In what Travis Katz, the head of international media for News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, calls a "soft launch," confirmed that MySpace (NWS) is in the preliminary stages of introducing a Mexican version of the site. He defined the "soft launch" phase as being live, but not marketed in any way by the company nor do they direct traffic to the site.
"It's really a testing phase for us, not something we're pushing out," Katz said. "That phase normally lasts about two weeks, and then we move into what we call our beta launch."
The beta launch of the Spanish-language version for Mexicans will entail users 
that are geographically in Mexico being given the option to be redirected to the site new site from the U.S. version. The Mexican market currently has about 1 million MySpace users.
After the beta period of about four months, then the site will be launched officially and then marketed more aggressively, according to Katz.
The company is trying to move fast in the international market before online communities are pursued by companies from the cultures they live in. The challenge by Baidu in China to Google in search shows that there are vulnerabilities on the internatinal level that must be addressed before companies entrench themselves into the minds of their users.
With France just recently coming out of the beta, and current strategic beta sites in important countries like Germany Italy, Japan and Spain, MySpace is trying to get a foothold before competition from within makes it almost impossible to overcome.
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