MySpace could be someone else's space soon

MySpace management confirmed yesterday that it is considering selling the ailing website, following the firm’s decision to lay off half of its 1,000-strong workforce earlier this week.

“News Corp is assessing a number of possibilities, including a sale, a merger and a spinout,” a spokeswoman at MySpace’s parent company said, according to a Bloomberg report.

The company has only just kicked off the “process” she added, and talks between MySpace and News Corp are at a preliminary stage.

But the decision comes as little surprise, given the number of job cuts undertaken at the California-based firm, which came just a few months after MySpace relaunched as an entertainment portal in October last year.

As we reported yesterday, the company is busy inking deals with “local” partners in the UK, Germany and Australia, so that the firm can manage ad sales and content in those regions. If a spin-off was to happen, these agreements, once in place, could prove to be critical to MySpace’s future.

Google similarly threw MySpace a lifeline of sorts late last year when it agreed to a multi-year search and advertising deal with the struggling web outfit.

However, MySpace might want to get its online estate in order first. Since the revamp, the site has proved much slower to navigate according to sporadic reports about the portal. That said, the company has claimed more than three million new sign-ups since the redesign.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg said that News Corp has tasked its executive veep of ops Jack Kennedy with the job of speaking to would-be suitors. ®