Lycos Cuts 20% of US Staff

[Brett_Tabke]

Reuters [reuters.com]

Terra Lycos SA TRLY.O TRR.MC on Wednesday cut more than 20 percent of its staff in the United States as it continues to try to reduce costs, a company spokeswoman said.

The Spanish Internet media giant, which has been grappling with the sharp slump in advertising spending, cut 147 jobs in the U.S. out of a staff of 649 people, the spokeswoman said.

She added the cuts were across the board in several of the company's offices, including Waltham, Massachusetts, New York, Miami, San Francisco and Mountain View, California.

[EliteWeb]

ouch, i didnt think they even had that many people working for them though.

[jeremy goodrich]

What r all those people doing there, I wonder. I get more traffic from Lycos / Alltheweb than I do from Altavista...but still, it's a trickle.

Still, they did have a few cool TV ads that I still remember -> lycos, go get it :) funny stuff.

[EliteWeb]

Yup was gonna say I remembered they ran tv commercials, and yes I get more traffic from lycos than i do altavista. especially for foreign traffic.

[heini]

>cuts

Neverending story. They have cut stuff all over European operations beginning 2001, if I remember correctly.
But holding several offices alone for the US?

[jeremy goodrich]

There were a bunch of lay off's in the US too, a while ago - I think 2001 as well, near the time of the merger between Terra and Lycos.

So, with the remaining team of 500+ people at Lycos, what's their current business strategy for their portal? Why would people use it, instead of Yahoo or MSN?

I'm curious as to their longer term strategy for differentiation and competitive advantage...if they don't come up with one quick, my bet would be too see yet another round of these.

Sad, really. The dog looked pretty happy in those commercials. :) Hope it wasn't a lay off casualty.

[Robino]

Always sad when companies have to lay people off.

I think the only reason people use Lycos is for the e-mail service. I have a number of customers with @lycos.com addresses.

[jcoronella]

Yes... 147... I'm one of them.

[heini]

hey jcoronella
sorry to hear that.

In any case Welcome to the board.

[jcoronella]

Thanks Heini, but I'm actually pleased about it. I now have more time to devote to my favorite hobbie: reverse engineering search engines ;)

[redzone]

Lycos has a lot of "brand" exposure in the NorthEast US. They developed a good regional following up in the CT/Mass area, and a lot of search users follow the "If it ain't broke, why fix it" habit. They've used Lycos for years, just as others have used Yahoo..

I was hoping Lycos could break out of the slump, but they didn't get their PPC engine off the ground quickly, even though a FindWhat's smooth running back-end was powering the account admin area.

Too bad..