At a companywide meeting on Wednesday, MySpace CEO Mike Jones announced that the social network's parent-company, News Corp, was exploring strategic options - including a spin-off or a sale - for the site.

The announcement by Jones comes a day after MySpace - which, in October, launched a new version of the site focused on music, movies, and entertainment for the younger users - confirmed that it was laying-off 500 workers; that is, nearly 47 percent of its existing staff. The job-cuts were described as a part of the company's "significant organizational restructuring."

Further reiterating Jones' statement about News Corp's strategic plans for the troubled MySpace site, the social network's spokeswoman Rosabel Tao told Bloomberg: "News Corp. is assessing a number of possibilities including a sale, a merger, and a spinout [spin-off]. The process has just started."

Earlier, in November, Chase Carey - Chief Operating Officer at News Corp - had told Reuters that the company was exploring all possible options for MySpace, including a sale. Carey had also told investors that the struggling MySpace site had only `quarters' instead of `years' to turn around its fortunes.

Incidentally, MySpace - which was once the leading Internet social networking site - has been overshadowed in recent years by Facebook, which currently boasts over 500 million users; and was recently assessed to be worth nearly $50 billion.