MySpace Launches French Language SiteMySpace Launches French Language Site

MySpace on Thursday launched in beta a French language site, as the popular U.S. social network continues to expand its online reach internationally.

MySpace's latest addition joins its other foreign sites in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom. But while MySpace dominates online social networking in the United States, it doesn't hold the top spot in other countries.

In France, MySpace's rivals include Skyblog, which had 7 million unique visitors in the country in November, compared with 1.3 million for the English language version of MySpace in France, according to ComScore Networks. The leading online properties in the country by unique visitors are Google, Microsoft, and France Telecom, respectively.

MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., does better in the United Kingdom. Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. division that runs MySpace, is the ninth largest site in the country, according to ComScore. MySpace accounts for a majority of the traffic generated by Fox Interactive properties.

Globally, however, MySpace is the largest online community, with more than 49.5 million unique visitors as of October, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Other metrics firms have placed that number substantially higher.