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AOL’s 1000+ Employee Layoffs Looming

Frank Reed — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:26:43 +0000

Back in November we talked about AOL’s need to trim their headcount by some 2,500 people. At the time the hope was that enough would walk away from their positions to avert the need for playing the bad guy and actually firing anyone. Well, according to All Things Digital the numbers didn’t quite add up with that plan and now AOL needs to start the proactive force reduction. Call it what you will. Here is some information from the ATD article

In November, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said he needed 2,500 “volunteers” to give up their jobs, but not enough of them got the message — only 1,100 walked away on their own.

Now Armstrong is entering the second phase of his corporate slimdown, and is firing some 1,000+ employees.

AOL officials say the company has begun notifying European employees of its plans to shut down many of its offices there, and has started tapping some American workers as well. The bulk of the US layoffs are slated for this Wednesday, the company says.

This is a very sad story indeed. While we keep hearing forced words of hope and encouragement that “things have turned around” we get crap unemployment numbers in December and news like this from one of the industries that is supposedly “doing well”. Let’s be honest, you need to simply count your blessings if you are in a pocket of performance no matter what industry you call home and the online space is no different.

To underline just how different this world is the following was noted in the article written by Peter Kafka.

The company hasn’t released a breakdown of cuts by territory or by department. But I’m told that the company’s editorial/content production staff, which Armstrong and his lieutenants have been emphasizing as a priority in recent months, will not remain untouched.

This just means that the outsourcing of content production is likely the way that AOL will go more and more. Pure speculation on my part but if your strategy moving forward is creating more and more content then taking away part of that internal team just means it’s likely cheaper to outsource.

The full release can be found at ATD but the closing remarks are as follows.

We will be offering packages to impacted employees in the U.S. that will include severance, benefits and outplacement assistance, among other things.

All of our cost alignment work is about ensuring AOL’s sustainability and future success. Project Everest is the completion of phase one of AOL’s turnaround.

Interesting how they name something like this as if it were a military undertaking and the curious use of a mountain’s name that few have conquered and many more have failed to climb.

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Massive Layoffs Await MySpace Employees

Bruce Houghton — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:20:23 +0000

Layoff described by one source as ":massive" are coming to MySpace although there is no official word yet from the company. MySpace shed 5% of its staff a year ago and laid of as many as 45 more last month. But these cuts will go far deeper, according to TechCrunch and could hit several hundred. Management will inevitably blame a tough economy and plummeting ad revenue, but declining traffic is the real culprit.

Monthly unique visitors to MySpace have fallen from 64.6 million in June of 2008 to 56.8 million in May of 2009 while Facebook rose from 35.2 million to 113 million during the same period. New leadership has been brought in both at parent Fox Interactive and MySpace to turn the ship around with music as the cornerstone of the rebuilding process.

A brief personal message to the head of MySpace Music:

Good luck, Courtney. This is going to be a tough one and you have many masters,

Now is the time to get the indie and d.i.y. music communityies more involved again They helped create MySpace, and they can help make it relevent again. It won’t cost millions either. Just equal treatment and a place at the table.

And you don’t have a lot of time before Facebook finally jumps more into the music game. They really have no choice but to.

Believe it or not, a lot of us are routing for you.

Bruce Houghton

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Flickr Is Target Of Yahoo’s Latest Layoffs

Frank Reed — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:53:05 +0000

While it is no surprise that Yahoo started announcing the layoffs of between 600-700 people this week (the

number varies according t the source) there is a bit of a surprise in what business units were targeted. The biggest surprise comes from the cuts made at Flickr.

Om Malik of Gigaom gives some interesting insight into these changes by sharing the announcements he picked up from various engineers through tweets. While layoffs do seem to be a part of it there seems to also be some voluntary exits that go along with the forced reductions. While this is completely conjecture on my part, the experience I have had is that when there are voluntary exits that coincide with layoffs that is not a very good sign. Most people are happy that they didn’t get let go and move on with their jobs and just deal with the ‘survivor’s guilt’. If folks are jumping ship of their own accord in conjunction with the layoffs then you have to wonder what is actually happening there.

