Ninemsn restructure leads to staff exits
Troubled portal Ninemsn has swung the axe with a series of staff redundancies following a restructure. The company issued a statement saying:
“Ninemsn has identified areas within our business requiring acceleration, de-emphasis or integration to ensure the ongoing market leadership, operational efficiency and continued growth of our company. Given this organisational restructure, a number of staff have been impacted through revised positions, promotions or leaving the organisation.”
According to Digital Media magazine , the staff were “given their marching orders” on Monday.
The departures are a radical contrast to last year, when the company suffered from significant problems in preventing its senior staff from walking out.
But it comes against a backdrop of a media slowdown in every medium. As Mumbrella reported earlier this week, there are reports that all of the major portals are struggling to shift inventory for February.
Update: The Australian reports that Joe Pollard, boss of the “fading” venture, was in crisis meetings with joint venture partner Microsoft yesterday.
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ninemsn are a bit like the US auto industry – they kept producing the same products, and pursuing the same outmoded strategies (and admittedly made lots of money in boom times) but didn’t innovate or try and change the market. Relying on Hotmail traffic is not a long-term effective strategy, and I really think they missed an opportunity to take advantage of their pre-eminent position in the marketplace by creating new products, or making their sites into compelling destinations for consumers. Their cross-media strategy is messy, as well. It’s too early to call, but unless they come up with some new ideas (or leverage some of the cool MSN products) I think they may be heading the same way as Alta Vista and Yahoo!
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