As any industry analyst will tell you, since its two journalists were returned from North Korea, Current.tv has been woefully overstaffed. The company simply doesn’t require that many employees to edit YouTube clips for its audience of jobless hipster doucheballs who have fallen asleep in front of the television.
And so it wasn’t entirely surprising this week when TechCrunch reported on a ‘bloodbath‘Â at the company, with 80 people being laid-off across all departments.
Current’s COO Joanna Drake Earl (who is herself three separate people) insisted to Leena that the layoffs aren’t a ‘cost-cutting measure’ but rather a ’shift in programming strategy’. In most other companies, this would be classic corporate bullshit, but in Current’s case Joanna, Drake and Earl might actually have a point. After all, by creating 80 new unemployed people – unemployed people who actually know what Current is – they’ve just doubled the target audience for their programming. How’s that for a convenient truth?
More layoffs of the week: It gets worse
Even outside of Current, it’s been a pretty horrible week with layoffs, layoffs and more layoffs. Adobe has Photoshopped out 9% of its workforce, Sprint is disconnecting 2,500, EA has decided that 1,500 of employees have no more continues and the Guardian / Guardian.co.uk continues paying the karmic price for axing my NSFW column with 100 more losses across editorial and commercial departments. Ouch.
Still, it’s alright for some of the week: Michael Arrington edition
With so many people losing their jobs just before the holiday season, it’s important that those of us who still have a regular paycheck are seen to be working hard – and not rubbing our luck in the faces of those less fortunate. I’m doing my part, of course, with my sympathetic handling of the Current layoffs, and it’s nice to see that Arrington is keeping his nose to the grindstone too. Let’s take a quick look at how the hardest-working man in technology spent his week, according to his posts on TechCrunch…
- Monday: Celebrated FishVille (the Zynga game that Mike regularly complains has sapped his free time) being returned to Facebook after Zynga agreed to pull all advertising offers from the game until further notice.
- Tuesday:Â Dicked around in Road tested a Tesla all day, before spending the evening dicking around on reviewing new vampire game, City of Eternals.
- Wednesday:Â The Crunchies are Coming!
- Thursday: Spent the day catching up on parts 2-4 of the brilliant Sales Guy vs Web Dude videos. Oh yeah.
- Friday: Realised that he’s been so busy during the week that he hadn’t weighed in on Erick’s reporting of Rupert Murdoch’s threat to remove his news sites from Google’s index.
Phew, it’s tough at the top.
MG’s news meme of the week: Movie tie-in edition
Eagled-eyed readers might have noticed that while Mike was living it up in the Tesla, MG was having a little fun of his own. Perhaps inspired by his story on how Netflix is about to make a deal with the devil to prevent its subscribers from getting hold of new release DVDs, the former Hollywood-dweller went into movie-reference overload.
After the Netflix story (illustrated by a still from Dumb and Dumber) came a movie-title-packed post about Apple adding a ton of HD movie content to its iTunes store, a story on Apple ‘Bathing’ in profits complete with a still of Julia Roberts in the bath from Pretty Woman, a 2000-word treatise on Twitter’s new retweet functionality that was basically one huge Forest Gump reference and – most blatant of all – a review of the new site launched to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Fight Club.
Of course, only a cynic would suggest that, with all the layoffs in the Valley, MG might be laying the groundwork for a return to his old career in tinsel town.
Victory continues to be ours of the week: ScamVille, part 3,983
To be fair, if TechCrunch has been having a little fun this week, it’s only because we deserve it. After all, we’re still riding high on the back of our huge and unequivocal victory in the ScamVille scandal. Sure, the occasional bitter commentator has found fault in some of our reporting in the past. But even they can’t deny that, through our commitment to exposing Internet scams in all their many guises, TechCrunch has single-handedly sparked a chain of events that will save the Internet industry, and by extension the world.
Hyperbole? Pft – let’s look at a few more of this week’s headlines…
- The ScamVille Lawsuit: Facebook, MySpace, Zynga And More Face Possible Class Action Suit
- SnapNames Gets Hit With Class Action Suit Over Shill Bidding
- Next Week: U.S. Senate Committee Hearing On Aggressive Internet Sales Tactics
Case closed. You’re welcome, the world.
