This is not a response to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp scooping up MySpace, Viacom executives tell Fortune’s Richard Siklos.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, Viacom’s working on two online “stealth projects” that Fortune thinks will give the Sumner Redstone-controlled company back its mojo.

Using social networking tools provided by one of its investment properties, Social Project, Viacom has created a system called Flux, that will eventually let registered users of MTV.com and other properties “personalize pages with blogs, video, photos, online friends, and so forth.” These pages are designed to travel with visitors to other MTV-owned properties.

The other is an investment in a video offshoot of hipster magazine Vice called VBS.tv — Vice Broadcasting System. The site, which launched in March is already producing shows for MTV.com.

The idea here is fragmentation and more of it, says Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman.

“This is the company that invented fragmentation in the cable world. In the digital world we’re going to take the fragmentation further. Through Flux and other methods, we’re going to link all those communities together and monetize them.”

MTV has talked at lengths about the idea of creating sites and digital properties on a very granular level by launching hundreds, if not thousands, of new sites tied to not just its programming, but particular stars or characters. This seems to adhere to the strategy.

A $500 million investment in video games was just the beginning. Dauman tells Siklos he’s got a few more small investments along the lines of Flux up his sleeves.

This all appears to be part of MTV Digital chief Mika Salmi’s handiwork to get MTV’s global digital properties on one common technology platform.

(Fortune)
(paidcontent)

Keep an eye on:

• Dow Jones and its main labor union are near agreement on a contract for reporters and other employees at The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.(New York Times)
• Google will propose at a meeting of European policymakers in France on Friday that national regulators agree on a basic set of global privacy protections. (Reuters)
• U.S. sales of video games and hardware jumped 46 percent in August from a year earlier, with Microsoft seeing sales of its Xbox 360 console shoot up after a price cut. The top game was Electronic Arts’s “Madden NFL 08″ for the Xbox 360, which sold 897,000 units, NPD said. Nintendo’s Wii was the most popular game console. (Reuters)