Today, CBS Interactive is laying off people across several of its properties, I’ve confirmed with the company. CBS is not saying which divisions or how many people are affected. It is positioning the layoffs as part of the integration process it began six months ago when it bought CNET for $1.8 billion. But it is not just the CNET businesses that are being cut.
I’ve also confirmed that earlier today employees at social music site Last.FM were let go. CBS bought Last.fm in 2007 for $280 million. One source puts the number of layoffs at as many as 40 people, mostly from LAst.FM’s London HQ, which has a total staff of 95. A spokesperson for CBS Interactive says that number is inaccurate on the high side, but won’t provide the correct number. In any case, it is likely a small fraction of the overall number of employees being laid off across CBS Interactive. Update: CBS says the number of Last.fm layoffs is less than 20, which would put it at about 20 percent.
Last.fm never really became a big money maker from what I can gather, and all of those engineers and other staff members are not cheap. Even after a redesign last July, growth has been flat. According to comScore, Last.fm had 9.2 million global unique visitors in October, a 6 percent increase from July. Imeem is still much more popular, with 22.1 million global visitors. And in the U.S., even Pandora has a bigger audience (4.97 million uniques in November, versus 2.75 million, see chart below).
If you know which other CBS Interactive divisions are going through layoffs today or the total number of layoffs, leave us a tip and we will add it to our Layoff Tracker. Update 2: There were also layoffs at CBS Sports where, a tipster who is a former employee tells us, “the entire accounting department” was lost, as well as jobs in Database Applications and Data Warehouse .
The Last.fm staff learned about the layoffs a little more than an hour ago. Below is a screenshot from one of their friends, showing their reaction on Facebook. That first status message is in Swedish and says, “better start planning for the future.” Update 3: Matt Hillman says that his status message below was not related to the layoffs.
See all
Post
In Dallas, CBS switched formats of a talk radio station Live 105.3 to The Fan all sports talk and fired the top afternoon rated show (out of all formats) in the 3-7 time slot.
Thanks for that link, tonique. No surprise but good to have confirmation. As they like to do, Techcrunch is trying to put a positive spin on things. They picked the most positive stats they could find on Last.fm’s usage stats - comScore rather than other trackers, U.S.-only, not International - and only showing the “total unique visitors” stat, which is unreliable (especially the way comScore computes it) and not the metric that companies really look at to guage their performance. Last.fm’s meaningful stats have been way down - more than 30%.
Last.fm’s redesign has bombed and this is the fallout everyone has been expecting. The only surprise is what took CBS so long. Let’s hope that if people had to get the axe (always a shame) it was the idiots who ignored the customer feedback in Beta testing and went ahead with the redesign they KNEW would be hated by their customers and the “Staff” and “Moderators” who were such assholes to Last.fm customers who complained about the redesign after it went live.
MONSTER LAYOFF LIST!
http://layoffdaily.com/
Sad.
You should be ashamed of yourself for displaying individuals like that.
word.
With the way things are going in the economy, I am not surprised at all. There are going to probably be number of larger companies/corporation doing playing the layoff game very soon.
I know, right? I mean, it’s not like I just saw CBS advertising IT jobs on Craigslist two weeks ago.
Seconding Ingrid here. Not so respectful to put individuals under the spotlight on such an occasion. I know Facebook is somewhat public but I doubt they would have agreed to that in the first place, had they been asked for permission…
It is not meant to be disrespectful. These are public, or at least semi-public, utterances that show a human reaction to what is too often a faceless event. Layoffs have very real human consequences. It does serve a purpose to shed light on that.
Everyday people sometimes get caught up in the news, but that doesn’t mean we should pretend they don’t exist.
Ok, firstly, Facebook statuses aren’t public in any way. They default to going to your friends.
Secondly, the publishing of names adds *nothing* to the story. At the very least, you should have blurred/removed the names & icons.
Thirdly, your readers seem to think it’s a bad idea. Listen to them.
There are times when publishing of names is in the public interest. In this case, it clearly isn’t - it’s just an invasion of privacy.
well I would love to know how you got your hands on those “public” pictures and statuses…
And if you really want to put a face on the event, why don’t you take some journalist’s ethics with you and go ask these people for permission and statements?
That would have been nice. I already asked for this to be taken down as it is an invasion of privacy for all mentioned and as my update had nothing to do with this (it was purely assumedby TC), it is irrelevant. I thought they might have been above this… alas, I was wrong.
Anything you broadcast on Facebook is not private. If you think otherwise, you are delusional. I understand Matt is upset about this, and I updated the post to note that his comment is actually about a different matter. The reasons I didn’t take it down are:
1. He refused to answer my questions when I was trying to get his side of the story and ascertain the facts in this case. So I posted his clarification and left it at that.
