News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has told a media and technology conference that his company has no interest in buying micro-blogging site Twitter until it can make money.
The 27th Annual Sun Valley conference, which is often described by analysts as a “summer camp” for executives, has also attracted high-fliers including Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffet and former Microsoft chief Bill Gates.
But most of the attention yesterday was directed towards Murdoch, who also warned others of investing Twitter, and said “hell no” to rumours that he is looking to sell troubled social networking site MySpace.
Twitter, which was founded by Evan Williams and Biz Stone in March 2006, is now famous for having a user-base that is millions strong without any revenue source.
While Stone said recently at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival that the site is researching ways to build revenue, Murdoch warned that the site’s plans may not amount to much.
“Be careful of investing here,” he said. “[Twitter is] a tough investment to justify because it has not yet come up with a sustainable way to make money.”
Murdoch also spoke about MySpace’s fall from its position as the market leader in social networking, saying he was to blame for the site’s downfall and that it grew too quickly.
MySpace has recently let go 720 of its employees, with 100 of those jobs reportedly in the UK, and has given its executive board a shake up with former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta taking the chief executive role.
“The business sort of grew out of control and really out of size. I blame myself and it had to be brought back in size, but we feel that we’ve got new creative people and it will be a very strong force in many ways and shouldn’t be compared… I mean, it will be a very different social site to, say, Facebook.”
MySpace, which was purchased by News Corp in 2005 for US$580 million, has lost hundreds of thousands of users while Facebook has continued to grow. Despite Facebook’s position as market leader, Murdoch appeared to dismiss the site saying “Facebook is like a directory… how they make money is another matter”.
Meanwhile at the conference, , top executives have given thoughts on the future of their industries.
Walt Disney co-chief executive Robert Iger told reporters that the company will be able to develop a strategy to bring much of its television entertainment online.
“People are going to pay for content,” Iger said. “We’re not concerned about that.”
The subject of paid content is likely to come up during the conference’s debates, while Buffet has reportedly said in a private conversation that he would pay about US$5 per month for YouTube access.
Many executives were seen in deep conversation, although the details of any discussions are not known as the conference is off-limits to reporters. Google co-founder Larry Page and Twitter chief executive Evan Williams were seen speaking together.
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt last year dismissed Twitter as a “poor man’s email”, but seemed to be in good spirits when speaking with former Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates.
Gates was asked about his thoughts on the recent announcement of Google’s Chrome operating system, but was humorously advised by Schmidt that “it would be better if you didn’t make that comment”.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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