AOL to Cut Up to 900 Jobs as It Integrates Huffington Post

AOL Inc. (AOL), the Internet company that agreed to buy the Huffington Post last month, said it will eliminate as many as 900 jobs as the company integrates the news website and restructures to try to return to revenue growth.

The company will cut as many as 700 jobs in India and 200 in the U.S., Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong wrote in a memo to employees today. In India, 300 of the affected employees will move to outsourcing partners and continue to do work for AOL, he said.

“The changes for me today are very personal,” said Armstrong at the Bloomberg Media Summit in New York. “AOL employees deserve a tremendous amount of credit because I don’t think it’s easy to go from managing decline to managing growth.”

Armstrong said he would discuss the job cuts with employees later today.

“Our strategy remains clear: create high quality content experiences for consumers, at scale,” Armstrong wrote in the memo. “Today, we are announcing an organizational structure that will significantly improve AOL’s ability to focus on growth.”

The company had 5,860 employees at the end of last year, according to regulatory filings. If the company sheds 900 jobs, that would be 15 percent of the total.

Declining Revenue

AOL, whose sales have declined for four straight quarters, agreed to buy the Huffington Post for $315 million, aiming to increase online content to help boost advertising revenue. In India, the company is outsourcing back-office work to cut costs and focus on increasing consumer product sales.

Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, joined AOL as president and editor-in-chief of a newly formed media group, which includes other AOL content. Her website will serve as the model for other journalism efforts, Armstrong said in the memo.

“AOL will invest more heavily in our in-house editorial team and transition away from a reliance on freelance journalists,” he said. “Journalists are the heart and soul of a media company.”

Armstrong said he recently made a personal purchase of $10 million in AOL stock. In May, the former Google executive, who became AOL’s CEO in 2009, bought $11.1 million worth of stock.

“AOL will turn around,” he said. “I have no doubt about that.”

AOL, based in New York, gained 31 cents to $19.65 at 11:41 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares had fallen 18 percent this year before today.

To contact the reporters on this story: Katie Hoffmann in New York at khoffmann4@bloomberg.net; Brett Pulley in New York at bpulley@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net. 

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 Source: 01net.com

Help Buy a Satellite from a Bankrupt Telecom to Beam Free Web to the Developing World

Increasing web connectivity in the developing world has been a focus of philanthropists, international bodies like the U.N., and individual states alike. But, like most grand visions, wiring entire countries for the Web is expensive. So how does a philanthropist sidestep the massive expense of building and launching a satellite that can beam Internet to remote regions of the world? You wait for a company to go bankrupt, then you buy their brand new communications satellite already in orbit on the cheap.

At least, that’s the idea. A philanthropic group called Ahumanright.org (universal Internet is that human right) has launched a site called “Buy This Satellite” that aims to raise $150,000 to bid for Terrastar-1, a school-bus-sized satellite launched in 2008. Terrastar-1 is currently in orbital limbo, so to speak, after its owner filed for bankruptcy. The group will also invest in the development of an open source, low cost modem for use in the developing world.

Once acquired, the group hopes to park the satellite over a developing country or countries--Papua New Guinea, the site points out, has an open orbital slot and only 2.1 percent of its population is online--and allow its citizens access to the Web for free. That, theoretically, will help educate the population, open up new avenues for commerce, and otherwise provide lagging economies with all the technological advantages offered to the wired world.

There are plenty of aspects of the plan that seem easy to poke holes in. For one, satellites generally go for more than $150,000 (even at a bankruptcy auction). And the phase one plan calls for hiring several full-time engineers for the project, but that'll cost $50,000 per year per engineer (and that's only if the engineers are content to work on the cheap)--well, you can see why we might be a bit skeptical.

However, the notion is both noble and ambitious, and we’re all about nobility and ambition. If the money can be found, a project like this has the power to seriously affect change in places where connectivity is scarce (if it’s available at all). Go to buythissatellite.org to do your part to purchase