Myspace, the once mighty social network, has been, over the past several years, in a tailspin. It's user-base has dwindled as Facebook has steadily taken over the networking universe. There were many reasons for the decline, including unsightly and disorganized user pages and a total lack of features beyond a music player. Myspace tried several maneuvers in order to remain relevant, including an ill-conceived logo design change, and an attempt to compete with iTunes by focusing on paid song downloads and ad-supported music streams, but these have failed.
Many business insiders are expecting MySpace to announce, as soon as tomorrow, that they will be laying off up to 600 employees. Myspace staffers have been expecting layoffs in early January for some time, with the numbers circulating being as high as 70% of the company’s staff. It was announced this past week that the CEO of Myspace China had resigned as its international office laid off 30 of its staff, cutting its operations by two-thirds in that country.
As for the future, MySpace is primarily being shopped to private-equity buyers, although there are growing rumors that News Corp. is to try to sell Myspace to Yahoo.