QWANZ

As Facebook was negotiating a half-billion-dollar investment from Goldman Sachs recently, MySpace, once the dominant Web site for social networking, was preparing to fire nearly half its staff....   >>>

As Facebook was negotiating a half-billion-dollar investment from Goldman Sachs recently, MySpace, once the dominant Web site for social networking, was preparing to fire nearly half its staff.



The layoffs, which cut nearly 500 employees from a payroll of close to 1,100, were announced Tuesday. The downsizing is the most draconian yet for the beleaguered company, and could be a precursor to a sale of the site by the News Corporation, which bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million after a bidding war with Viacom.



On one level, the decline of MySpace again shows the fragility of social media where fickle consumers and changing tastes can make sensations out of services like Tribe and Friendster that quickly fade from public imagination. According to comScore, MySpace reported 54.4 million users at the end of November, a loss of more than nine million from the previous year.



“MySpace was like a big party, and then the party moved on,” said Michael J. Wolf, the former president of Viacom’s MTV Networks and managing partner at media consulting firm Activate. “Facebook has become much more of a utility and communications vehicle.”



Read more in the New York Times article below. Image is a screencap of the site.