The World Hasn't Ended... Yet

Yes, the world hasn't ended.  The economy is still not completely in the toilet.   But some early signs are coming...

- Google had a layoff - the big G has laid off 100 HR folks.  Makes sense, since they aren't hiring.  they've also shut down their recently opened Austin office.

- Steve Jobs is sick, and has taken 6 months off.  Apple stock got clobbered as a result.  And suddenly the prospect of a religion without its chief prophet has become all too real

Ouch.

Breaking News - Carol Bartz New Yahoo CEO!

Interesting stuff - Carol Bartz, Autodesk's  limo-riding,  performance-enhancing former CEO is going to be Jerry Yang's replacement.

Good to finally have a decision.  More on this later

Not Even One Laptop Per Child

OLPC, or One Laptop Per Child, has laid off half its workforce (~32 people).  The remaining employees will also probably get pay cuts.

Ouch

LiveJournal Dying

LiveJournal today announced a "restructuring" in their US (San Francisco) office.  All product and engineering team members are gone, top to bottom.  Only technical operations (keep those servers humming, boys!), legal, admin and customer service teams are staying... as of now. 

SUP, the Russian internet startup that bought LiveJournal in 2007 for $30 Million, will probably start consolidating all tasks in Russia.  LiveJournal is quite popular, but just like all other social networks (except MySpace), has failed to figure out how to make money.

LiveJournal is just the latest social network to start going under.  Some others I've covered (a sample of the pain in social networks) are:

• Hi5,  which represents the second tier of social networks after Facebook and Myspace
• LinkedIn, representing the business social networks
• Sneakerplay, representing the ultra-niche networks
• Ning, representing the overly funded network enablers
• Zivity, representing the adult social networks  (yep, it really is a downturn)
• And, of course, Facebook's theoretical value falling (theoretically) from $15 Billion to $1.5 Billion. 

Quite painful, unfortunately. 

Alcoa Cutting Jobs, Production Output, Facilities

The economic downturn means that basic commodities manufacturing and production is getting seriously affected.  Alcoa, which produces Aluminum, is making drastic changes.  Among all the reasons - Automotive production is falling drastically, and there is a surfeit of inventory throughout the Automotive supply chains.

• Cutting output by 18% - 750K tonnes/year
• Reducing 2009 capital expenditures by 50%
• Cutting 13 - 15% of workforce (13,500 - 15,000 jobs)
• Salary and hiring freezes.  Contract positions being eliminated
• Selling four business units that don't deal with core products, and that should bring in about $100MM   (about the amount these four lost in 2008 - a net loss of ~6%):
• automotive wheels
• electric systems
• global foil
• transportation products

Alcoa had gone through a round of layoffs around June - August, which were a little prior to a full realization of the economic conditions hitting the world. 

Page Rank Increase For My Blog

A Page Rank increase of +1, bringing it to 2, for  Capoeirista,  my cover-all blog.  Ho-hum.

Whats New At Cuil?

Last time we checked,  Cuil had lost their VP of Product, Louis Monier.  How are they doing now?

Unfortunately, their traffic doesn't seem to be doing too well.  They botched their launch slightly;  they had great PR, got a lot of traffic, couldn't handle it, and didn't have the best results for searches. 

Cuil does still have a following.  But as the two charts from Quantcast and Compete show, below, their current strategy of incremental improvements has not won back their launch audience yet.

Quantcast

Compete