Social networking site Myspace announced Tuesday that it is laying off 500 employees, nearly half of its overall workforce. Although company officials claimed the cuts did not reflect a failure in performance, industry observers note that Myspace's revenue had plunged nearly 40% in the last year, while overall membership in the site dropped 27 million, numbers that strongly suggest that Myspace's efforts to re-brand itself as a media-sharing site, rather than a social networking site, have largely fallen flat.
See "Myspace to lay off 500, or 47%, of workforce", Jon Swartz, USA Today, January 10, 2011