Portals like those from Yahoo and Microsoft will fade in popularity as savvy users go directly to the content they want to view, publishing titan Rupert Murdoch said this week.
"Young people today -- who are the great users of the Internet -- know exactly what sites they want to go to and they go there," Murdoch said at a media investor conference Monday sponsored by Citibank NA. "They don’t have to go and work their way through Yahoo's home page or MSN's or someone else's."
The News Corp. chairman's prediction comes as the company plunges into online media after several years of sitting on the sidelines. He acknowledged criticism that his company was late to invest in the Internet, and said pressures of flat revenue from its traditional print media have been a wake-up call. Broadband access has only recently expanded, he noted, and Murdoch said his company avoided losing money several years ago on Internet projects.
News Corp. bolstered its online holdings last year with several acquisitions. It bought IGN Entertainment for $650, which ran a network of Web sites for gaming enthusiasts. Also brought into the fold were Intermix Media, which ran MySpace.com, for $580 million, and Scout Media, a publisher of Web sites and sports magazines.
The acquisitions sharply increased News Corp.'s online readership, and Murdoch said his content has the third highest number of paid views in the U.S., behind Yahoo and MSN but ahead of Google or eBay. He projected that News Corp.'s main sites, including sports and former IGN sites plus Myspace.com, will have revenues of $350 to $400 million by 2007.
Several improvements are planned for Myspace.com to make it "stickier," Murdoch said. This week the site will begin offering free video downloads. The company is also developing instant messaging technology, and voice capability is planned, he said.
Myspace.com has about 47 million users, representing a gold mine of data for targeted advertising, according to Murdoch. The site is growing by about one million users per week, he said.
Myspace.com will not develop into a traditional portal, centered on organizing content for users, Murdoch said. Rather, his company is bullish on building community, or "social networking," sites, where users build connections to friends, colleagues and their preferred content. "No one has done that before," he claimed.
This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.
Download now »
Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.
Download now »
The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.
Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation
Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.
Download now »
Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts
Recommend This
