After the launch of MySpace Japan this week, News Corp is looking to China as its next big market. Rupert Murdoch said back in September that a move into China was on the cards, and that his Chinese-born wife, Wendi Deng, is helping to make the launch run smoothly. Today News Corp president and COO Peter Chernin also chimed in, saying on a conference call with analysts that they're looking for a Chinese partner for MySpace - he says they'll launch within a year if they can find a good match.
Interestingly, Chernin also mentioned that they're interested in buying applications that "work with MySpace", which I interpret as the ecosystem of MySpace layouts, slideshows, photo sites and other add-ons. Even so, he said it wasn't a "big hunt", and we're getting mixed messages from Chernin about whether they're going to buy or build these tools - he said in the past that they'd beat YouTube (MySpace Video is now in the lead when it comes to usage on MySpace pages), and that some of these sites are just feeding off MySpace's traffic.