Slashdot Mirror
MySpace Lays Off 47% of Employees
tgtanman writes "CNN reports that MySpace has announced that it has laid off 500 employees, 47% of its total staff. From the article: 'MySpace's management kept most of the site's developers but gutted nearly every other job role, according to a staffer who survived the cuts ... "Today's tough but necessary changes were taken in order to provide the company with a clear path for sustained growth and profitability," CEO Mike Jones said in a written statement. "These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product."'"
it will be facebook soon enough
first true post
MySpace still had 500 employees?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
American On-Line.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
MySpace has developers? What do they do?!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
They're still around?! I thought I recognised "Tom" squeegying my windows at a red light the other day...
What "new product"? MySpace is MySpace, isn't it? What else do they do? (Can't bear to RTFA and find out.)
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
...I bet most of those ex-employees will be complaining about it on Facebook this evening.
MySpace, the choice of bat shit insane mass murderers everywhere.
From the article: 'MySpace's management kept most of the site's developers but gutted nearly every other job role, according to a staffer who survived the cuts
Translation: They're up for sale, and devs are part of the more valuable "human capital". I wonder who would be buying?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
There is a "Connect with Facebook" button on the front page of myspace.com
It blew my mind
one can only hope the next iteration empowers the individual and gives them ownership and true control of their information.
You mean like the absolute control over whether or not you post online your age, gender, sexual orientation, or the fact that you like Midgets Soaked in McRib Goo?
Wait, this is Slashdot - I forgot, social networks break into your homes and mess up the place if you don't post embarrassing details about yourself.
NewsCorp bought MySpace for $580 million five years ago. Good going Murdoch. I hope the rest of your investments do as well.
Myspace used to employ more than 10 people! What do these people do all day?
I loved Imeem and then MySpace bought them out. So, maybe somebody else who can afford Imeem should buy them up and allow them to go back to their business they had and possibly make amazing music plug-ins for their walled garden *cough*Facebook*couch*
The world is how you make it
I'm sure that he's got a package labeled 'parachute' neatly stored near his desk, just in(evitably) case.
I guess he still has a glimmer of pride left after all.
I am sure he is laughing at this post... all the way to the bank.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It is a little know fact that MySpace got its name from a typing error.
It was supposed to be called Mice Pace - based on their innovative approach of running millions of mice over millions of keyboards in order to create a sample of "perfect code".
It was a variation of the idea with monkeys and typewriters - mice were cheaper to get and easier to scale up.
The result is the site we all know as MySpace. They could never get the Complete Works of Shakespeare out of the mice either.
But they did get half a Justin Bieber song once. Thousands of mice had to be put to death after that.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
HAHAHAHA, bad investment Ruppert!
I'm not sure you can have 47% of one person...
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
How exactly does MySpace make money?
Does it really have a path to profitabillity?
This is the year of MySpace!
Myspace seems to have a lot of office space to rent out.
Which means it had 1064 employees before the layoff. What in the world could they possible need more than a thousand people for? And why are now able to run with only half that many?
If you can't run MySpace with 100 people -- and that's being generous -- there's something seriously wrong. This is another case of "Somebody (in this case Rupert Murdoch) gave us a lot of money, so we can afford to hire a shit load of people regardless of whether or not we actually need them.
Had they shitcanned the officers instead, the money saved would've been able to keep the company afloat for another five years. And the best part is, then the remaining employees might actually be able to do something useful and turn a profit for the company.
"These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product."
How About
"These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of said employees. If you're looking for talented devs/marketing/whatever, contact us". Would make the transition easier for some people.
I'm guessing most of these people were full-time mods responsible for keeping tidal-waves of porn and spam off of the site.
Too bad they couldn't find a way to automate the blocking of duck-face pictures.
http://antiduckface.com/
If the world isn't beating a path to your door you're doing something wrong.
I thought it was the must idiotic mess of ugly web real estate I had ever seen. Poor execution which never got any better.
Now looking at Facebook, I think it's confusing as hell, too. Something better will come along and knock them off their peg.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Am I alone in thinking that MySpace was Geocities for the new millennium?
Three Squirrels
It seems like there is a lot of hate for Facebook on Slashdot. I wonder whether MySpace gained anything from it.
500 employees? That's more than their current user base.
The fate of any online service who's sole purpose seems to be to flood their users with spam and marketing gimmicks. Twitter take notice.
I feel sorry for the employees but the worse his investment becomes the happier I am.
Everyone should have seen this coming. Makes me wonder what will happen with FB and Twitter.
People actually still use it?!
Just keep in mind that despite the product having been shit all along, the core tech behind it all is very legit. At one point the site was one of the most trafficked sites in the world, we were pushing more bandwidth than google somewhere in the '06 timeframe. From a backend technology point of view it was one of the most interesting and fun places to work around. But yes.. all the product criticism is unfortunately completely justified. The leadership on that side of things has always been worse than non-existent. It's a real shame for the techies that know what they're doing that still work or used to work there.
It was posted on Facebook...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Wished they hadn't to be honest....
This for example, was on there today(thanks(?) to Sarah Michelle Olmstead)
"Wat am i supose to do wen the best part of me wuz always u nd wat am i supose to say wen im all choked"
I mean for fuck's sake.
What does this do to the stocks, up or down, I am not sure, maybe up cause they see myspace is serious in streamlining and remaining in the game, or down, because everyone sees this as signs of trouble...?
No one uses myspace anymore because the layout/menus are all messed up and pages take too long to load on older computers. All they need to do is roll back to the version they were using a couple years ago and everything will be fine and people will start using it again.
Truer more descriptive words never spoken.
I know my first reaction is MySpace is still hanging around? They had more than 1000 people working for them still? They still have 500 people doing something at MySpace?
In other news MySpace lost half their user base... :)
I mean, Daaaaaaaaaaaaa --*cough, cough!*-- aaaaaaamn!
The post itself, or that it was modded 'Funny'?
MySpace is dying.
As an offer to any newly laid off MySpace project manager or product person, we will give you an interview as soon as you can make it over...
Citrusbyte is a rapidly growing LA based web application dev shop.
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/sof/2159291337.html