Lets nip this one in the bud right away. SFAppeal is reporting that MySpace terminated every employee in its San Francisco office as part of the wider layoffs today.
The report is based on an anonymous MySpace employee who told the site “San Francisco MySpace offices have just been obliterated. (Staff is) all just getting phone calls in silence and staring at each other, one by one. All fired. Even higher ups. One by one.” That statement was interpreted as “we’re told that every San Francisco-based MySpace employee has been laid off this afternoon.”
MySpace won’t comment on whether their San Francisco office remains open (you read that right, they will not answer the question “Do you still have a San Francisco office?”) but other sources close to the company say the office remains open and that layoff rates weren’t materially different than at MySpace headquarters in Los Angeles.
We’ve heard that MySpace will likely close the San Francisco office eventually, but as of now everyone who’s willing to talk says it either isn’t closing or isn’t imminent.
They are simply cutting half & sending half the jobs overseas.
MySpace sucks anyway. Too many ads everywhere. The user interface is strange and the site is full of spammers. Garbage belongs in a landfill.
I think MySpace is the wave of the future. Facebook leads now but MySpace is growing and will soon totally take over FB and Twitter and maybe even Google. They’re already totally beaten Yahoo and widgets.
either you forgot the sarcasm tags, or whatever your smoking .. pass it this way
Myspace is now DeadSpace.
Cheaper to go overseas with it. I think they realize that they are not standing a chance against facebook. I can foresee myspace being the underdog for quite some time.
Don’t fear the reaper.
Yay, this should mean cheaper space in SF. Maybe Hi5 can take it
my ass got laid off today and i’m confident MS will comeback on top. they have what others don’t have, content…lots and lots of content from other newscorp companies.
ex – will you expand on the “they have…content” sentence? Are you talking about MySpace Music? Something else?
I think he/she is talking about Media/Entertainment/Celebrity content from parent FIM company. I met a couple of Myspace Employees at a devjam and this is what they would mention while differentiating themselves from Facebook.
Well Music is a start, remember they don’t have to pay for songs uploaded by artists they also pull content from deals like Hulu and other media in the News corp universe. The content is all there but execution deserves a lot to be desired, Hopefully at the end of this MS will be a leaner and meaner machine. And Yes they are still here in San Francisco, Its pretty bare right now though as I left. Last I heard FIM’s other properties(IGN, rotten tomatoes) in the bay area might be consolidated at the SF office. I have nothing but good things to say about the company and the people I worked with. BTW I’m not ex-employee above.
sorry to here that, and glad for your positive attitude. I wish you luck and much success…
2 different products, vieing for similar eyballs, in a downturn economy. Myspace will work it out.
i’d be very surprised if they took out the whole office. i can’t say why without revealing my own identity, but let’s just say if they do that, that’d reveal the execs criteria for letting everyone go wasn’t much more than a pinned up spreadsheet and some darts… hey… wait a minute!
lot more happening tomorrow….
I was laid off too….and in the most unprofessional way. My boss didn’t even come say good-bye. But I think they did me a favor. I hated working there. It was a constant cluster-f of BS and high school drama. So long!
good for you then!! God help myspace from Owen Van Natta.
yeah, i’m sure owen’s in desperate need of help. what’s he making, probably 1M/year.
let’s remember, folks, MS is owned by FOX, which is about as evil as evil gets.
this isn’t restricted to only myspace, rumor has it that other FIM properties will be affected BIG time tomorrow.
Can we post names of who was laid off.
I dare you
I’d recommend against that. That’s a personal decision on their part.
sometime can open myspace .sometime is not . died.
Just to echo what has been said in previous posts, 720 people (300 back in August/Sept. of 2008 and 420 yesterday) lost their jobs because of 6 Executives that made extremely poor decisions – SIX…I could name them all (4 of which are known and have been mentioned here on Techcrunch.)
My question is this: Who’s left from the Executive Pool? Jeff Berman is still there…as is Tom Anderson, Tom Andrus (VP Product), Allen Hurff (VP Engineering), Kevin Freund (VP of Media) and John Faith (VP of Mobile). How long before they are gone? How can one be a VP of a division that has no people in it?
My prediction is that the current incarnation of MySpace (the Social Network) will be dead by end of year. It’ll morph into something that resembles the bastard child of TMZ, Hulu and Egotastic.com
- Allen Hurff was part of this wave of Layoffs. My mistake.