MySpace, the social networking site owned by News Corporation, is reversing a strategy of international expansion in an attempt to slash costs and improve profits amid a global advertising slump.

The move follows last week's restructuring in the US, when MySpace said it would cut its workforce there by 30 per cent.

In the past two years, the company has striven to open offices in new countries, hiring new staff and launching country-specific MySpace sites.

But following the recent hiring of Jonathan Miller, the former AOL chief executive, to run News Corp's digital division, the strategy has been thrown out.

Operations in London, Berlin and Sydney are to become primary hubs for MySpace's international operations. Offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden and Spain are "under review" and face possible closure.

The change of plan comes as the company faces intense competition from rival Facebook, which recently overtook MySpace in the number of unique visitors it attracts to its site.

Meanwhile, new sites such as Twitter have challenged the traditional social network model, which is an ­additional problem for MySpace.

The international job losses form part of a range of cost-cutting measures implemented by Mr Miller and Owen Van Natta, MySpace’s chief executive. They have also scrapped a move to a new "campus" facility in Los Angeles that had been planned by Peter Levinsohn, the former head of Fox Interactive Media, News Corp’s digital arm.

The cuts announced on Tuesday will reduce the company’s total number of employees in the US and internationally to about 1,150 from about 1,900.

Source: FT