EmptySpace

MySpace is laying off nearly half its staff, seen as potential preparation for the sale of the former social networking leader and clear dominance by rival Facebook.

The firings restructuring affects about 500 employees - roughly 47% of the company, and comes after weeks of speculation about the cuts. People close to News Corp, MySpace's owner, have hinted that the media giant is not involved in sales talks, but shrinking MySpace's losses would be key in attempts to shop it to would-be buyers. The restructuring will affect all divisions and regions of the company.

MySpace still gets around 60 million visitors a month, but is way behind the 150 million monthly visitors to Facebook. Facebook was recently valued at $50 billion after getting cash from Goldman Sachs and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, which for 2.5 time more visitors is much better than the $580 million MySpace was purchased for in 2005. Initially, the deal paid for itself after Google Inc inked a three-year $900 million search advertising deal, but even for it's success, you can argue nobody is making movies about Tom from MySpace.

In October, the company launched a new version of the website centered on music, movies and entertainment for the 35-year-old-and-under crowd. They are making "strategic local partnerships" in Britain, Germany and Australia to manage advertising sales and content - some in connection with Fox Networks (what a surprise). There have also been reports that MySpace China, a separately owned and managed company, is laying off most of its workers, and that the business is also being shopped to private equity firms.

Sad to think that even with tens of millions of monthly visitors, it's a company on the downturn...and don't be shocked when this same thing happens to Facebook by 2020.