Murdoch: MySpace Is Cool, Twitter and Facebook Are Not

At 78-years-old, he might not be your typical social networker, but Rupert Murdoch could have a major say in the future of Web sites like MySpace and Twitter.

At a media and tech conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, Wednesday, the News Corp. boss hyped up his company’s struggling MySpace site and threw some not-so-subtle jabs at its biggest competitors, Twitter and Facebook.

Murdoch said he would not sell MySpace, despite the unit’s financial troubles. And he said News Corp. is not interested in buying Twitter because it hasn’t found a way to make money – this despite the fact that the microblogging site has made huge gains on social networking leader Facebook in terms of number of users.

Murdoch went on to dis Facebook, calling it “a directory.”

News Corp. bought MySpace four years ago for nearly $600 million when it was the leader of the social networking pack, but Facebook took the lead shortly thereafter, and Twitter has since become the media darling of the industry.