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News Corporation has seen its quarterly profits fall 22% on the back of losses caused by the sale of the MySpace social media website.The company, whose UK subsidiary News International has been rocked by the phone hacking scandal, made £ 423 million ($683 million) net profit in the three months to 30 June – down from $875m last year.

News Corp sold MySpace in June for only £21.8 million having paid £362 million for it in 2005.

Chairman Rupert Murdoch said he had the backing of his board. “The board and I believe I should continue in my current role as chairman and CEO,” he said.

Mr Murdoch admitted the recent phone-hacking scandal that resulted in the company closing its News of the World newspaper had caused News Corporation difficulty, although its revenues rose 11% to £5.6 billion.

“Make no mistake, Chase Carey and I run this company as a team, and the strength of that partnership is reflected in our improved results,” he said.

“While it has been a good quarter from a financial point of view, our company has faced challenges in recent weeks relating to our London tabloid, News of the World.  We are acting decisively in the matter and will do whatever is necessary to prevent something like this from ever occurring again.”

The scandal also resulted in the departure of senior News Corp executive Les Hinton, who was chief executive of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, and News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks.

And last month Mr Murdoch and his son James, News International chairman and News Corporation deputy chief operating officer, were forced to appear before MPs in London to answer questions about the scandal.

Investors will have to wait until News Corporation’s next quarterly results for more information on how the closure of News of the World has affected its profits, as the title’s final edition was on 10 July, 10 days after the three months covered in the company’s latest financial results.

However, News International only provides a very small proportion of News Corporation’s revenues and profits.

Its other main businesses include Hollywood film studio 20th Century Fox, US television network Fox Broadcasting and publisher Harper Collins. It also owns the Wall Street Journal.

And News Corporation’s 39% share of UK-based satellite broadcaster BSkyB proves highly lucrative, however, last month it was forced to abandon its bid to buy the remainder of BSkyB following the hacking scandal.

The sharp drop at MySpace follows a further round of major redundancies at the start of 2011 and the continued growth of Facebook, which now has 30 million registered users in the UK.According to the latest comScore figures, Rupert Murdock’s MySpace lost 10 million unique users between January and February of this year, going from 73 million to 63 million in a matter of four weeks.

This time last year, when site began the first in a series of major relaunches, MySpace attracted 95 million unique users.

Parent company News Corporation is reportedly still trying to offload the ailing social network – which had hopes to reinvent itself through its streaming service, MySpace Music and its renewed focus on entertainment content.

At the start of the year Mike Jones, MySpace’s chief executive announced that the company was making 500 staff members redundant and slashing its international operation to a skeleton staff.

The site, which is owned by News Corporation, has been struggling to keep up with Facebook for the last two years.

However, despite having made a major round of redundancies last year, which saw its US workforce reduced by 400 jobs to around 1,000 and its international operation reduced from 450 to 150 personnel, more cost cutting has been needed to make up for its big financial losses.

The troubled site, which saw its UK audience halve to 3.3 million monthly visitors in July 2010, is pinning its hopes of renewed success with a return to its music and content roots.

News Corporation bought MySpace for £373 million in 2008. The website was briefly valued at £7.7 billion when News Corp attempted to merge it with Yahoo in 2007, but it’s value- as well as it’s traffic has been heading south ever since.

Struggling MySpace is cutting almost half of its global workforce.The job cuts come as MySpace is continuing efforts to turnaround its fortunes.

The social networking website is getting rid of 500 positions, or 47% of its employees.

The announcement comes as MySpace continues to lose ground to Facebook, and as it tries to reinvent itself as an entertainment website.

MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for £372m in 2005, but it has struggled to make money for its parent company ever since.

Mike Jones, MySpace’s chief executive, said the job cuts were “tough but necessary”, and had been taken to put the website on the path towards growth and profitability.

He added: “These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product.”

Facebook has finally announced it will allow a “panic button” application on its social networking site.
The button, aimed at children and teenagers, will report abuse to the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and Facebook.

Once installed, the application appears on their homepage to say that “they are in control online”.

The launch follows months of negotiation between CEOP and Facebook, which initially resisted the idea.

Ceop, the UK government law enforcement agency tasked with tracking down online sex offenders, called for a panic button to be installed on all leading social networking sites last November.

Bebo became the first network to add the button with MySpace following suit, but Facebook resisted the change, claiming that it’s own reporting systems were sufficient.

Pressure mounted on Facebook following the rape and murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall by a 33-year-old convicted sex offender, posing as a teenage boy, who she met on Facebook.

Forty-four police chiefs in England, Wales and Scotland, signed a letter backing Ceop’s call for a panic button on every Facebook page.

The agreement to launch a child safety application is the culmination of months of negotiation between Ceop and Facebook.

Jim Gamble, Ceop’s chief executive, said in a statement: “Our dialogue with Facebook about adopting the ClickCeop button is well documented – today however is a good day for child protection.

“By adding this application, Facebook users will have direct access to all the services that sit behind our ClickCeop button which should provide reassurance to every parent with teenagers on the site.”

In addition to the online reporting application, a new Facebook/Ceop page is being set up, with a range of topics that, it is hoped, will be of interest to teenagers, such as celebrities, music and exams. It will link these subjects to questions about online safety.