RSSAOL Lays Off 20% of Work Force
By Nate Mook | Published October 15, 2007, 12:26 PM
Confirming the rumors, AOL told employees Monday that it would lay off 2,000 workers, which amounts to about 20 percent of its total global work force. 1,200 employees will lose their jobs in the United States, with 750 cut from AOL's headquarters in Dulles, Virginia.
The layoffs come as part of AOL's continued transition away from Internet service provider to advertising-driven Web services. In a letter to employees, AOL CEO Randy Falco said when he came to the company, he knew such measures would be required. Pink slips will begin arriving tomorrow, and continue for the next couple of months.
"Everyone impacted by this reduction deserves our thanks and respect for their contributions to the company. We will aid these individuals in their transition to new opportunities as much as possible, most importantly with what we believe are generous severance packages," Falco wrote.
The new round of layoffs follow a massive cutback of 5,000 positions that occurred last fall. However, Falco notes that AOL has also added "hundreds" of new employees through a number of acquisitions, including advertising companies AdTech, Third Screen Media and TACODA.
"So where is this taking AOL? Put simply, my vision for AOL is to build the largest and most sophisticated global advertising network while we grow the size and engagement of our worldwide audience," Falco said in the letter. "We're only a year and a month into our transformation, and the turnaround has been dramatic. We're now in a position to win as an advertising-supported business."
But even if its transformation to advertising succeeds, AOL's fate is still up in the air. Investors are pushing Time Warner to decide on the unit's future, with many expecting the media giant to put AOL up for sale once it stabilizes, or spin off AOL's advertising business.
omg, i just hate them more now, WHAT a******S!! 20% thats a lot of ppl
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|AOL should stay and adapt itself to modern environment. I like the old time where there was a AOL floppy disk in every flyer. After reformating, these floppies were useful for temporary storage.
Nowaday, nobody use floppy anymore. AOL should continue this "tradition" but must use USB keys instead. AOL, please put at least 1 GigaBytes of your content in an USB key and distribute these USB keys in each flyer.
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|Actually depending on the time you were working for AOL it was a couple thousand dollars. My wife and I worked in the Maitland,FL corp office in the Cancelation department. She departed early, from the program to persue local job. Then I left a month later. Had either of us stayed would have gotten a severence package. We know this because of co-workers that stayed in contact were doing a s*** before the call came down from va to pink slip everyone, couldn't get the exact figure from anyone but the were content but unhappy lossing job. This had occured when AOL announced free service with a broadband account like it is now.. Basically if you have highspeed at home goto www.aol.com and sign up as a free user
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|and you openly admit you worked in the "3 more free months, please don't leave us" department? That's brave man. First gay people, now aol employee's are coming out of the closet..what next?
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|So they continue their downward spiral into oblivion.
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|"We will aid these individuals in their transition to new opportunities as much as possible, most importantly with what we believe are generous severance packages"
so basically you're going to give them t-s***s that say "i worked for aol and all i got was this lousy t-s***."
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|"my vision for AOL is to build the largest and most sophisticated global advertising network"
Sounds terribly exciting.
You should probably rename the company Advertising On Line.
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|Is anyone truly surprised that AOL is trying to make a "transition" from being an ISP to other ventures?
How many people do you know who still uses AOL?
Considering my first exposure to the Internet was through AOL, I am still sort of sad to see the company's demise.
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|I used Prodigy too at one time, that doesn't mean I still want it around...
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|What?
No Tom to defend his glorious AOL?
Heh... Has reality finally dawned on him, perhaps?
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|"What?
No Tom to defend his glorious AOL?
Heh... Has reality finally dawned on him, perhaps?"
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Actually, Tool, I don't need to defend my "glorious AOL" from immature comments such as yours.
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|i'll take immaturity over delusion any day of the week.
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|Someone actually still uses AND likes AOL? Amazing.
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|Can't face it, eh?
...already in denial. At lest you're moving quickly through the steps. It won't be long now and you'll never look back.
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|It was only yesterday that there was only Compuserve, Prodigy and American On line.
One wanted all but it did not got it on the right track and now none
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|YOU GOT FIRED! LOL
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|If you read the full letter its somewhat amusing. They don't even mention layoffs until the fifth to last paragraph. What ever happened to mentioning the main idea in the opening paragraph? lol.
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|Let's try to make people think they still need AOL when they have a high speed connection that comes with free email like Comcast or Yahoo DSL.
They have been pulling that s*** for years.
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|better to use Gmail or Yahoo email and be independent of your ISP. That way, you can switch ISPs and keep the same email address. I have no loyalty to any ISP...they are all rip-offs in the USA.
We pay out the a** for slow connections compared to the rest of the world.
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|And if your ISP goes down the drain (AOL), at least you get to keep your e-mails.
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|so what will all of the current aol/netscapce connect/walmart connect/net zero/ect. customers who rely on AOL's bloatware to connect to the internet and what about their spam? how will people go on?
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|They are going to fail miserably at advertising and marketing. Google owns that market, microsoft can't even make a dent and they are throwing literally billions at it.
That market is way more competitive right now then is the isp market. So not exactly a good move.
The only real option would be to become completely portal based like yahoo is. That method works for them and is actually not bad.
Aol might as well be netscape at this point. In 10 years we will be saying aol who?
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|They have been switching to portal based, as they realize the ISP market is a loser at this time. However, as so many people dislike them, it will be difficult for AOL to succeed in that arena. (Not to mention they didn't seem to notice when too much advertising chased customers away in the past.)
As to Time Warner selling them off, that parent company prevented AOL from reinvesting its profits, back when it was making serious money, and at the same time gave TW execs extraordinary benefits. The executive quarters in the new TW building in NYC are reflective of that. I wouldn't want to be an AOL exec, unless I were looking for a "golden parachute."
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|Ya! Finally AOL is in its death throws! This is a long overdue prospect on this massive bloatware app.
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|Haha it can't come soon enough!
But what will all the aohell chat room users do?
Maybe soon we'll see a resurgence on alt.aol-sucks lol
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|What will they do?
Flood IRC, usenet, and public forums.
The day AOL dies, am massive crapflood of unwashed newbies will descend upon the internet.
It'll take years to recover.
Nothing new. It used to happen every September. The difference being that the numbers were smaller and the cleanup took a bit less time.
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|correction: every day following the day from that which started in september on.
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|Holy hell, man.
That hurt.
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|I am not surprised about this. I knew it was comming. I was laid off from AOL from the Tucson, AZ center. We just woke up one day and there was an e-mail from corporate telling us we no longer had jobs. There was no warrning or anything on this. These bas****s are going down and going down fast. They loose tons of customers everyday due to high speed internet and they just can't cut it anymore. The end is near for AOHell and I love watching them sink themselves into a hole that they can't get out of.
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|Jumped the shark awhile ago. The end is near.
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|ouch.
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|The writing was on the wall when they changed from icons on their toolbar for Helix from graphical ones to bland generic ones. They didn't want to have to deal with hiring graphic artists anymore. Oh well AOL. You had your day. Time to move on.
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