News Corporation has discussed swapping MySpace, its internet social networking unit, with Yahoo! in return for a 30 per cent stake in the enlarged group.

The discussions remain tentative and could collapse after the departure of Terry Semel as Yahoo!’s chief executive and his replacement by Jerry Yang this week. Mr Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! and incoming chief executive, yesterday pledged to “dig in” to his new role, and acknowledged the difficult task he faces to arrest the decline in the internet portal’s shares.

News Corp, the parent company of The Times, is interested in a deal even if it means losing some control of MySpace because it would give the media group exposure to a far larger internet-based business.

Other News Corp digital assets, including the games network IGN, bought in 2005 for $650 million (£326 million), are also thought to have been offered to Yahoo!. A deal would demonstrate a remarkably swift return on News Corp’s investment in MySpace, which it acquired for $580 million in summer 2005.

Yesterday Yahoo! was worth $37 billion. A quarter stake in an enlarged company would be worth $12.3 billion. It is not clear whether Yahoo! was willing to accept the terms offered, even though it has been eager to break into social networking to catch up with Google. Yahoo! tried and failed to buy Facebook, the No 2 social networking site, for $1 billion last year.

A News Corp source said that Rupert Murdoch, the company's chairman and chief executive, remained committed to the internet, although he has conceded in an aside in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal that the privately owned Facebook was gaining ground. Asked whether newspaper readers were drifting off to MySpace, Mr Murdoch joked: "I wish they were.

They're all going to Facebook at the moment."

The revelation of discussions with Yahoo! over MySpace comes as News Corp is pursuing a $5 billion bid for Dow Jones. Although Dow is best known for publishing The Wall Street Journal, News Corp believes financial information is a fast-growing digital business.

Meanwhile, Pearson, owner of the Financial Times, is in initial discussions with General Electric, owner of the NBC Universal media group, about a possible counterbid for Dow. Pearson and GE would, respectively, inject the FT and CNBC into an enlarged Dow, and take 45 per cent each, leaving Dow’s Bancroft family with a tenth.

The idea is to commit no capital from Pearson, a deal that could appeal to some shareholders unwilling to see the British company go head-to-head with News Corp with its own cash-based bid. Yesterday shareholders privately expressed support for Richard Buxton, of Schroders, who indicated he did not want to see a cash bid, but would be willing to look at a paper-based deal.

Separately, News Corp is hoping to raise $400 million by selling a quarter stake in its outdoor advertising business, operated out of Moscow and specialising in emerging markets.

Source: timesonline.co.uk

With major brands finding more and more sub domains to spam Google Yahoo has gone a step further.

They are selling entire high ranking sub domains to sites that fill them with affiliate links.

Pretty much the ultimate in pre-sell pages.

Source: threadwatch.org

Yahoo! Announces Agreement to Acquire Rivals.com, a Leading College Online Sports Site

Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Rivals.com, the leading online destination for college and high school sports and recruiting information. The acquisition will significantly expand the community offerings and open publishing capabilities of Yahoo! Sports, which has the most engaged sports audience on Internet. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"Yahoo!'s acquisition of Rivals.com exemplifies Yahoo!'s mission to connect people with their passions, communities and the world's knowledge," said Scott Moore, senior vice president and head of news & information, Yahoo!. "Among the more than half billion people who touch the Yahoo! brand every month, we find that sports fans are among the most passionate. We're now best-positioned to serve this important audience in the U.S."

Rivals.com is a leading online provider of college and high school sports and recruiting information, primarily focused on football and basketball. The acquisition will bring an important addition to Yahoo! giving the company a clear leadership position in some of the most important categories in sports publishing. The locally-driven open publishing network will complement the offerings of Yahoo! Sports, which are currently focused on coverage of national sports stories, as well as fantasy sports games and information. Rivals.com maintains a network of more than 150 individual websites, which attract approximately 2 million fans each month. Because the Rivals.com network also attracts an active community of users on each site, the acquisition will play an important role in building on Yahoo!'s mission to connect its users to their communities.

"With the Yahoo! acquisition, Rivals.com is beginning the next stage in the evolution of our business. We will now have exposure to millions of additional sports fans, as well as marketing, sales and engineering support which were previously unavailable to our company," said Shannon Terry, CEO of Rivals.com. "We are bringing together two of the leading brands in online sports and I look forward to further developing the most vibrant sports community online."

Additionally, Rivals.com is expected to bring new revenue opportunities to Yahoo!'s advertising and subscription businesses, which are currently the key drivers of Rivals.com's business model. Yahoo! believes there are potential growth opportunities in both businesses, given that Rivals.com has established a profitable and growing business model in both of these areas, with little marketing and sales support. For Yahoo! advertisers, Rivals.com reaches a sought-after demographic: an engaged and highly educated consumer. Yahoo! also sees potential in expanding the core demographic of the site to reach a younger demographic through its high school sports offerings.

"The Rivals.com team produces a broad network of college team sites, with communities of fanatical, like-minded enthusiasts around this local content," said James Pitaro, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! Sports. "College sports engagement is primarily driven by community, and adding Rivals.com to Yahoo! Sports creates tremendous opportunities for us to connect our sports fans with the right sports content at the right time."

For additional perspective on this announcement from Yahoo! and Rivals management, please visit http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/06/20/listen-up-college-sports-fans/ and http://www.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=1014&CID=684814.

Google announced today the worldwide expansion of its pay-per-action advertising beta. Pay-per-action is a new pricing model that allows advertisers to pay only when a pre-defined action is completed on their site, such as when a user makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter, or completes any other clearly defined action. Since the initial launch of the pay-per-action advertising beta in March 2007, many advertisers who have used the new pricing model are pleased with the opportunity to have more ways to promote their products and services online.

"Pay-per-action advertising helped our company make the most of our marketing budget," said Alexandre Douzet, Executive Vice President and General Manager, TheLadders.com, the leading $100k+ job search web site and an early adopter of Google's pay-per-action advertising model. "At TheLadders.com, we are big proponents of marketing efficiency, so the ability to supplement our existing cost-per-click campaigns with a model that rewards qualified leads makes a lot of sense to us."

Starting today, advertisers in the beta will see an alert in their AdWords account informing them that they can now create pay-per-action campaigns. Going forward, advertisers who have enabled AdWords conversion tracking and received more than 500 conversions from their CPC and CPM-based campaigns in the past 30 days will be automatically added to the beta on a rolling basis.

Pay-per-action ads are only shown on publisher sites in the Google content network, also known as Google AdSense™ for content sites. Publishers in the Google content network who want greater control over the ads shown on their sites may select between individual ads, a shopping cart of ads, or a specific keyword that is relevant to their site's content. These publisher-selected ad units contain only pay-per-action ads, and therefore, they do not compete in the auction against CPC or CPM-based ads, which are served in separate AdSense for content ad units.

With this new pricing model, both advertisers and publishers gain more precision and control over their efforts to effectively spend advertising budgets and deliver relevant ads to related website content. Pay-per-action advertising is now available to qualifying advertisers worldwide.

For more information please visit: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/payperaction.html