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Mega-ISP Update: Layoffs At AOL, Voices At MSN
rfc1394 writes: "There are two articles, the first article, in today's Washington Post, mentioned that AOL, having successfully digested Time Warner, is producing results of that digestion by additionally extruding almost 1,000 people in layoffs due to an anemic advertising market and a need to meet projected revenue goals of about $40 billion.
A separate Post article mentions how Microsoft's online service MSN is having a woman named Shelley Reynolds create a series of spoken identifiers for its online service similar to AOL's famous 'You've got mail!' and identifies El Edwards as the man who is the voice behind the phrase. The second article also tells about the effect of sound on people with respect to technology, and the payments involved (Edwards reportedly got about $100; Reynolds will receive something under six figures.)"
"You've got pink slip!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It is a sick world when companies layoff people like they are a social security number and not a person. Consumers are the very people we employ. When you layoff your employees, you lose them as a consumer as well. The economy crashes because of these companies. How do you expect people to spend more when you are laying them off. Do the math.
extruding almost 1,000 people in layoffs due to an anemic advertising market and a need to meet projected revenue goals of about $40 billion
Does getting rid of workers increase *revenue*?
creation science book
We can send emails with MPEG attachments to the sys admins of the sites brought to their knees by /. links.
"You've been slashdotted."
A man without a God is like a fish without a bicycle.
Err, "boulder". (doh!)
FWIW, I find the definition of boulder to be quite interesting: "A large rounded mass of rock lying on the surface of the ground or embedded in the soil". Why not just say "a large rounded mass of rock", and leave it at that?
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
after another hundred year government-enforced monopoly
This assumes, of course, that all the stockholders (in aggregate) care about is the results in the current quarter.
The dotbomb's stock prices were based largely upon speculation. You can't tell me that, a dotcom with P/E ratios in the thousands had stock prices based on the latest quarter's earnings. In these cases, during the "boom," shareholders (again in aggregate) were willing to forego current income in exchange for potential future market dominance.
It's a double-edged sword. If you have a killer plan, but can't get anything going in the near term, why should I invest my money with you? Similarly, if you've got your current market covered, but have no plans for growth in the future, why should anyone new invest?
In the latter case, what happens when your current market disappears (and it will)? You've got no company, and my stock is worth zilch.
A viable company has to have both a current value proposition, and a speculative function operating simultaneously, and the market will reward both.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
Edwards got $100 initially, and the WAVs sounded like they were recorded on an old Magnecord PT6 reel recorder. the original WAVs had some component of a whistle up to speed leading them all, indicating they started the tape and pointed a cue, instead of rolling tape continuously, cueing the announcements, and putting nonmagnetic leader tape in between for cleaner digitization. so when AOL 3.0 came out, they rehired Edwards to reprise the tags, and he got considerably more... I have heard something in the $25,000 range. they also got the whistles out.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"Who could have foreseen something like this happening," said Elwood Edwards. "Years ago my wife worked at AOL and asked me to record the greetings for the company. Now, as I think about the millions of AOL members who consider me as the 'mailman' of cyberspace, I'm amazed. I'm pleased that I've had a small part in making the computer world smaller and more personable."
Edwards has recently started his own business doing voice-overs for commercial and business broadcasts, radio and television. More information about Elwood Edwards and his voice-over services can be found at his Website:
http://members.aol.com/voicepro.
I think he's got the last laugh... ;-)
"You've got rich!"
-earl
Orangejello (pronounced "orahn-jzello" -- I SWEAR this is REAL!!)
Did you know he's actually a twin? The other one is Lemonjello (le-MAHN-zhe-low).
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
At $100 for his services, Mr. Edwards received $14 and change per word for "You've Got Mail," "Welcome," "Goodbye," and "File's done." This woman is not only saying "Good morning," "Good afternoon," "Good evening," and "Goodbye," she's also going to address people by NAME. According to the article, she's reading over 10,000 names, including alternate pronunciations. That's at least 10,007 words. $14 x 10,007 is over $100,000 already.
MSN is getting a bargain.
For more information, click here.
They also need to come up with some soothing, high positive energy Aquarius phrases for the following:
"This application has performed an illegal operation and will be shutdown"
"Please wait"
"Would you like to reboot now?"
"We are going to MSN today"
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Why pay someone 5+ figures for their voice when you can just copy any voice? I guess these Microsoft guys really don't read slashdot enough
3 25 3&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/31/133
El Edwards has a website with more of his voice work. Not surprisingly, it's an AOL member page. I listened to his demo briefly and I could swear I heard a faint tinge of desparation in his voice.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
>USER- *click yes*
>MSN- "Are you sure?"
>USER- *click yes again*
>MSN- "You must reboot"
Unless, of course, it contains a .vbs attachment, in which case it's automatically opened with a cheery:
"Hello! Someone send you this file to get your advice!"
(Edwards reportedly got about $100; Reynolds will receive something under six figures.)
Ed...
"You've got screwed!"
der dee der.
I cant wait for AOL to sue Micros~1 for saying "You've got mail". They'll probably go with something like "You have a new e-mail message, but you havent properly verified your key for your installation of WindowsXP. We are notifying the proper authorities. Please call us at 1-900-444-3321."
_14k4
www.poorheart.com
slashdot_at_poorheart.com
C:\PROGRAM FILES\Internet Information Server\Media\Sounds\
CodeRed.WAV "You've got worms!"
There's also this link on Yahoo News, courtesy of the world authority on layoffs ;). And of course, that has its own message boards on the subject as well.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
AOL now realizes it is becoming a monopoly in its own right, so they don't need to advertise anymore, so they don't need a marketing department, so they're laying all those guys off. Makes sense to me.
