By: MySpace and Japan's Softbank Corp. announced plans Tuesday for a 50-50 joint venture to bring the popular Internet social networking site to Asia.
MySpace KK will be run mostly separately from its U.S.-based parent company, the two companies said in a release. The announcement confirms an earlier report carried by Japan's Nihon Keizai newspaper.
Each company will invest 590 million yen ($5.09 million) in the new company, which adds to MySpace's international operations in Britain, Germany, France, Australia and Ireland.
The new venture comes amid rapid growth in Japan's social networking sites, which are thought to have more than 10 million users, the Nihon Keizai said. Softbank subsidiary Yahoo Japan Corp. provides social networking sites, but Softbank has not involved itself in the sites' operations.
Softbank is Yahoo Japan's largest stockholder, with 41.9 percent of the company's shares. Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo Inc. owns 33.4 percent.
MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which took over the Internet business in 2005 when it bought Los Angeles-based Intermix Media Inc. for $580 million.
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