Malik’s statement below poses an interesting thought.

Frankly, cutting the Flickr team is a bit of a head-scratcher: That group is one of the few pockets of future-thinking tinkerers at Yahoo, especially when it comes to building new media experiences around “social objects” such as photos.

If that is truly the case then there is a talent leak occurring. Of course, the changes that have come with the Carol Bartz era could simply be too much for some to handle. It certainly isn’t the same Yahoo that existed just a few short months ago. Talent that liked a loose culture and atmosphere may be having a negative response to the decidedly different culture that is going to result from Bartz’s leadership.

As can be the case, some of the comments that follow this post exhibit the Yahoo supporters coming to bat for the new Yahoo world order while others wonder if they need to move all of heir photos from the service. There also appears to be a debate about how much, if any, money Flickr generates for the company. All good questions for sure that will only be answered with the passing of time and not opinions.

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MySpace Parent Company Laying Off 100 Jobs

Danny Brown — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:06:53 +0000

In a move that won’t surprise as many people as it would have this time last year, Fox Interactive Media has announced it will be cutting its workforce by as many as 100 jobs. Fox is the parent company of social network site MySpace as well as Photobucket and various mobile sites.

The move, which accounts for 5% of employees across the board, is another sign that MySpace and Photobucket are falling increasingly behind in the social networking battle. With Facebook and Flickr taking away much of the core audience of Fox Interactive’s babies, the signs aren’t good for Tom Anderson and his friends.

But is it such a surprise?

Despite MySpace’s redesign last year to offer a better advertising platform as well as a more open network for users to access multiple social accounts, they’ve been falling behind Facebook for a while. While there’s no denying MySpace’s popularity in the US, outside of the States it’s Facebook that’s enjoyed a wider uptake.

Recent figures from comScore show Facebook receiving almost twice as many unique visitors as MySpace worldwide. Why the difference?

MySpace seems to be suffering from the “too much of a closed niche” syndrome. Right or wrong, the network is viewed as a place solely for bands to promote their music. Facebook is more of a “social” social network with more personalization available. With the likes of iLike and blip.fm available, there’s even less reason to be on a music-dedicated site (or at least that’s the view).

Add the growing presence of Twitter and MySpace seems to be the social network that nobody is really talking about anymore.

It’s not all bad news. According to a MySpace spokeseperson, they are still looking to take on new staff over the remainder of the year. And NewsCorp, the parent company of Fox Interactive Media, isn’t exactly a slouch in the monetary department.

The question is, with monetization of social networks still a thorny issue and advertising spending down, how much money will NewsCorp be willing to throw at MySpace, and for how long?

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Yahoo Fending Off Takeover Advances

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:56:34 +0000

A low stock price has plenty of firms interested in buying Yahoo, and the company may find it impossible to say no to them.

Barring a dramatic turnaround in Yahoo’s fortunes, the company could be ripe for a takeover. A number of big names would love to have Yahoo’s traffic and services.

Among the names listed in the New York Post, AOL, AT&T, CBS, Comcast, Microsoft, Viacom and News Corp have expressed interest. So have private equity firms, salivating at Yahoo’s sub-$24 stock price.

“Jerry Yang and David Filo still don’t want to sell the struggling Internet company, but its stock price is so low that the duo may not be able to fend off a takeover offer without compromising their fiduciary duty to shareholders,” the Post said.

Time is running out for turning things around at Yahoo, which announces Q4 2007 earnings next week. Seeking Alpha said how much time depends “on fourth quarter results, how aggressive the layoffs are and what kind of guidance Yahoo issues to analysts when it reports earnings and holds a conference call with analysts on Jan. 29 to discuss its future plans.”

Rumored layoffs at Yahoo have been claimed to target from 700 to 2,500 people, but actual numbers have not been disclosed. Cuts in underperforming European operations, and possibly in China, may be looming.