MySpace is about to have a major wave of layoffs, according to multiple sources close to the company. One source describes the number of people affected as “massive”, while another source says that the layoffs will likely affect between 300 and 500 employees. It’s unclear if these numbers apply to MySpace alone or its parent company Fox Interactive Media, but MySpace makes up around 1600 of the 2900 employees in FIM, so it’s likely that the social network will be hit hard.
Last summer MySpace let go of 5% of its staff, and as many as 45 employees were laid off last month. These cuts go far deeper. We’ve heard that the company’s legal team is hammering out the paperwork that will need to be submitted to the state of California under the WARN act, which requires large companies to give advance notice of any major layoffs. We’ve contacted the California Employment Development Department, which has yet to receive the filing, but we hear they should be getting it any day now.
Contacted for comment, a Fox Interactive Media spokesperson issued the following statement:
“Like any company with new leadership, Fox Interactive Media is reviewing every aspect of our operations, performance and structure. It’s no secret that we are looking for ways to improve our products, increase the value of our digital assets, and enhance the overall financial strength of the company.”
Since former AOL chief Jonathan Miller took over as News Corp’s CEO Digital Media and the MySpace executive team shakeup in April, MySpace and FIM have undergone extensive measures to cut costs, including these personnel hits. FIM also just backed out of its plans to take over its new Playa Vista offices.
Why the cuts? MySpace traffic is plummeting, and revenue is going to take a huge hit when the Google deal terminates in mid 2010. MySpace already has an uphill battle on its hands as it vies to compete with Facebook, and it’s no longer going to have that very lucrative revenue stream to lean on.
MySpace is shrinking day by day, while Facebook is a LOT MORE every minute!
Nah, Facebook may be growing right now but their traffic will plummet too once the novelty wears off. Then everyone will be on to the next site. Social networking is a very fickle and fast concept.
Agreed. The users there are already bitchy enough.
They bitch cuz they care. That’s the difference. No one cares about Myspace.
Website developments should be over by now. Only maintenance work doesnt need as many people. Now only server costs, no development costs.
Myspace needs some ajax developments though.
I don’t think I can get my entire family to join another social network. Facebook is here to stay.
agreed,, even all my aunts were all over each other’s wall day by day. a real fun and somewhat interesting sight for me ^^
All the people I know who did not like MySpace anymore and went to Facebook did not find it any better. They invited all their MySpace friends to come with them and sought out more of the same kind of people, drama, spam and other problem s they thought were caused by MySpace.
I never have any problems on MySpace, but I also don’t hang with the kinds of people that cause the problems commonly heard associated with MySpace.
Facebook was novel in 2006, there won’t be another major social network unless Facebook really screws up. Network effects are too strong, and in reality, people aren’t that fickle.
Of course they are. Twitter is already bleeding facebook. FB s still barreling along on sheer momentum, but if you check in the tank… Fumes is all they’ve got left. They got 18 months tops before ther US market starts to retreat. After that, third world subsidization will bankrupt them.
There are many things that can factor into that result. Lack of management skills, lack of fiscal responsibility and budgeting, not having an eye or ear for what the people want, etc. The list goes on. Overall, MySpace gave up on the idea of innovation and improvement.
“Overall, MySpace gave up on the idea of innovation and improvement.” +1,000,000
After website is settled there is not much scope for development, unless you keep changing unnecessarily like facebook. It is no strange to layoff.
But myspace needs some ajax.
“not having an eye or ear for what the people want”
- That is exactly, not listening to what people want. Totally ego driven. If you want to work on soemthing great, the sick manager will intentionally hold you back.
Very problematic management, who won’t give tasks to employees eager to contribute just because the employees didn’t flatter the manager enough. Totally pathetic.
MySpace is heading to MyNuts to give me MyPleasure
with some ajax?
way too much people anyway
Good thing “MySpace is worth just $6.5 billion” (http://www.tech...-updated-model/). They can just sell some of that equity now and save these jobs, right?
Hmm lots of speculation in this post, yet somehow you missed the best piece of gossip here.
Sean, common already. I think that train has left the station for cheeseville.
Don’t you have a salon appointment?
As always the first thing the new management does is fire more and more people.