PlayD’oh of the week: Social gaming, ftw; traditional gaming, less so
It’s Friday, so let’s end with some good news, particularly for our poor wounded friends in the social gaming arena.
Playdom – responsible for some of the most popular MySpace games – has raised a seriously impressive $43 million round from New Enterprise Associates, Rick Thompson, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, on a $260 million pre-money valuation. Woo!
Meantime, over in the UK, Steve O’Hear reports that Playfire – a social network for gamers – has raised $2.1m in Series A funding, lead by Atomico Ventures (Niklas and Janus from Skype), in conjunction with Bebo founder Michael Birch, LastMinute.com’s Brent Hoberman and others. Yay!
Finally, not to be outdone by all the other Play-whatever companies, Playfish has finally completed its acquisition by Electronic Arts for $300m in cash and stock, plus a $100 million earnout. This is of course a fantastic deal, not just for Playfish but also for Electronic Arts who immediately celebrated their new prize (and their decent second quarter earnings) by….
...laying off 1,500 employees.
Oh.
Commenter of the week: Outsourced to Arrington edition
And finally, with so much time on his hands this week, Mike even took over my job in finding this week’s best TechCrunch commenter. In fact, he went one step further by actually replying to her. Thanks, Mike!
Have a good weekend – I’m off to get fired.
michael micheal micheal…
Haha Paul Carr is awesome. Never stop posting Paul!
Is this a weekly column? I’m going to have to remember to stay sober long enough on Friday evenings to read this.
(if it’s not, it should be.)
It is.
For the past two weeks it’s been published on Monday morning but Friday seemed like a more logical day.
See your point, but.
Preferred the “last week on Techcrunch” feel of the Monday morning edition.
Felt less like a wrap-up than a warm up for the week’s news to come.
Paul, mate, something is amiss here… No bar / pub fights this week?
Have another pint…
Michael is my hero!
fantastic post paul.
Nice recap Paul! I’m starting to like you here!
Any post with MG as the author and (Twitter/Apple/Facebook) also in the title, I don’t click anymore.
It’s not that I’m lazy…I just don’t care :->
+1
ScamVille: victory is ours, saving the Internet industry?
Is there anything less gratifying than a journalist self-gratifying?
“TechCrunch has single-handedly sparked a chain of events that will save the Internet industry, and by extension the world.”
You really didn’t spot a grain of irony in that, did you? And people ask me why I hate anonymous commenters.
My normally fine-tuned bullsh!t radar might have been out on this but I figured you may have actually been serious.
It was, after all, a post ostensibly about self-promotion.
Great picture in the article … I saw the movie …. appropriate scene choice … I get it!
Paul Carr is a brilliant writer. Love the daggers wraped in humor. I find myself liking everything Paul writes…the subject doesn’t seem to matter.
I just hope I am never at the wrong end of his sardonic wit.
Another great post Paul. Maybe that’s why us Brits always get to play the bad guy in Hollywood.
Keep it coming.
If you blog about tech does that mean you are in tech?
“Current’s COO Joanna Drake Earl (who is herself three separate people)”
First time I have lolzed at a TC article in a while. Looking forward to more
I think the IDEa of a weekly revews is cool.
But perhaps it would be good to have :
- an icon-image for this theme
- an icon that is well reconisable by readers
Just an idea.
Thierry
putting your head to the grindstone is where you’ll find the cutting edge of tech. using your nose will only get you bloogers.
Off to get fired?? Tell Mike to give you a big fat raise and a holiday bonus!
wait wait wait so you are going to be posting the weekly round up on fridays now (seems more logical. i didn’t like reading the other two posts on mondays)? thanks for the edited adition paul, and stop reminding us that you’re gonna get fired. you’re not gonna get fired. we like you here oon tc. a little bit of quality thoughts and great laughs. it’s a good mix.
glad to see the results the scamville posts have produced.
TC, now THAT’s journalism.
Look at the print world where you had the muckrackers. But the print world is dying, and the digital reporting world needs to not forget about the great things they can accomplish.
Keep it up!
A great, funny but true article. Thanks.