News Corp. plans to expand the astoundingly popular social-networking site MySpace into 11 foreign countries, including possibly China, France, and Germany. Citing the success of the UK version it launched last year and the increasing number of foreign users on the American site, the site's overseers have decided to invite music-loving exhibitionists in Dusseldorf and Marseille to post half-naked pictures of themselves in their native languages.

Variety's Steven Zeitchik writes:

The number of international users of MySpace is not known, but at least in the U.K., many British users are on MySpace.com, the American version. All the new sites would be presented in local languages.

For MySpace, Europe presents an attractive territory not only because of new subscribers -- company already has more than 85 million of those in the U.S. -- but also because it could accelerate development with mobile platforms, which are more popular in Europe.

But Murdoch could also face challenges in trying to expand MySpace overseas. Culture of blogging and personalized Web pages have lagged in Europe relative to the U.S.

Murdoch and Co. also continue to consider new safety procedures, like allowing users to privatize their profiles and keeping minors from contacting adults and vice versa, in the face of several high-profile lawsuits stemming from cyber-stalking. Which will surely put a dent in Gary Glitter's friendbase.