It is more likely to be the case that they are firing their technical staff. Sales and marketing generate revenue, everyone else is overhead...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
I found it odd to read an article on the internet, extolling the virtues of human voices instead of just the written word, and it contained no way to actually HEAR Shelley Reynold's voice! I mean, they could at least have provided links to somewhere on MSN's web site or even to a home page for her where people could check out her portfolio. I found myself wondering, "Just WHAT does she sound like?" but, I am NOT so interested as to sign up for MSN to find out! Can anyone provide links so we can hear what all the talk is about?
I'll sign up for the ISP that starts geek voice-overs.
/var/mail/you is empty-- get some friends!"
"Dude,
AOL would offend far fewer people if they just had some honest commercials.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
"Do the voice again! Do the voice again!" - Drunken bar patron badgering El
http://windows.scares.us
Does it seem odd to anyone else that this article about the new voice for MSN is about three times longer than the one about the DMCA and Dimitri from the other day?
I guess we can see where the press' priorities are.
I see it like this: with the help of the merger, AOL now realizes it is becoming a monopoly in its own right, so they don't need to advertise anymore, so they don't need a marketing department, so they're laying all those guys off. Makes sense to me.
:)
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Hey well maybe people will not use MSN because you'll have to download 10,000 2MB .wav files just so you can hear your name... then again maybe not and the hard drive people will again make a killing ... ahhhh people are sheep :)
P.S. Before you flame the 2MB thing is a joke: although you never know with M$
The Anti-Blog
"It picks up a certain audio decibel [...]"
What kind of non-sentence is that? Isn't that like saying that a bouler has "a certain mass kilogram"?
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
AOL: "You've got mail!"
MSN/Win9x: "You've got mail! Now go tell your friends to use MSN!.
MSN/WinXP: "You've got mail! Click here to pay $0.35 to read the first 1024 characters..."
Got Rhinos?
"I honestly believe I have enough positive energy ? this is totally an Aquarius-type deal ? if I record these things thinking very positively, I kind of believe metaphysically it cheers people up. They'll get a positive hit," Reynolds says.
I think Ms. Reynolds has taken a few too many positive hits herself.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I remember when Microsoft used to pay college professors only $200 to talk about them.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Probably nobody, I mean, "yuulghvv gllk mmallll" probably violates some parental control setting...
The earlier poster just grazed the surface of this issue. A key financial percentage that analysts like to look at is revenue or'Earnings per Employee' as an indicator of employee productivity as it reflects good management practices and corporate health.
The issue is not how many employees are being laid off, but what services are being outsourced. Oursourcing services such as call centers and HR, as well as IT infastructure management, etc. look on paper the same as layoffs, in that such outsourcing reduces the number of 'Regular Fulltime Employees' thus improving the revenue percentage shown as Earnings per Employee. This is a common practice and we shouldn't be suprised that AOL is making use of them.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
MSN- "You've got mail, are you sure you want to read it?"
USER- *click yes*
MSN- "Are you sure?"
USER- *click yes again*
MSN- "You must reboot"
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Its what you call stock value manipulation. Basically you fire people to make the profits seem larger and hence get high stock value. From I understand CISCO tried the same thing and it back fired on them, ie the stock value still took a hit. This is one of the problems with public companies, and probably the reason it can go bad after the IPO, since they concentrate on stock value instead of the product.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Edwards reportedly got about $100; Reynolds will receive something under six figures
James Earl Jones got $1mil (I think?) just to say "CNN" for the CNN network comercials....
Man I wish I had a voice speaking job....
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
haven't MSN users always been hearing voices?
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
Any idea whether this will have an effect on Mozilla or the Open Directory Project?
Tim
During the boom, even companies that didn't want to grow (that is, wanted to build up existing markets instead of trying to rush into new ones and buy companies, etc.) were pretty much forced into it by shareholder expectations. And now shareholder expectations are working the other way - even solvent companies with working business models are compelled to cut back spending and lay people off, just because that's what "analysts" want to see.
And it will only get worse.
Hopefully this will help illustrate why half-arsed attempts by ISPs to provide 'content' to their subscribers are to be avoided. It might have looked like a good idea a couple of years ago when the advertising market was buoyant and share prices were based on - well, who knows, but having some trite 'portal' probably helped to boost them further.
But if even specialist content companies like Salon - whose only purpose is to provide content and make money from adverts - find it hard to survive, what's the point in service providers wasting resources on that too?
An ISP provides a certain level of service, for which you pay a fixed monthly subscription - which isn't subject to the whims of the advertising market. What's wrong with sticking to a tried and tested formula?
(Okay, so this is AOL, and they feel they have to do *something* to exploit those users who don't change their browser home page... but I still wish they wouldn't bother.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Goes without saying that any voiceovers or "sound and technology" as computer scientist call them, are very expensive. Female voiceovers because of the excruciatingly small number of women in the business of speaking in public, are the most expensive. You always hear stories about how Julia Roberts commanded the highest fee in the history of acting to come out of her 10 year "maternity leave". Well voiceovers are no different. When was the last time you heard a female voiced movie trailer?
Good grammatical point indeed. :) :) Corrections and details welcome!
I fear I still have to correct the physics of it. The decibel unit isn't a unit per se; it's 1/10th of a bel. A bel is a logarithmic quantity: it means you express a unit logarithmically. In effect, a 60 decibels (6 bels) sound is ten times louder than a 50 decibels sound. So, the words 'audio decibel' aren't that stupid.
Now, my physics courses are far behind me, but I believe the 'real' unit behind sound is joules, used to express the energy of the mass of air displaced by a sound. Or something like that anyway.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Now you see who they've been aiming their software at for so long.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.