News Corp.
In the last year or so, Rupert Murdoch's conglomerate has repeatedly aimed to more fully embrace the Internet. Most prominently, it purchased the wildly popular social networking site MySpace.com, and in January, News Corp. revealed plans to transform MySpace into a multipurpose Web portal like such Internet veterans as Yahoo!
Now, News Corp. has snapped up a $3.5 million stake (described by CNN as "substantial") in Simply Hired, a site that culls listings from thousands of employment sites like Craigslist and Monster.com
Although job searching has long been a powerful draw for Web surfers, there are plenty of entrenched competitors. Let's face it, Simply Hired isn't a household name -- today's news was the first I'd ever heard of it. Not only is Craigslist a strong contender, but there are also other well-branded names like Monster and Yahoo!'s HotJobs to contend with. Furthermore, Simply Hired is essentially a search engine, and given Google's
On the other hand, of course, Simply Hired could be greatly helped by News Corp.'s Internet crown jewel, MySpace. The most recent data from Amazon.com's Alexa traffic-ranking service identifies MySpace as the fifth-most-visited site on the Internet, and while many MySpace users are young teens who are hardly interested in their upward mobility, there are also plenty of users who could very well use some job-search help in their post-college years.
Whether News Corp.'s cash infusion in Simply Hired will be money well spent is debatable, but shareholders should expect more of the same. News Corp. has previously said that it has earmarked more than a billion dollars for Internet-related deals, so $3.5 million is just a drop in the bucket. Furthermore, when it comes to the Internet, News Corp. has a lot of catching up to do. While MySpace's current popularity is impressive -- although social-networking sites can attract fickle audiences, as once-cool Friendster discovered -- playing catch-up on the Internet seems more difficult in an arena with so many active, veteran competitors.
Time Warner and Amazon.com are longtime Motley Fool Stock Advisor selections. Microsoft has been recommended by Motley Fool Inside Value . Take the newsletter of your choice for a 30-day free trial.
Alyce Lomax does not own shares of any of the companies mentioned.