] HipMojo.com » Rupert Murdoch Gets Last Laugh, Laughs All the Way to the Bank

Rupert Murdoch Gets Last Laugh, Laughs All the Way to the Bank

News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media decided to stop users from posting Photobucket videos onto their profiles.  MySpace, it should be noted, curses the day they allowed YouTube to grow their business on MySpace’s back.  That’s coming from Michael Barrett, Chief Revenue Officer at FIM.

Photobucket made this announcement on their blog, and we appreciate where they’re coming from, but they are misguided when they say this: “We believe that by limiting your ability to personalize your pages with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting the very belief of personal and social media.”  Anyone on the blogosphere that says FIM is the bad guy here is with all due respect forgetting the fact that Rupert Murdoch paid $580M for Intermix for MySpace, as I wrote previously, it’s not your space, it’s his space.  If you are unhappy, leave MySpace and make him pay.  If you choose to continue to live on MySpace, then yes, you have to play by his rules.

Don’t get me wrong, limiting the ability to personalize one’s page on a social network might indeed restrict the value of the social media to others, but it only makes sense for FIM to do this, because they helped YouTube grow, cash out, and now they have to play catchup with MySpace Videos.  As such, why on earth would they let another YouTube materialize?

I wonder what, if anything, this does to Photbucket’s price tag in a sale, which I think, like Metacafe, won’t materialize.  At least not at the $100M+ range it’s aiming for (their investment bankers wanted $400M - good luck).

Of course, a somewhat unrelated but interesting denouement: former FIM COO Mark Jung, who helped build IGN and sold it to News Corp. for $650M and then saw MySpace get all of the internal and media love, is now an investor and chairman of Clearspring, a widget management tool… which some people are rightfully/wrongfully arguing might become obsolete if sites like MySpace block.  Say what you want about the murky reasons as to Mark Jung left FIM, but could Mr. Murdoch be giving the old shaft to Mr. Jung without even realizing it?  Or does he realize it aplenty… who knows?

Disclosure: Mr. Jung was my indirect boss while I was employed by News Corp., and while I have nothing but respect and admiration for Misters Murdoch and Jung, I just can’t say it’s mutual…

UPDATE: Statement from FIM, found via GigaOm:

“MySpace allows its users to embed video, slide shows, and other features from third parties so long as they comply with our terms of service. Photobucket recently began running an ad-sponsored slideshow and encouraged users to post these ads in bulletins and profiles throughout the community. We spoke to the company about their actions, but they refused to respect our community’s terms and we had no choice but to disable their service. MySpace does not block third party embeds or services that abide by our terms of use. We support the freedom of expression and creativity of our community and must continue to protect the experience expected by our users.”

Again, FIM is actually reasonable here.  Revver tried the same thing.

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Posted By: Ashkan Karbasfrooshan | Apr 11th

One Response to “Rupert Murdoch Gets Last Laugh, Laughs All the Way to the Bank”

  1. MySpace to PhotoBucket: Buh-bye « TechFold Says:
    April 11th, 2007 at 10:59 am

    […] HipMojo suggests that FIM is trying to prevent the rise of the next YouTube and protect their own nascent MySpace Video product. […]

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