In an effort to control costs and consolidate products, MySpace parent company Fox Interactive Media is shuttering the SpringWidgets (which launched in 2006) and Flektor (acquired in 2007) widget platforms. Twenty five employees are affected.
Ten employees at Flektor’s Culver City offices will have the opportunity to interview for positions at MySpace. It’s not clear if SpringWidget’s fifteen employees, located in Atlanta, Georgia, have been laid off or will be able to find new jobs within MySpace. Both sites are set to be shut down, says a FIM representative.
SpringWidgets has evolved into a platform that MySpace uses to create widgets for advertisers. Flektor is a Slide and RockYou like widget platform that lets users create slideshows with photos and other small applications.
Earlier this year MySpace let 5% of employees go (under a new performance plan). More recently they stopped giving employees free lunches.
It’s important to note that Fox Interactive Media has 1,700 or so employees, so the layoffs aren’t material. This looks more like a house cleaning of products that don’t deserve to be branded and maintained separately from MySpace.
Flektor and SpringWidgets are added to the deadpool.
I am very sorry to hear this.
I wonder what will happen to all the excess engineers in California. How much savings does a typical engineer have in the U.S.?
I know there is not much social protection like in Europe, so how long can someone support themselves if they are laid off?
In California, unemployment benefits are determined through an esoteric table, but for someone earning an engineer’s salary will probably be around $450/week.
Of course, at an engineer’s salary, it would be completely irresponsible not to save some of your own income against such shocks. Most of the engineers I know in that area have around a year’s living expenses squirreled away (perhaps less if they invested imprudently).
To learn more about Islam or to find out how it is the best religion, visit http://www.isla...cb.blogspot.com
Wow! Thanks Imad, your comment is so insightful and relevant to the topic at hand. I eagerly look forward to learning more about Islam and how it is the best religion. Truly.
you forgot to deadpool this…
Flektor had amazing potential. Their products were visually appealing and easy to work with. I hope FIM will get to keep a lot of the code and designs.
yeah i know I just found that site like a week ago.. i loved it. and i cant find anything else like it. im kinda mad.. but yeah i hope that they do keep everything and make something similar to it.
Where are they in Culver City?
http://kepler.s...Number=C2876604
Found it. Flektor is 1.7 mi – about 5 mins from me according to Google. On National. Wow. Small world.
Too bad they don’t do mobile.
SpringWidgets was a terrible platform. Good riddance.
Michael,
This is Don (formerly) from SpringWidgets.
It’s sad but true that the SpringWidgets team has been laid off. Sue and I, who lead the team have been spending the last week since we left personal notifying developers and clients about the demise of the platform and I was about to send up a note to the site, but since you have found out, I guess this is probably the best place to put it:
Friends,
It saddens me to have to announce that SpringWidgets is closing. The last couple of years have been amazing for myself and the rest of the team here at SpringWidgets. We have had the opportunity to do some truly great work with some amazing people throughout MySpace and the rest of Fox Interactive Media, from the world’s best agencies and brands to the tens of thousands of bloggers and website owners who all helped us serve billions of widgets to hundreds of thousands of people around the world since this product began.
Providing all of you with a platform to share your thoughts, your content, your creativity, your brands, your blogs, and everything else that you could put in a widget has been a high point in our lives and we wish that we could keep this going forever, but all good things must come to an end.
The team and I have all gone home, the computers are shut down and the doors are closed, but your widgets will live on for just a little longer. I have been informed that the platform will continue to operate through the remainder of January, after which all 75,000+ widgets and the website will go dark. If you have a widget in our system, please gather any metrics data you wish to by then as I can’t guarantee how long it will be available.
Again, it has been a pleasure and we look forward to creating something bigger and better sometime in the future.
Thanks,
The (former) SpringWidgets team
By the way, of you need a crack team of Social Media specialists contact me through Facebook. We didn’t do just widgets, we also produced things like MySpace for iPhone and a lot of forward thinking social media R&D for the past 3 years.
I loved SpringWidgets…sad to see them go.
I personally didn’t use SpringWidgets much, and I don’t like it either… But I am very sad about Flektor. It was powerful service that I used a lot, and I will miss it very much… There are some similar services but…
Too bad.
mike giving the classic last rights sermon. he’ll have a lot of undertaker work this year.
DeadLocator.com – game over
Its unfortunate…never a good sign to see companies go out of business…I really liked some of the team from Spring Widgets…good luck guys in your future life.
Michael,
This is Don (formerly) from SpringWidgets.
It’s sad but true that the SpringWidgets team has been laid off. Sue and I, who lead the team have been spending the last week since we left personally notifying developers and clients about the demise of the platform and I was about to send up a note to the site, but since you have found out, I guess this is probably the best place to put it:
Friends,
It saddens me to have to announce that SpringWidgets is closing. The last couple of years have been amazing for myself and the rest of the team here at SpringWidgets. We have had the opportunity to do some truly great work with some amazing people throughout MySpace and the rest of Fox Interactive Media, from the world’s best agencies and brands to the tens of thousands of bloggers and website owners who all helped us serve billions of widgets to hundreds of thousands of people around the world since this product began.
Providing all of you with a platform to share your thoughts, your content, your creativity, your brands, your blogs, and everything else that you could put in a widget has been a high point in our lives and we wish that we could keep this going forever, but all good things must come to an end.
The team and I have all gone home, the computers are shut down and the doors are closed, but your widgets will live on for just a little longer. I have been informed that the platform will continue to operate through the remainder of January, after which all 75,000+ widgets and the website will go dark. If you have a widget in our system, please gather any metrics data you wish to by then as I can’t guarantee how long it will be available.
Again, it has been a pleasure and we look forward to creating something bigger and better sometime in the future.
Thanks,
The (former) SpringWidgets team
@d
have teamflektor contact teamlocator asap.
TeamLocator.com – a united front.
In an economy like this I suggest;
http://amazonbe...eal-of-day.html
and
http://iwantdot...m.blogspot.com/
mike giving the classic last rights sermon. he’ll have a lot of undertaker work this year.
DeadLocator.com – game over
http://kisalt.us/590/
More layoffs at MySpace today
i can’t believe this, just as soon as i found this – and its awesome – its gone. so super annoyed and frustrated.
what else is available to me? any suggestions.
Yeah omg gaby i just found this website like 3 days before it went offline.. i was like this site is freakin awesome.. then i come home to make so more stuff and they took it offline, and yeah people tell me to try Slide.com and Rockyou.com.. but they suck compared to Flektor.
I find this story most surprising, because I just went to
http://www.springwidgets.com/
The site seems to still be alive, and it’s April 15, well past January.
@Joseph,
Allen Hurff, while letting the Atlanta MySpace office (SpringWIdgets) go, told us that support would end at the end of January. He then gave Sue and I (the management team of SpringWIdgets) the opportunity to work for free for a week while we notified our users of the date and closed the office, which we did. The rest of the SW team was told to be out by end of day.
I’m on @synstelien on Twitter if you would like to know more.
It appears that they finally pulled the plug on the servers yesterday. Not a functioning SpringWidget to be found anywhere any more!