As part of its reorganization and layoff plan, MySpace yesterday decided to close its Miami panregional sales offices. The Miami office had three employees including Victor Kong, VP and Managing Director, Latin America and US Hispanics and Tatiana Lopez, PanRegional Sales and Strategic Partnerships Executive. In addition, MySpace offices in Brazil, Argentina (16 employees) and Mexico (13 employees) were closed.
MySpace laid off around 300 of its 450 international employees, and close at least four of its 15 international offices.
What is next for the localized Spanish-language versions of MySpace?
As of November 2008, MySpace had 6.8 million users (although MySpace has stated that it has 9 million users only in Mexico) in Latin America (vs. 71 million unique users in the U.S. in April 2009 according to COM Score).
Portada has been told that the closing of the Mexican office means that the Secret Show and other tools specifically designed for the Mexican market have been canceled.
In the U,S. Hispanic market, Manny Miravete, VP US Hispanic Sales Strategy at Fox Interactive Media, where he spearheaded the MySpace Latino unit, was let go last week.
In a memo obtained by TechCrunch: MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said: ‘We are focusing on London, Berlin, and Sydney for two very simple reasons: (1) these are markets where we have a lot of MySpace users as well as the resources to allow us to compete effectively and (2) these are major international commerce centers where a robust MySpace presence can help our company develop new and innovative business partnerships.’
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