Time to trim the fat. Get rid of the pikers and keep the people that are not just collecting a paycheck. Time to get rid of the employees there that thought they were all that, but truth was everyone wanted to do business with Myspace when they were hot, all one had to do is answer a call or email and they had a paying advertiser on their social network. NOT ANYMORE!!!!!
Eh…It sounds like the site is on the ropes, pretty much, as far as revenue goes anyway.
I’m guessing that their “Put your ad here” campaigns aren’t as successful as Facebook’s ad space offers. There are more eye balls there.
Let us see now, if Myspace has left something in it and can pull up their socks and join the party again with facebook.
Hmmm…. seems like tech crunch is bumping the numbers up a bit to try and attract more traffic…
there’s been plenty of rumors circulating about some trimming at Myspace, but there’s none that are anywhere near as high as 25% of the workforce. I think TC might be trying to over-inflate the numbers to instill fear and emotion into people… something often done by tabloids.
Whatever works…
TC seems to like calling people fired for poor performance “laid off”. I don’t know if they’re just trying to play up the juicy OMG MYSPACE IS FAILING storyline or if they’re just trying to help those people out with their credibility when they tell EDD that they were “laid off” so they can draw a check.
Also I get a kick out of how in the social networking wars, MySpace is cast in the role of “the man” and Micro$oft-backed Facebook is the plucky upstart with dungarees and shaggy hair.
Yes, Microsoft has a small share of Facebook, but MySpace is owned completely by News Corp.
Also I get a kick out of your use of the $ instead of an ’s’ in ‘Micro$oft’. That is very clever how you implied that Microsoft is somehow involved in earning money. Did you think that up yourself?
No.
Wow Larry, did you think up “did think that up yourself” all by yourself? I bet you feel special! Have a cookie
i found myspace to be troublesome. I did so much to get attraction but only had no friends. God by MySpace!
Please learn how to build coherent sentences before trying to leave a comment. Thx!
- Not from India
lol … Zing!
There are many reasons why MySpace can be a trouble to people.
Why does it take so many people to run a dumpy ass web site?
I agree with your question. Why can’t Tom just operate MySpace from his basement? lol
That was just ignorant, Jason. Why don’t you try running a sophisticated site one day. It shows you really don’t know much about the Internet space, and what it takes to run a company.
MySpace, there’s a seat for you next to Friendster.
that was funny
Just when people may think that online companies are stable, they prove themselves to have the same amount (if not less an amount) of stability. Why are people working for companies or social media platforms when they can become freelancers or even self employed? We need to start creating our own platforms!
Two words: health insurance.
That’s my reason.
Remember when good old Rupert was “willing” to trade MySpace to Yahoo! for an equity stake? Now we know why.
Does someone know when they will lay-off?
Once people start to realize that there is almost no value in knowing what anyone is doing at any given moment, all social networking will go away. None of these companies even make money. I used to work for MySpace and I don’t think anyone in management ever considered that the idea or their growth was unsustainable. They didn’t even consider FaceBook a viable threat as recently as 9 months ago just before I left. Those folks are long gone now though and the new management will have to clean up their mess and probably have to reinvent the site. When will these companies realize that slow and steady wins the race.
Yeah, go tell your VC “slow and steady wins the race.”
After 4 years, that’s exactly how I’ve buried most of my VC backed competitors. Just a couple more over funded ones to go.
‘way too much people anyway’
‘Sean, common already.’
‘I did so much to get attraction but only had no friends. God by MySpace! ‘
How do you expect to have your comments taken seriously when you write like your average semi-literate, 12-year-old MySpace user?
8=====D~~
Dinner is served!
Sad..
this is a great move… all these people were probably hired to expand the service offerings of myspace, which was probably a bit too ambitious in the first place… now they can trim the fat and get back to putting to some distance between them and competitors in areas where they still dominate… i.e. Music and to lesser extent… premium video content
lets not be sarcastic..this can happen to anyone.
HR at Maple is furiously at work at the moment.
You think tomorrow is the DDay?
I don’t care. I will quit. They switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline. They have my staples for the Boston and I kept the staples from the Swingline stapler.
If, if they take my stapler, I will, I will set the building on fire.
