{"id":17798,"date":"2011-01-11T11:06:38","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T19:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/?p=17798"},"modified":"2011-01-11T11:08:08","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T19:08:08","slug":"the-myspace-growth-plan-lay-off-47-of-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/electrotech\/the-myspace-growth-plan-lay-off-47-of-staff","title":{"rendered":"The MySpace Growth Plan? Lay Off 47% of Staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

$\"\"$ The social network that once defined the term continues on a downward spiral. Despite the fact that\u00c2\u00a0MySpace is still one of the 10 most visited sites<\/a> on the web in the US, has undergone a major site redesign, and even entered into a partnership with rival network Facebook<\/a> in an effort to keep users around, it seems anything less than #1 is a position too low for News Corp to support.<\/p>\n

Ouch. Guess they missed the memo on the economic recovery thing.<\/p>\n

The job cuts are across the board, and follow a deep 2009 cut that took MySpace’s international staff from 450 to 150 people. {Paid Content UK<\/a>} Most of the international staff cuts are in ad sales, and though there’s no breakdown by department for the US, sales positions there are expected to be on the chopping block as well.<\/p>\n

Though it’s likely not much\u00c2\u00a0consolation\u00c2\u00a0for the newly unemployed MySpace alumni, Jones ended his official statement on a somewhat more upbeat note.<\/p>\n

“While it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still early days, the new Myspace is trending positively and the good news is we have already seen an uptick in returning and new users. Since the worldwide rollout of the new Myspace, there have been more than 3.3 million new Profiles created.\u00c2\u00a0 We also introduced Topic Pages, which connect users to entertainment-focused content from news sites and blogs all over the Web. Over 134,000 Topic Pages have been created since the introduction of the new Myspace. There has also been a boost in viral activities, with over 10 million social actions and 90 million \u00e2\u20ac\u0153follows\u00e2\u20ac\u009d within the Hubs and Topics categories.\u00c2\u00a0 In addition, we are seeing Curators driving a lot of the engagement on our site.\u00c2\u00a0 Users who \u00e2\u20ac\u0153friend\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one of our Curators increased their frequency of visits by 35 percent.\u00c2\u00a0 Lastly, we have already seen a rise of four percent in mobile users just between November to December, now totaling over 22 million,” he said. {Paid Content<\/a>}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The social network that once defined the term continues on a downward spiral. Despite the fact that MySpace is still one of the 10 most visited sites on the web in the US, has undergone a major site redesign, and even entered into a partnership with rival network Facebook in an effort to keep users around, it seems anything less than #1 is a position too low for News Corp to support.<\/p>\n