MySpace Terminates 400 Employees

An effort to restructure MySpace into a more innovative and entrepreneurial business results in News Corp cutting 30% of the social network’s staff this week, approximately 400 employees. MySpace has seen nothing but bad news lately, traffic has been dwindling and last month the platform was dethroned as the number one social media network in the U.S. by rival Facebook.
 
“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta. These layoffs have been attributed to Google’s decision to heavily downsize it’s $300 million per year advertising deal with MySpace. Sources suggest Google is looking for something closer to $50 million per year.
 
While many MySpace employees appear to be expendable as of late, including former CEO Chris DeWolfe, co-founder Tom Anderson remains on the roster, and still friends with everyone.

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June 18, 2009

Posted by: Collabo

Category: MySpace, Social Networking

Tags: , , ,

  • When I signed up for MySpace over 3 years ago I added this to my profile: "Who I'd like to meet: Tom, the MySpace guy. Anyone who can turn a pile of the shittiest web pages on the Internet into millions of dollars highly impresses me."

    What I like to take from this today is that MySpace offered a great platform for allowing people to express themselves and share those expressions with friends. I think that is the area MySpace needs to focus on. They have a strong artist base. It's still a great place to hear the latest music. I think they should rework their system to be more intuitive and up to date and concentrate on adding well thought out features for self-expression.

    I don't think MySpace has the luxury anymore of trying to be everything to everyone.
  • Agreed! I'll be diving into it more since I've signed up for an account, but from what I can tell at first glance, it looks very web-1.0 (hate to use a hot-button term for a design description, but oh well).
  • I wonder how they'll get out of this slump they're in. Personally, I'm scared to use MySpace because of the horrendous design. I don't even have an account. But I guess I'll need one to figure out what's really wrong with it. Will be signing up for it soon.

    PS: I find it hilarious that Van Natta is able to make such a statement about MySpace, having only been there for such a short period of time. I don't think he's the slightest clue of how to fix it and what's really wrong with it, although I could be very wrong.
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