Websites for social networking have never had so many friends. The best known, MySpace, recently became the most visited website in America. Its acquisition last year by News Corporation, a media giant headed by Rupert Murdoch, for $580m now looks like a masterstroke. Other media groups and investors are crowding around other such websites, which allow people to create their own pages with photos and blogs and make connections with other people. Takeover rumours have been swirling around two smaller sites, Facebook and Bebo. And a group of investors recently put $10m into Friendster, an early example of the genre that is trying to make a comeback. Even Wal-Mart, an American retailing giant, has started a social-networking site, called The Hub—to widespread derision, because it forbids the racy content that users enjoy.
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