500 employees too many, look at POF, what, 20 employees max?
does anyone know if severance checks are guaranteed during layoffs.. I should of starting packing my stuff a long time ago
Is this from MySpace or Fox Media overall?
Noone cares about friggin facebook. Everyone’s got twitter now! That’s why myspace AND facebook are dying!
I know someone that claims to be a myspace administrator and she snoops through people’s pages and forwards people’s mail to everyone. I hope myspace kicks her to the curb!
myyearbook is going to kick all the other sites butts because they have the same things as the other sites but with a twist. its more fun and just better. myspace is old. there are bigger better things
there will always be bigger better things its part of our life as week advance so does everything around us making old things less used and not needed till you hear less and less of them then they are gone like vhs and dvd there are no more vhs anymore dvd has taken over. its just the way we work myspace is just getting close to its time
I LOVE Twitter!
I love myspace I hope it never shuts down!
Myspace is fucking awful. Glitchy, buggy, crashy piece of crap that NO ONE uses anymore.
I go online on Facebook and I have 80friends online, I go on myspace -> 4 friends online, all of whom are bands and not real people.
DEADSPACE
seventy million users disagree with you.
There are several problems with MySpace. The most obvious one is the kind of content they offer – the same tired, celebrity-oriented kind you get on TV.
IMO, they should have tried to be a bit more risque – let’s face it, that’s what sells…but who am I to argue? Just a user!
Actually back in the day MySpace was chocked full of t & a..but alas when the corporate dollars came calling they had to boot that vibe.
It made sense then…but unfortunately they surgically removed the fun and realness in efforts to be all things to all advertisers.
Social Networks are like nightclubs. They constantly wax and wane — as much because so many people want to be part of the “new, in thing” as anything else.
Looking back, we will see that the seeds of decline for Myspace came when Facebook threw its doors open to everyone…and that the seeds of Facebook’s decline were sown when people’s parents, aunts, and uncles started joining Facebook.
But that’s not everything…some of it is that people are attracted to the shiny and new in any case.
Wow 25%! Myspace is really in deep doo-doo!
Reminds me of what Geocities went through. Sites come and go.
Let’s face it. This is the american way.
Shrinking a company down is the easy way out. Growing a business and having a viable vision is a skill seldom acquired by fast talking execs.
How many developers here have worked for product, project, managers that had no clue how to get the right people together with the right focus to get the job done. In parallel you have people more interested in their own careers by settings up fiefdoms.
The way to the top is to pad yourself below as thick as you can. Talk fast, show confidence as though you’re the Avon lady, and when it’s all said in done… make a run for it.
Wow, you sound like you work at MySpace too, cuz you know so much.
I think the biggest problem for MySpace was their focus on celebrity stuff like music and film instead of the users. 3rd party applications have been Facebook’s strong point. There are all of these new things to keep users coming back. The other thing is you aren’t spammed to death like on MySpace and for the most part the crowd is a bit classier. It did start off as a college only site. It may lose some people in the future but I think it’s going to be around for awhile.
Agreed, look at myspace’s portfolio of innovation, invention, unique features that make it stand out, and that could make people always come back to the site. Anything on the site can be done elsewhere, cheaper, and with a better UI. If you can’t invent or re-invent yourself, you can’t stay up. All initial novelty wears out.
Wow I work at MySpace…Nice to have to hear it from the internets and not from the actual company you work for huh?
Myspace is obviously over its head with people. If you were hired in the go go times a couple of years ago or so, life is about to change. Myspace offers me nothing. Facebook was fun for the first month…but now the novelty of friends contacting me from high school is over. I don’t have time to get to know each other again. I don’t care about my friends and mostly aquaintances or old co workers every day decisions…about getting coffee, or getting ready for the weekend..yippeee!…really…it’s like the useless blah of twitter. Oooh how neat..somebody can know what i’m doing reght this second. How fascinating. It is I guess if you’re into having virtual friends…because that’s what most of them are.
just consider techcrunch the HR department.
Marc Sandus wrote “look at myspace’s portfolio of innovation, invention, unique features that make it stand out, and that could make people always come back to the site.”
