A couple of days ago the Financial Times reported that MySpace was planning to go global, launching non-English localized versions of MySpace in 11 countries sometime this summer. Countries named at being potential targets included the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China and India. MySpace currently has around 75 million registered users (it increases by the second).
Will it work?
I personally think MySpace is going to have to battle tooth and nail for users in each country. Many countries already have local social networks that are growing in popularity by the day. As an example, a social network called Orkut is already hugely popular in Brazil. According to the New York Times, 11 million Brazilians have Orkut accounts. To put that in perspective, around 12 million Brazilians are believed to use the Internet from home. I suspect many of the countries MySpace is targeting will have competitors in place that have some degree of traction already.
The battle will be won by the network that quickly get the most users in each country, creating a situation where users have to be a certain social network because that is where all their friends are congregating online. Be interesting to watch what happens.
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