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Layoffs Hit Washington Post Mobile Team
imac.usr writes "The Huffington Post is reporting that The Washington Post has gone through yet another round of layoffs, but this time instead of cutting editorial positions, they're apparently cutting IT positions, specifically in the mobile applications department. According to Washington, DC media blog FishbowlDC, 54 people, including the General Manager of Mobile and Director of Mobile Products, were given the axe on Valentine's Day. A particularly damning quote from the FishbowlDC article: '"[CIO and VP Shaliesh] Prakash thinks these are 'inefficiencies' – that is the exact word he uses for human beings who are not useful according to him," said a source who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "Get rid of experienced people to save money, under the garb of streamlining is the new trend inside the Post."' Given that mobile products seem somewhat more likely to succeed than printed newspapers, this seems a strange decision at best."
I wonder if CmdrTaco is the source.
Was Malda given the chop? He was supposed to be some kind of Web 2.0 guru for them/ If they gave up on that mirage, his position is precarious. He's unlikely to be welcomed back here as editor. Though we will probably see more of him as a contributor as you cant spend all your life consuming drugs and hookers..
There are many things in Net 2.0 that are very popular, but that do not necessarily have utility or profitability.
For example, just about everyone and their dog (on the internet, no one can tell you're a werewolf) uses Facebook, and before it MySpace, Friendster, Digg, Reddit, etc. But do these services have a working business model? It seems they all flounder at that point.
It seems to me that most Net 2.0 firms have an unsustainable business model, which is:
1. Get really popular.
2. ???
3. Sell company -> Profit!
In the same way, we know we've got a lot of people who like using their phones to tweet, click, troll, sext, etc. But is this actually useful? And other than the cell phone providers, is anyone making money off this with a sustainable model?
Futurist Traditionalism
Actually that's pretty spot-on. I hate how every news organization today has to have its own downloadable app. "Welcome to the South Butt-hole Sentinel! Click OK to download our app! Or [typesize=0.001]click here to continue to site."
I don't want to have a whole menagerie of single-site news apps of varying quality and usability. Aggregator apps such as Currents and Flipboard are a step in the right direction, but they leave me cold as well; they're weird, they pick and choose articles they think I want to see (usually off the mark) and a lot of the periodical's value is lost in translation. Among other things, the talkbacks are stripped out and these days, I find the talkbacks more entertaining and, sometimes more informative, than the original article.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Here's the result cascading into anything connected with it & the "holy dollar" in publicly held companies (no small wonder Micheal Dell's attempting to BUY BACK the company he started - my guess is, even HE realizes it's a road to eventual ruin, & allows the WORST "virus of the spirt" as I call it, in greed, to take over everything).
* "Welcome to the WORLD, in 2013", folks...
More like welcome to the world of working for a for profit business at any time in history. The Washington Post needs to make money or it goes out of business. There are three ways the mobile platforms model can help with that: (1) They could contribute to the subscriber base (2) they could sell ads (3) They could create buzz about stories and link to stories that sell ads.
To pay 54 people including a CIO and a General Manager, you'd need to be generating a lot of money from the mobile business -- more than $5M per year. Obviously top management at the WP took a look at how much money they could possibly be generating out of their mobile business and concluded that it wasn't generating that much money and didn't have any prospect of generating that much money any time soon, nor a plan to do so.