MySpace France : dial fr for Murdoch

MySpace France opened their beta version on the web*. Un-translated US banners feebly try to animate an almost empty shell but you can count on Fox Interactive Media for tying a few knots with local media partners.
In France, Murdoch's blog machine cannot leverage on a strong News Corp presence and worse, it will face a strong leader with a rather newscorpish look and feel : Skyblog sounds like a Sky branch and succesfully targets the illiterate. Yes, the global deal with Google can bring audience, but not substance... and especially not MySpace's trademark podcastable broadband-broadchested-six-pack-daily-mirrorish substance.
MySpace France must be finalizing some partnerships with a cellco / M-VNO, and certainly with TV / radio channels. I don't expect Arte / France Culture executives to be shortening their holidays.


* dial http://fr.myspace.com/ for Murdoch ; myspace.fr seems to be auctioned by its opportunist owner.

NRJ mobile and bank robberies

From radio to TV to mobile, NRJ Group are heading for a multimedia grand slam. Of course, NRJ owner Jean-Paul Baudecroux cannot leverage on as massive a blog pool as his rival and potential target Skyrock (Skyblog drafted millions and NRJblog followed with a me-too product - still considered as such by the public)... but he's the early bird and remains the helluva dealmaker. Plus he certainly took this media a better way than other players. To the point this French operator could export the concept to Scandinavia, where M-VNOhood started : NRJ/ENERGY operates in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, but also in Germany, Switzerland or Austria. Besides, they know about network operating since the NRJ Group owns the French towerco towerCast, also a SFR partner in their DVB-H trials (see "Satellite of love"*).
Far from your usual reseller, NRJ mobile can be considered a genuine M-VNO. They're not killing voice (35 to 55 cents per mn), they're not killing SMS (6 to 12 cents apiece), they're certainly not killing radio (15 cents per mn), and they're not even killing music : 2 euros per song, that will disturb neither their carrier (SFR), nor their carrier's owner (Universal), nor even NRJ's annoucers (SFR and Universal among others). The core target is young but not so cheap, and their vanity is rewarded : customers can pick their numbers in the 06.06 series (no doubt M6 Mobile is loving it).
NRJ's partners should know about overcharging services : CIC (10% of NRJ mobile) happens to be my bank...


* by the way, TF1 & co have just started their T-DMB trials in Paris on October the 15th (one month after DVB-H), I'm sure with the blessing of LG (see "Mobile Real TV - LG and the H-free handset").