Hmm. That’s a rather thin book, comparable to “Mountains of North Dakota”, “The Wisdom of Paris Hilton” and “Great German Cuisine”
@Hope I have a job still:
ditto. just said the same thing myself.
Thanks to this article I now know that I soon may be out of a job..and like Hope I have a job still said, MySpace hasn’t even said anything to the employees.
LAME.
The “Keep-them-in-the-dark” metality is not unique to MySpace, to be fair…it still sucks balls though…
Let’s face it, the site is dead and no one I know uses it anymore. Sadly, all these articles on the demise of MySpace is just going to kill it even quicker because no one wants to still be on a “dead” website. Look at Friendster!
I used to work at MySpace and let me tell you, it’s a joke here. There’s no innovation, no planning or anything that resembles structure. Most of the time, they would spend all this time working on something only to squash it at the 11th hour. Just look at the Playa Vista office, sign that huge lease then at the 11th hour, they decide not to move there. Typical MySpace… LOL
Being in the industry for 15 years now, that seems to be the case with most internet companies, not only MySpace.
dude, people like you before working for MS may be screwed so badly that they loose inovation and stuff since last few years
myspace is fine. It’s stupid websites like this that have a vested interest in seeing it fail. Any “tech” site that lets you use your facebook login to post a comment has a vested interest in seeing its competion fail.
My only complaint is myspace has not told us a thing and the only news we get is from this rag of a hack site.
An analyst in Mar 17 2009 has predicted Chris Dewolf’s leave. And the reality occurs 1 month after. This news is going to be true as well.
I think you guys have so many people working for you in MySpace, if you can pull out list of employees getting fired and post it here it will be really great for MySpace employees. Only problem is your post will be too too long since they are going to fire 500 employees ha ha ha…..
you are a moron
These layoffs will not be just for MySpace. This is going to be a Fox Interactive Media wide round of layoffs.
FIM owns MySpace
FIM owns PhotoBucket
FIM owns IGN (http://www.ign.com)
FIM owns GameSpy (http://gamespy.com)
FIM owns Rotten Tomatoes (http://www.rottentomatoes.com)
FIM owns AskMen (http://www.askmen.com)
FIM owns Fox Audience Network
FIM owns Digital Publishing Group (http://myfox*.com – like http://myfoxla.com)
FIM owned FoxSports (until recently) : (http://www.foxsports.com)
a FIM employee
The DW manager lies and act vanity to prevent employees less of her “personal” favor from contributing to the company. And months of wrong report data sending to executives because of the attitude.
Lots of office cranks plotted, but nothing to develop the best from her team. Just probably one of the contributors to the failure of the company.
HR, after firing many employees for wrong or makeup reasons, and knowing the existence of such managers while don’t do anything, added another ice to the company.
If the lawyers at Fox are worth a turd they’d start thinking about who they’ll be suing or pressing charges against for all of the leaks or false information being spread via “media” outlets such as this one.
The economy is shit for everyone and MySpace (like everyone else) has to start taking measures to stop the bleeding and correct the course.
Layoffs are a natural (albeit unfortunate) necessity in times like these. For Tech Crunch or any other outlet to key on this as being the deadly end of FIM or Myspace is purely irresponsible reporting and will likely result in even bleaker circumstances for Myspace and its employees.
If MySpace fails it because it sucks so be it. If Myspace fails because the media makes it so…well not only is that unethical…it’s quite possibly illegal.
this says it all about techcrunchs reasons for posting this story
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Actually, Tech Crunch has been quite accurate…
accurate how? it distorts webtraffic numbers. It distorts the news about everything other than facebook, which it seems like it’s a part of or wants to be. TMZ has better news content than this site. While it may have found a mole at myspace to rat out what’s going on, they are no better than a web version of the Sally Jessie Rafiel show. If they want myspace to fail, like it seems they do, they are doing a pretty good job at casting fear to the employees while the management sits on thier hands quietly not saying a word to anyone.
I love myspace better than facebook.
But unfortunately some of the info aren’t false and for simply opinion there is few thing attorney can do.
Just as how managers put together false performance reviews and fail the employees purposefully even though they are the ones actually underperforming and tthen fail the company in an indirect way…and all you get is just an OPINION.