Myspace Plans to Lay Off 550 to 600 Employees Tomorrow

Myspace, which has been struggling to revitalize itself, is expected to lay off 550 to 600 of its staff of just over 1,000 tomorrow, according to several sources.

NetworkEffect first reported news of the large-scale cuts at the end of December.

But now, the social-network-turned-entertainment-hub has set a date–January 11–and is working on finalizing the people it will let go, which will likely include a significant number of international employees.

The Beverly Hills, Calif.-based company will be touting the changes as a restructuring to shed “legacy” businesses and products.

Unfortunately, the context for that rationale is that Myspace is shedding a full half of its staff.

After the layoffs, the News Corp.-owned Myspace will turn its sights to sale options, as I also reported.

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.

Internally, Myspace staffers have been expecting layoffs in early January for some time, with the numbers circulating being as high as 70 percent of the company’s staff.

(Disclosure: News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

Update: Myspace did make major layoffs on January 11, though it reduced the number to about 500 staff cut.