Business News Digital

Myspace makes redundancies

By | Published on Tuesday 12 November 2013

MySpace

As it continues to regain traction in the social media world, Myspace last week made 5% of its staff redundant, reports the Los Angeles Business Journal.

Chris Vanderhook of current Myspace owner Specific Media told the publication: “We’re implementing changes at Myspace to support continued innovation and growth by streamlining operations to achieve profitability. We appreciate our team’s contributions to Myspace over the years, and are offering outplacement services and severance packages to assist impacted employees”.

As previously reported, Specific, led by Vanderhook and his brothers Tim and Russell, bought Myspace from NewsCorp in 2011 for $35 million (considerably less than the $580 million Murdoch’s company paid six years earlier). Around half of the site’s 400 staff were laid off immediately after the sale and 8% of Specific’s own staff went shortly after that.

The all-new Myspace eventually went live in public beta in January this year, and after an initial flurry of interest seemingly failed to hold the majority of users’ attention – including token staffer Justin Timberlake, who seems to have distanced himself from it somewhat.

Whether the latest redundancies will indeed act as a streamlining exercise to aid Myspace’s slow journey back to the top, or actually mark the beginning of the end, remains to be seen. Though we’ve learnt not to predict the date of Myspace’s death.



READ MORE ABOUT: | |