It was widely speculated that MySpace was getting ready to undergo massive layoffs at its company, and the social network has confirmed the rumors today.

Touting the layoffs as a plan for restructuring the company in order to become more “innovative, efficient and entrepreneurial,” MySpace is letting go of 30% of its staff, whittling the company down to 1,000 employees. MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta was quoted as saying that the staff had become bloated, making MySpace hindered in the innovation company.
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CollectiveX, the site where you can create your own professional network, is undergoing some major re-branding this week, changing the look of the site as well as the company’s name. CollectiveX is now Groupsite, which is more identifiable as a service designed for groups that would like to work together in an online environment.

Launching a couple of years ago, CollectiveX was among the first of the major services to offer free group collaboration products. With a distinct focus on professionals, CollectiveX’s feature set revolved heavily around action-oriented capabilities, and less on socialization. That being said, CollectiveX hasn’t seen the same success as some of its peripheral competitors such as Ning. While CollectiveX has been careful to distinguish itself from other self-sustained network creation sites, it’s clear that a new direction is necessary for the company’s long-term success.
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Meebo’s latest partnership is with myYearbook, the social networking site started by teenagers for fellow high schoolers. The partnership includes myYearbook using Meebo chat as a prominent feature on every page of its site, providing chat tools for Meebo users and guests alike.

The partnership should be a win-win for both Meebo and myYearbook, as instant messaging is a highly requested feature from myYearbook users. myYearbook is one of the largest networks dedicated to the high school age demographic. This specific user base is also quite active when it comes to online activity, making it a good fit for Meebo’s chat and media-sharing tools.
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Microblogging video service 12seconds.tv has added user-generated commercial options to its service today. 12seconds has emerged as a Twitter-like version of video sharing, with the bite sized update format being applied to its specific type of media. Add in Twitter integration and a recent iPhone application with a unique workaround, and it’s clear that 12seconds is determined to offer its features to as many users as possible, in every way possible.

But what about monetization? Creating revenue around the microblogging phenomenon has been difficult for the cream of the crop, so what does 12seconds think it can do in order to begin making money from the trend? User generated commercials. Called 12omercials, these tiny ads will be sponsored by brands, and created by 12seconds users. The point is to offer “dedicated” recommendations to the world, and generate some revenue all the while.
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There are a lot of credit card initiative programs going on right now, given the economic state of affairs and the increased standards for lending out money and credit. So when I learned of Citi Cards teaming up with MySpace, I wasn’t at all surprised. Gotta get ‘em while they’re early, right?

The new offering coming from Citi is called Citi Forward, which is a credit card that’s supposed to be more tailored to the financial needs of current consumers. Citi Forward aims to encourage the maintenance of good “healthy” credit, by incentivizing consumers by things like lowering their purchase interest rates by a quarter percent when cardmembers use credit wisely. Other rewards include ThankYou Points each billing period for paying on time and staying under the credit line.
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Bebo has undergone a lot of changes and upgrades in the past few months, especially after having been acquired by AOL last summer. And Silicon Alley Insider has posted some screen shots of the upcoming Beb 2.0, which will be an entirely new version of the site and user profiles.

The biggest change looks to be the inclusion of “Timelines,” which will be a lot like the Facebook news feeds. Bebo’s Timelines will display user photos, videos and blog posts in the life stream, a feature that was added to Bebo profiles last December. This could very well be further implementation of AOL’s other acquisition, SocialThing.
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hi5 entered into the virtual currency space late last year, and it seemed like an all around good move for the social network. Having now delved into the world of virtual gifting, enabling easier virtual exchange was achieved by the offering of hi5 Coins, which can be applied to a great number of things representing supply and demand through the network in this sense. So where does that leave hi5 in the grand scheme of social networks? VentureBeat seems to think that virtual gifting could be he jackpot for hi5.
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Friendster has opened up some new offices in Asia, which makes sense seeing as the social network has a stronghold in the Asian countries–not the U.S. The company made a series of announcements this week regarding changes being made to Friendster, including new executives that have been brought on board, and a number of new partnerships aimed at further developing Friendster’s dominance in the Asia Pacific.

New office locations include Singapore and Sydney, Australia, which is where Friendster’s CEO Richard Kimber will be based along with the new hires for marketing and business development. Given its proximity to the Asia Pacific, it’s not entirely surprising to see Friendster establish central executives in Australia. The U.S. global headquarters, however, are now in Mountain View, CA, where some executives and cross-department employees will remain. Looking towards the rest of the year, Friendster has made it quite clear that it will be focusing a great deal of attention on the Asia offices, where at least 80% of the company’s new hires will be based.
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Social networking isn’t just for the youngsters anymore. It’s for the young at heart. According to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report, the share of adult Internet users on social networks has more than quadrupled in the past four years. From 8% to 35%, that’s a huge leap in terms of the adoption rate for using online social networks. And this number also means that adults represent a larger amount of users than the 65% of online teens who also use social networks, making the influence of adults on social networks significant and on the rise.
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We’ve seen so many social networks launch in the past four years, it makes even my head spin. But one key differentiating factor between many of the peripheral social networks and the major players like Facebook is the actual ability to network. Socially.

The benefits of social networking (with a purpose) began to come into focus when MySpace musicians found they could connect with each other and audiences on a professional level. And when it comes to social networking for the rest of the professionals out there, LinkedIn is the place to go. Even though Facebook hasn’t always had the best format for direct networking with the purpose of finding a job, it’s still very useful for this objective. So now that millions of people across the U.S. are in need of a job, no thanks to our current economic crisis, many are turning to Facebook and LinkedIn for recommendations and job leads.
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