2. Regardless of the situation with Matt, this screenshot was sent to me by an acquaintance of his and the other two people pictured. It is partly how that person learned of the layoffs, partly how the information got out, and thus it is relevant. The other two statements are indeed reactions to the layoffs.
3. Nowhere do I say that these people in the image were laid off. That is an assumption being made by some of the readers here. All I know for sure is that they were listed as employees of Last.fm on a page that has since been taken down. The image reflects their postings on Facebook at the time the layoffs were announced. It is similar to posting a Twitter stream related to a news event. Some of the streams are relevant, some are not, but as a whole it provides extra, human, context.
4. That photo is not even what Matt looks like.
“4. That photo is not even what Matt looks like.”
Oh I don’t know… Give it 40 years or so!
The fact still remains that permission was not acquired from the individuals’ who facebook status you displayed. Facebook can be set so that only friends can access such information, the fact that you went through an ‘acquaintance’ of these people just shows that you could not readily access this and SHOULD have asked for permission BEFORE it was published. To do anything other than this is disgraceful.
I’m guessing the fast-acquired celebrity of having their faces singled out as “the ones who got fired” just made their day even better, thanks!
Explains a lot, I went for an interview there for the ‘Lead Web Developer’ role in October, the response was that they felt I was a good match however they wouldn’t be making a decision until the new year due to economic worries.
Hearts out to all the people there who are loosing their jobs.
P.S. bad show on the screen grab TC
Just what we need more layoffs.
What on earth do you think you’re doing showing people’s private Facebook statuses on a public blog?
I agree; I believe that you should blur out the names and faces and reupload it. Of course, everything you do on facebook and the internet is potentially public, but I think that journalists and bloggers should respect others’ privacy when there is no good reason not to.
Testing Facebook connect on Techcrunch.
would these layoffs be better or worse without the CBS acquistion? hmmm…
This is people’s lives you’re displaying to the entire world. What makes you think that’s a good idea. Journalism etiquette–
Agreed, not cool.
another test
I hope this doesn’t affect “How I met your mother”
One more test…sorry!
Ouch! I’m sorry to hear that… I do enjoy Last.FM - for stats and gig tracking it’s the bomb!
Howcome imeem had such a big deep?
i mean dip
Layoffs? Wouldn’t Moonves’ $150MM comp package pay for all of those peoples’ salaries for five years? Broken company…
OK, maybe you didn’t hear it first BUT this down cycle is going to be FAR WORSE than even the people that think it’s going to be devastating believe. Huh?
It’s not that I am a pessimist, quite the contrary, I believe this cycle will eventually drive more innovation and create more wealth than the last. That said, it is going to be a painful ride.
Why? Because Americans are going to do something that everyone thinks we won’t. We are going to stop consuming beyond our means. Because we are going to do that in large numbers the result will be a steep decline in aggregate demand. If we get this steep decline in demand then all bets are off with respect to who ends up in the “dead pool.”
It won’t be just the big three automakers.
what’s with the US only graphs and stats? Sure Pandora is big in the US, but it’s not even available abroad.
You’ve got global readers too - please try to avoid being so US-centric
it would such a shame if last.fm ever went away. it’s not perfect, but it’s a pretty great service.
Any news if people on the west coast got let go? I hear the whole Entertainment and Social media division is a big mess, with the managers too busy spending cash and not actually making results. Guesss what people - social media is only profitable if you’re selling a startup; as a business direction it is a big fat zero. Do you really think you’ll make money because people want to chat about JAG on CBS.com? Most people who watch it are too old to use computers!
The winter is getting colder!
They should add themselves to http://layofftalent.com/
so bad
So basically you decided to keep Matt’s picture up because he didn’t do what you wanted him to do, answer your questions.
- “He refused to answer my questions” MAYBE he didn’t want to answer your questions because he didn’t want his layoff to be YOUR NEWS
- “ascertain the facts?” really? is that what you were doing? Interesting that Kafka, along with a number of reputable sites, was able to “ascertain the facts” through the statement cbs issued. Even though it didn’t address all details in question, they were fine with that. YOU got GREEDY and decided it wasn’t enough.
- “so I posted his clarification and left it at that” the clarification you posted should have been removing or blurring the facebook screen shots.
You’ve done this really badly mate. Dreadful way to go about things.
Good luck to the last.fm lot.
I wonder if Erick Schonfeld would have liked it if his own status update had been exposed without his consent in a similar situation. It’s worth thinking about this before publishing private information merely for sensationalist purposes