News Corp admitted that its Fox Interactive Media arm which includes MySpace will miss their projected 80 percent increase in revenues over last year by "about 10 percent." The company had projected revenues of $1 billion, but as with other networking sites the company has found it difficult predict advertising revenue as advertisers wrestle with the commercial value of making friends online.

This is a little embarrassing for Mr Murdoch who made the social networking site the focal point of his media empire's digital aspirations. The results are likely to also cause hesitation over the soaring valuations of competitors like Facebook.

Despite the projected shortfall, News Corp states that MySpace is still the leader of the social networking pack. With 73 million regular users, more than double the numbers posted by Facebook, each of whom spends an average of 44 percent more time on the MySpacce site, which naturally appeals more to potential advertisers.

Even with the miss, profits were up from $1.8 billion to $2.7 billion, mostly due to the gain of $1.7 billion from the transfer in stake from DirecTV to Liberty Media and also included is a tidy $21 million profit from the recently acquired Dow Jones corporation which includes the flagship publication the Wall Street Journal.

In the UK, News Corp's earnings saw double digit gains with the stable of newspapers —the Sun, the News of the World, the Times and the Sunday Times—partly because of the decommissioning of older web printing presses as the publications move to newer more efficient color facilities.

MySpace may be slightly off target, but whoever said print was dead might want to reconsider as it seems Mr Murdoch, with an estimated net worth of $8.8 billion, has good reason to still smile as he's doing rather nicely, thank you, very much.