LIKE TOTO IN OZ, TWITTER OPENS CURTAIN ON MURDOCH

Rupert Murdoch is using his Twitter account to give followers greater insight into his thought processes than he has displayed in most press interviews and public statements. On many days he tweets not at all; on others, he appears to be doing so at every spare moment, as many as six tweets in a single day. On Tuesday of this week, he posted five comments, including a recommendation to check out the “beautiful new site art.sy.” (.sy is the country code domain extension for Syria.) On Wednesday he commented on the outcome of the New Hampshire primary. (Romney “owes a lot to [New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie who energized R[omney] with great effect.”) On Thursday, there were no tweets at all by the News Corp boss. Today (Friday) he remarked that devices on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas were “all disruptive. Traditional coys [he presumably meant “toys”] feeling digital tornado.” He also said that he had been receiving “many questions and jokes” about News Corp’s $580-million acquisition of the social website MySpace in 2005 — which it sold last year for a mere $35 million. “Simple answer,” he tweeted. “We screwed up in every way possible, learned lots of valuable expensive lessons.” A few hours later: “CES wrapping up. All talk is about coming Apple tv. Plenty of apprehension, no firm facts but eyes on their enormous cash pile.”