MySpace will axe nearly 30% of its staff - some 400 employees – in an attempt to revamp the business as it loses ground to rival Facebook.
“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said in a statement. “Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.” Read the internal memo here:
MySpace is believed to be a profitable but disappointing earner for parent News Corp, which acquired the company in 2005 for $580 million, the New York Times said.
MySpace will be left with around 1,000 employees.
The company has steadily lost its dominance of the social networking scene to Facebook, which recently became more popular than MySpace in the US by a slim margin, Reuters said.
Facebook has long been more popular globally – Facebook had 307 million unique visitors in April, while MySpace had just 123 million, according to metrics firm ComScore.
The News Corp subdivision which includes MySpace – Fox Interactive Media - fell 10% short of its $1 billion revenue projection for the year.