• All Things D et al, Monday, January 10, 2011 12:04 PM

News that MySpace plans to layoff more than half of its remaining 1,000 employees is no surprise, but what it means for the company's future remains an open question.

Officially, MySpace "will be touting the changes as a restructuring to shed 'legacy' businesses and products," according to AllThingsD's NetworkEffect blog, which broke the story.

Internally, sources tell NetworkEffect, "The company is primarily being shopped to private-equity buyers, although one intriguing possibility currently being raised within News Corp. is to try to sell Myspace to Yahoo." (Watch out, Facebook!)

"Staff at Myspace will not be surprised to learn of the layoffs, [as] reports have been circulating for many months now," The Next Web reports. "The remaining staff will hope that a change in ownership can bring new life into the company, otherwise it will be a sad end to a social network that once had so much potential."

"Parent company News Corp is trying to slim Myspace down financially so that it could be a more appealing purchase property for larger, more solvent companies," writes the Tech Report Blog. "By November numbers, they still had 54 million visitors a month but the trend lines show that that number is down 15% from a year ago and dropping fast."

"In November," as paidContent reminds us, "News Corp COO Chase Carey set a turnaround-or-offload-it clock on unprofitable MySpace: 'This is something we judge in quarters, not in years.'"

"News Corp appears content with the latest redesign and refocus of the site," paidContent adds. "But we're yet to learn whether it's happy enough to hang on or to pass MySpace on."

"The fresh new coat of paint helps MySpace at least look like it's putting up a fight," notes Softpedia. "But, as speculated when the redesign was first introduced, it may be nothing less than just a sprucing up as News Corp prepares to sell its major online venture."

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