MySpace News Corp, is toslash 420 jobs in the US, as it battles to develop a
strong business around Web 2.0 social media.
The social networking site, which was bought by News Corp in
2005 for $585m, has faced stiff competition from Facebook. Earlier
this year Facebook overtook MySpace in the popularity stakes.
While News Corp claims MySpace is worth over $6bn, experts
believe MySpace and other social networking sites are struggling to
commercialise their brands, despite having more than 80 million
registered users.
In a statement which has been published on a number of
websites, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, said, "I believe this is
the first difficult step toward a major turnaround - a step that
will not only shore us up in the short term, but position us for
long term success. We need to become a more innovative company.
Becoming more innovative is an ongoing responsibility for all of
us, not a one-time effort. We are developing a process that will
empower anyone in the company to contribute ideas and enable us to
integrate your thoughts into our plans for the future. We will
follow-up with details on this process in the coming weeks."
One expert in social media technology said it is still not clear
how social media websites will make money. "If it was known,
Facebook would be doing it."