritual book imprints Zondervanand HarperOne. Dan Fawcett, president of Fox Digital Media, did the deal. → Read More
Fox Interactive Media (FIM), the online arm of News Corp has plans to become a full service online advertising agency that provides advertising to non-News Corp sites. FIM President Peter Levinsohn told the audience at the Reuters Media Summit today that the advertising network is already in discussion with other News Corp sites for ad sales and that an expansion outside News Corp could come as soon as the first half of 2008, according to Reuters. Levinsohn said that the service, known internally as “FIM Serve” was originally built to serve advertising on MySpace, which would be presumed to be part of, or the same service announced by MySpace November 4. He also noted that the service focuses on graphical advertising and would not conflict with the Google/ MySpace search listings deal. It would however see News Corp go head to head with Google presuming that Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick is finalized. News Corp continues its push towards becoming the major online player behind Google; the company’s purchase of MySpace for $580 million in 2005 turned out to be the bargain of the century, particularly now that Facebook has been valued at $15 billion. News has purchased a range of online properties including IGN, Flecktor, Photobucket and Rotten Tomatoes amongst others, and was rumored by TechCrunch UK November 22 to be in talks to acquire business social networking site LinkedIn. That list excludes the already enormous traffic captured by News Corp’s online destinations of its vast media empire which will shortly include the Dow Jones company and the Wall Street Journal. We are not that far away from waking up and possibly seeing a world online where the competition is no longer Google vs Yahoo, but Google vs News Corp. Others have failed in challenging Google but so far News has bought wisely and in areas where it believes it can add value and provide synergies across existing properties, and its size and scope may well see it passing Yahoo shortly as Google’s main competition. CrunchBase Information Fox Interactive Media Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
NBC will start offering its top television shows as ad-supported downloads this fall (autumn) from the NBC Direct website. The announcement is a major setback for the NBC/ News Corp joint venture Hulu, which was originally set up to offer this very content. The announcement also follows on from NBC’s decision to discontinue offering its TV shows via iTunes by the end of the year. NewTeeVee reported that shows to be offered by the service include Heroes, The Office, Life, Bionic Woman, 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Initially the service will only include Windows Downloads; support for over devices, and Apple computers will be added lately. We can’t deadpool Hulu just yet, but thing just keeps going from bad to worse for a company initially dubbed ClownCo. → Read More
News Corp head Rupert Murdoch has said that he was “leaning toward” making the online Wall Street Journal free, but had not yet made a formal decision. The news comes after the New York Times dumped their pay-for-view service Monday. The Wall Street Journal currently charges $99 per year for full access to all content at wsj.com Murdoch rejected criticism that a free wsj.com would hurt the newspaper, saying that making the site available free would help boost viewership and revenue globally… ‘If you make it free, it will hurt the paper’ — I don’t think so,” (via Reuters) → Read More
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