• by Gavin O'Malley , June 26, 2009

The layoffs keep coming at News Corp. interactive units. Just a week after MySpace announced plans to cut its workforce by 30% -- or roughly 425 employees -- Fox Interactive Media unit Photobucket has let go a third of its staff -- or some 35 workers.

The cuts, first reported by industry blog BoomTown, will affect roughly 75 FIM employees -- the remainder of whom resided at various other divisions of the News Corp. unit, including its IGN video game and entertainment division.

"As part of our continuing review of each of the FIM business units, employees were informed of job cuts today at several of our sites," according to an FIM spokesperson. "We made these cuts to ensure that our resources are aligned properly with our business goals, and at a scale that will enable us to operate as efficiently as possible."

Last week, the "restructuring" plan at MySpace crossed all U.S. divisions of the News Corp.-owned social network. "MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today's marketplace," said Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s CEO of Digital Media and chief digital officer. The move marked MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta's first major move since replacing MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe in April. "Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company," said Van Natta.

Largely in an effort to bolster MySpace and its other Web properties, News Corp. paid $250 million for Photobucket in May 2007. Then best-known for helping users post images on MySpace member pages, Photobucket rose to prominence as a one-stop shop for uploading digital pictures and videos online. Yet, as MySpace's star has fallen over the past year, Photobucket's has inevitably followed.

Today, social media king Facebook has over 200 million users, compared with MySpace's 130 million, according to comScore.