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Popular news-collection and social-networking Web site Digg.com is cutting back its workforce in hopes of achieving profitability. The San Francisco, Calif.-based company will reduce its staff of 75 people by 10 percent, according to founder Jay Adelson.

Adelson said the company’s goal is to become profitable this year and can only do so by being more conservative. He founded the company in October 2004 and has pulled in $40 million in funding, including a $28 million round just four months ago.

“This means we’ll be taking proactive measures to manage our costs, including a head-count reduction in certain areas that are less core to this year’s objectives while continuing to hire for roles that will help build on our leadership position and get us to profitability faster,” Adelson wrote in a Digg blog.

To reach its goal, Digg’s management team plans to hire a direct-sales team in addition to other “targeted hires.”

Things To Do

Digg has other things on its to-do list, including rolling out new features for its more than 35 million-member community, focusing on sponsorship opportunities, and continuing with publisher and trade partnerships.

One critical step for the company is to work on expanding its advertising strategy and building on its partnership with Microsoft to sell ads. Digg’s three-year, revenue-sharing deal with Microsoft began in July 2007 after Digg considered Yahoo and Google as partners. The contract is up next summer.

“I’m confident that with commitment and focus on these priorities, Digg will be an even stronger company in 2009 and will continue to create innovative features for our more than 35 million community members,” Adelson said.

Competition Heats Up

While Digg begins to refocus, competition is getting stronger. Last week, visitors to Twitter, another popular social-networking and news site, surpassed Digg for the first time, according to Hitwise, an Internet…

Source: newsfactor.com

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Not long ago, it seemed that four companies would forever dominate the Web in traffic and ad dollars. Each of the Big Four — Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft’s MSN, and Time Warner’s AOL — attracts more than 100 million unique visitors a month. Collectively the group accounts for roughly 90 percent of gross ad dollars online. So far, so good.

But now those companies are facing a threat to their dominance. I’m not talking about the recessionary headwinds that have slowed growth even for mighty Google. Nor is this about the self-inflicted wounds that have weakened the positions of the other three players. Yahoo spent the last year in turmoil following Microsoft’s takeover offer, inducing Carl Icahn to elbow his way onto the board and then force out CEO Jerry Yang as business conditions grew increasingly dire. AOL is hardly better off. Its former CEO, Jonathan Miller, freely admits that AOL essentially missed the boat on social media and the decline of AOL’s legacy connectivity business. Microsoft failed to acquire Yahoo and continues in vain to seek a credible competitive response to Google’s search advertising juggernaut.

These travails aside, there are bigger threats on the landscape. Today’s massive social networking systems are rapidly becoming Webs within the Web — one-stop shops for a wide range of services (from content to communications to commerce) that were once the unique province of the Big Four.

One-Stop Shopping at Facebook

For example, through a combination of its own creation and that of third-party developers, Facebook has become a world unto itself. Now the Web’s largest social network as measured by active users [140 million at yearend 2008], Facebook offers bread-and-butter portal services like e-mail and instant messaging as well as photo posting and video sharing. But Facebook’s reality extends much further. A partnership with Amazon.com has produced a…

Source: newsfactor.com

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Just as Clearwire Corp. has fired up its long-awaited WiMax wireless data network in two cities, Nokia Corp. has stopped selling the only portable gadget that can use the network without accessories.

Nokia spokeswoman Laurie Armstrong confirmed Wednesday that the company has discontinued the N810 Internet Tablet WiMax Edition on its Web site.

Armstrong did not say why the tablet was withdrawn. But she said Nokia is still interested in WiMax, and by the time WiMax networks are more widely deployed, “refreshed products with even better performance will be required.”

Nokia’s portable computer, which has a 4.1-inch touch-sensitive screen and a slide-out keyboard, is still for sale for $438 in a version without a WiMax modem.

WiMax, sometimes described as a long-range version of Wi-Fi, is a competitor to traditional cellular broadband technologies. It offers relatively fast data speeds, and its proponents hope that WiMax antennas will be built into a variety of gadgets, from small computers to GPS devices.

Leading computer manufacturers have announced their intention to make their laptops WiMax-capable, but for now the only way to use Clearwire’s “Clear” network is with plug-in modems.

“We have a robust pipeline of devices slated throughout 2009 and will be providing more details in the coming weeks,” said Susan Johnston, spokeswoman for Clearwire.

The network is live in Baltimore and Portland, Ore.

Clearwire was formed last year by the union of a smaller company of the same name with Sprint Nextel Corp.’s WiMax division.

Source: newsfactor.com

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