Tokyo Friendfinder
News Corp. launched a Japanese version of its MySpace social networking service Monday.
The site, which has grown to become one of the most popular destinations on the English-language Internet, is already available in national versions for Australia, France, Germany, Ireland and the U.K. The Japanese service becomes the sixth national version and fourth language version of the service.
MySpace Japan will be operated as a joint-venture between News Corp. and Softbank, according to a report in the Monday morning edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper. The two companies did not offer any comment on the newspaper report. Softbank is a large Internet and communications conglomerate in Japan and its operations include Yahoo Japan, number-three cellphone operator Softbank Mobile and the Yahoo BB broadband provider.
The service will go up against a number of competitors, chief of which is Mixi, which claims around 6 million members. The company behind the site, Mixi Inc., debuted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in mid-September. Shares were priced at ¥1.55 million (US$13,166) each and ended their first full day of trading at more than double that price. The price has come down since then but is still above the IPO price. On Monday they closed at ¥2.14 million.
— Martyn Williams
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04:52 PM 
Mark Hiratsuka •
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