News Corp must have a plan. Either that, or they’re still operating off of that mentality that drove so many investors to waste cash during the bubble. Recently I mentioned that News Corp picked up Myspace for $580 million. This time, News Corp purchased the massive gaming community network IGN. The price tag on IGN? How about $650 million! Myspace and IGN are completely different networks. Myspace was a home-grown social network. IGN is a collection of news sites, online tools, and various communities. For a while, IGN was in the buying game as they picked up various sites and communities to add to it’s collection. Apparently, the strategy worked.
This is – of course – nothing new. Both Google and Yahoo have been snatching up communities lately. Ironically enough, I’m posting on blogging software that Google bought. While everyone may have expected Google, Yahoo, and even Microsoft to be players in the online community market – it seems that News Corp is moving in on their cyber territory. (yes, I said cyber).