Facebook flies high; MySpace cuts staff by around half

At the time Facebook was recently in negotiations with Goldman Sachs over a half-billion-dollar investment, MySpace, once the dominant social networking web site was planning to cut staff by half.

MySpace.com founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe had earlier enjoyed th support of Wendy and Rupert Murdoch.

According to analysts, the downsizing could be a precursor to a sale of the site by News Corporation, which acquired MySpace in 2005 for $580 million after a bidding war with Viacom. ith the layoffs which were announced yesterday, MySpace has shed nearly 500 employees from a workforce of nearly 1,100.

They say, in way, the decline of MySpace again shows the fragility of social media where web sites can quickly zoom in popularity and as quickly fade away from the public imagination thanks to fickle consumers and their ever-hanging tastes.

According to comScore, MySpace lost over 9 million users from the previous year with the number of users standing at 54.4 million at the end of November.

According to Michael J Wolf, the former president of Viacom's MTV Networks and managing partner at media consulting firm Activate, MySpace was like a big party, and then the party moved on. He added that Facebook had become much more of a utility and communications vehicle.