MySpace to cut 30% of workforce

LOS ANGELES -- MySpace said Tuesday it is cutting nearly 30% of its workforce in a bid to become more efficient, bringing its staffing level more in line with its more popular rival, Facebook.

The move comes less than two months after MySpace, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., hired former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta, 39, as its chief executive.

It also comes a day after data from tracking firm comScore show Facebook has caught up with MySpace in monthly U.S. visitors for the first time.

"Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company," Van Natta said in a statement.

The cuts amount to about 420 people, bringing the total number of MySpace's U.S. staff to 1,000. As of May, Facebook had about 850 employees worldwide, the vast majority in the United States.

MySpace's user base has stagnated at about 125 million worldwide users, while Facebook said its usage has doubled to more than 200 million in less than a year.

But until now, MySpace still had the edge among U.S. users. Numbers from comScore show that in May, MySpace and Facebook both had about 70 million users apiece in the United States.

MySpace, however, generates more revenue, according to Internet research firm eMarketer; it estimates that MySpace generated about $605 million in global advertising revenue last year, compared with $250 million for Facebook.

MySpace's revenue is expected to shrink next year while Facebook's is seen as growing.

MySpace said the restructuring crosses all of its U.S. divisions.

Jonathan Miller, the former AOL chief executive hired as News Corp.'s chief digital officer in early April, said MySpace's work force had grown "too big considering the realities of today's marketplace."

Van Natta said the goal was to put the site on a more entrepreneurial footing and "return to an environment of innovation."

But eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said that could prove difficult for an organization that has lived under the corporate structure of News Corp. for the past four years.