• The Wall Street Journal (by subscription), Friday, December 1, 2006 10:45 AM

It looks like News Corp. will get to bring MySpace to China after all. The media conglomerate is in the process of finalizing a deal with a Boston-based technology and former China Netcom Corp. CEO Edward Tian to create a MySpace China.

With its domestic growth slowing, entrance into China would be huge for News Corp. and MySpace. With nearly 200 million Internet users, China represents one of the Web's largest markets and the fastest-growing.

Still, there's no guarantee that Chinese Web users will take to MySpace. Regulating the site's content will be difficult, particularly as the company grows. News Corp. does very little to regulate MySpace as it is. One person close to the MySpace China deal said, "People are still trying to figure out if social networking can work as a business in China."

If the deal be finalized, it could be a major coup for News Corp. in its quest for international expansion. MySpace has already boosted international traffic by adding customized versions of the site to the UK, Ireland, Austria, Germany, France and Japan--some 79.8 million unique users worldwide, according to comScore Media Metrix. U.S. visitors still represent 66% of MySpace's traffic.

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