How quickly fortunes change. Overtaken by the leaner and cooler Facebook, MySpace is one of a host of web giants now reduced to hobbling beggars striving for your attention. MySpace will be laying off 500 workers worldwide , or about 47 percent of its Beverly Hills, California workforce. Three years ago, MySpace was a billion-dollar investment for News Corp and media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the crown jewel of Fox Interactive Media. Now it’s a struggling investment that may end up being sold off to AOL or Yahoo for a song after a restructuring from social network to entertainment hub.
“The new organizational structure will enable us to move more nimbly, develop products more quickly and attain more flexibility on the financial side,” said MySpace Chief Executive Mike Jones.
Once upon a time, MySpace was expected to grow into a billion-dollar business, generating profits in excess of $300 million dollars. However, once it was bought up by News Corp, innovation ground to a halt, pressure to turn a profit rose, and MySpace went from a hip young company to just another arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media octopus. Its failure to carve out a place for itself at the corporate table has undoubtedly contributed to its demise; the fact that it can’t keep a CEO for longer than a few years at a time isn’t helping matters.
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