Australians Locked Out Of MySpace Mobile Web
By James Quintana Pearce - Tue 25 Sep 2007 07:38 PM PST
That didn’t take very long… the free-for-all ad-funded MySpace Mobile page announced on monday is no longer accessable from Australia. It worked for a while, but “by lunchtime, following queries from smh.com.au, Australians attempting to visit the site were automatically redirected to the regular version of MySpace, rather than the one optimised for mobile phones” reports the SMH. I’ve included a screenshot here to show what we get redirected towards: That red bar along the side shows where you can scroll down, it’s about four screens deep. According to the SMH: “MySpace spokesman Darain Faraz, when asked why the functionality was suddenly switched off, would only say: “This is a US initiative that doesn’t affect any Australian MySpace agreement.”...An industry source said Optus had paid MySpace a significant amount of money for the exclusivity.” I can imagine the conversation… “Hi, MySpace? Optus here. We seem to have different definitions of the word “exclusive”, maybe it’s a cultural thing...”
It’s not too bad—the agreement was began on August 1st and the period of exclusivity is for 3 months, so from November 1st it should be generaly available. Of course, Australia isn’t the only problem...Last month Canada’s Rogers Wireless also signed an exclusive deal with MySpace…
Posted in: Companies, News Corp., Operators, Countries, Australia/NZ, Social Media
