The latest step in Rupert Murdoch’s effort to turn around the fortunes of his digital businesses came Tuesday in the form of hefty layoffs at MySpace. MySpace, the social networking site owned by News Corporation, the media conglomerate controlled by Mr. Murdoch, said it was laying off roughly 400 employees, or nearly 30 percent of its staff. After the layoffs, MySpace will have about 1,000 workers. The company said the layoffs were an attempt to return to a “start-up culture.” In a statement, Owen Van Natta, a former Facebook executive who became chief executive of MySpace in April, said: “Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company. I understand these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.” MySpace, which was acquired by News Corporation in 2005 for $580 million, was once the pre-eminent social networking site. But more recently it has lost some luster to Facebook, and at the same time has come up short of News Corporation’s financial projections. Until recently, MySpace still had an advantage over Facebook in the United States, although Facebook had more users globally. But recently, according to comScore, Facebook has matched MySpace in the United States, with about 70 million members.


Read Full Article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/technology/companies/17myspace.html?_r=1

The MySpace social media network’s traffic has dropped so much that it will fail to satisfy a minimum traffic level crucial to parent company News Corp’s three-year $900 million advertising deal with Google, inked in 2006, that made Google the exclusive search advertiser on MySpace — then the world’s most popular social network.

News Corp. executives bandied about three different estimates of how much of the Google’s $900 million MySpace will not take in, due to the shortfall, but a consensus emerged that the penalty will be in the neighborhood of $100 million. As the Financial Times points out, this Google ad deal covered News Corp.’s estimated $580 million purchase of MySpace. The site’s failure to provide the deal’s minimum traffic level is bad news for News Corp., which otherwise reported a generally positive outlook due to its movie studio and cable channels, which currently generate 85 percent of the company’s revenue. MySpace knows as much as anyone that its traffic is dwindling as users continue their migration to Facebook and Twitter to do their social networking. Rupert Murdoch’s new second-in-command at News Corp., Chase Carey, essentially admitted defeat in the social networking arena: “We’re not trying to beat Facebook. We’re not trying to beat Twitter.” Rather than compete against those social networking heavyweights, MySpace intends to double down on what has always been a core strength: the millions of artist pages on the site, which dwarfs the catalog of other music services, because it includes so many unsigned (and, for that matter, signed) bands. MySpace’s new strategy, already known before the earnings call, will be to realign the site as an entertainment destination rather than a place where people keep up with friends and family.


Read full article here: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/myspace-traffic-drop-costs-news-corp-about-100-million/

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Myspace Friend Finder have received the "SAFE TO INSTALL" certificate on findmysoft.com .

Easily navigate MySpace from anywhere on the web. Stay connected to MySpace.com with persistent login. Receive notifications with updating messages. Clean up messy profile pages with the “Simplify” button.

--Easily navigate MySpace from anywhere on the web

--Stay connected to MySpace.com with persistent login

--Receive notifications with updating messages

--Clean up messy profile pages with the “Simplify” button

--Make your profile look good with My Space or Yours.net custom layouts

--Navigate everything on your myspace profile and other users myspace profiles with dual menu controls

--The MySpace toolbar is loaded with Me.dium's Social Search

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https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8480

If MySpace could help developers promote their applications to get more distribution, activity notifications in friends’ news feeds would be a great way to do it. Last night the company announced that they are rolling out the beta version of "application activities". Currently these application activities will only be viewable to developers until at least "after the holidays".

Once fully rolled out this will give developers on the MySpace platform, much greater promotional visibility. This is excellent news for developers but as Chris, a social application developer states in the MySpace forum, "I want to have my activities code ready to go the instant this goes live on the main site, but also I have a lot of urgent work to get done on other platforms which have much higher traffic."

[via SocialTimes]

The customised MySpace interface, developed with Research in Motion, the company behind the new handsets, gives BlackBerry users the ability to receive updates and send messages in real time, as well as uploading photographs to their profile.

According to figures from the social network, the MySpace mobile site receives more than two million daily unique mobile visits.

The announcement follows the success of the MySpace iPhone application, which, according to MySpace’s figures, received 1.7 million daily unique mobile visits in July.

Travis Katz, managing director of MySpace International commented on how the announcement is the next step in the development of MySpace mobile, giving the social network’s 120 million active users the ability to connect on the go.

The social network launched an application for Android devices, including the T-Mobile G1 mobile phone, launched in the UK at the end of October.

[via Mediaweek]