The key insight here is "social networking, one of the hottest areas of audience growth online. "

"But despite owning one of the largest customer bases on the Internet, with about 85 million members, it has not fully exploited advertising sales opportunities at the unit, Chernin said. "We've just scratched the surface of how to monetize it."

MySpace has become a focus of investor attention for News Corp.'s media empire, which spans the Fox television and cable news networks as well as the New York Post newspaper, even though it remains a tiny part of the company's operations.

The division is being viewed as a testing ground for new media opportunities, particularly efforts to reap advertising dollars from social networking, one of the hottest areas of audience growth online. "