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Jan 11, 2011

MySpace CEO Mike Jones today announced a "significant organizational restructuring that will result in a 47 percent staff reduction across all divisions globally and impact about 500 employees," confirming many rumors that the News Corp.-owned social network would be going through heavy layoffs before possibly seeking a new buyer.

Formerly a social-networking sensation, MySpace lost more and more ground to Facebook over the past few years until it finally underwent a massive redesign that focuses on pop culture media-sharing for young users rather than attempting to be a universally appealing social network.

"Today's tough but necessary changes were taken in order to provide the company with a clear path for sustained growth and profitability," Jones said of the recently redesigned MySpace. "These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product."

The statement had some bits of slightly sunnier news: "Since the worldwide rollout of the new MySpace, there have been more than 3.3 million new profiles created," Jones' statement announced. (OK, but does it offset users who continue to desert the site?) "We have already seen a rise of four percent in mobile users just between November to December, now totaling over 22 million."

Jones also announced that there will be some partnerships for MySpace in the U.K., Australia, and Germany to handle advertising sales and content, which hints that layoffs overseas may be particularly heavy. He said that the company "will retain a core, dedicated international team to work with partners in order to ensure users, content partners and advertisers continue to be served."

There was no mention of News Corp.'s rumored plans to shop MySpace to other buyers.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20028136-36.html#ixzz1Alb4Or7B

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Not surprised.  Truthfully though, I liked MySpace better than Facebook.  If nothing else just for the ability to personalize your space and show a bit more of your personality than you can on FB.  Loved making profiles

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Well this doesn't surprise me one bit...let's just hope that some new buyers make it friendly towards groups again...I agree with you Teri...I did like the design of myspace better..... I don't want the "new" layout of FB...but I guess you don't have a choice... just glad to see all my friends here

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Originally Posted by Teri Lacy:
Not surprised.  Truthfully though, I liked MySpace better than Facebook.  If nothing else just for the ability to personalize your space and show a bit more of your personality than you can on FB.  Loved making profiles

I agree wholeheartedly!

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I just cannot care about Myspace anymore.  I've been trying to delete my profile over there for days and it just won't let me.  I'm annoyed . . . and I'm in the wrong thread for being annoyed!

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I too prefer Myspace, but with all the "upgrades" to the site I can no longer even log onto the site. The funny thing is I had bookmarked the OF&F group and can read the different threads but not being able to log on I can't post anything.

Even Facebook is starting to get bad. Oh well.

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yup, the old myspace was the best, but this is way better than nuthin, which is what we had with the new myspace. sorry that so many folks had to lose their jobs over bad decisions, but that's the world we live in I guess.

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i too echo the sentiments displayed here. myspace cornered itself right out of the market, by trying to be more like facebook. now you have all us israelistes wandering the sinai, hoping to find the promised land. you figure that at some point, as people started fleeing their site, they would've gotten the message that all their "fixes" were making it worse.

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I agree with everyone here...I too liked Myspace so much better than Facebook.
When I get into my account over there...it logs me out...They really ruined a good thing!

Mary...I still have the old facebook layout too...guess we'll have NO choice in a few days!  LOL

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Ditto on liking the old MS better.

But it is no more.

And what I think about when I see that they've laid off half their staff is the fact that this layoff comes after a couple of other sizable layoffs.  So they've actually canned over half their people.

As far as MS goes, I still have my profile.  Nothing to gain by deleting it and there are a few connections with interesting people I'd lose.

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Originally Posted by Scott Terry:
Ditto on liking the old MS better.

But it is no more.

And what I think about when I see that they've laid off half their staff is the fact that this layoff comes after a couple of other sizable layoffs.  So they've actually canned over half their people.

As far as MS goes, I still have my profile.  Nothing to gain by deleting it and there are a few connections with interesting people I'd lose.

I know what you mean. There was a couple of people over there I really enjoyed talking with, but can no longer and do not have an e-mail address that I can look them up here with either because we did all our talks by messengering each other in Myspace and not yahoo, hotmail or aim.