Plenty slimmer

Yesterday Yahoo began making good on its promise to lay off 1500 members of its staff — nearly 10% of the search brand's workforce.

Affected departments include sales, marketing, content, administration, engineering, and acquisitions like Maven Networks and Right Media Exchange. According to Advertising Age, marketers from its category-development team were also shafted.

Those from the latter pile include ex-Mars and Unilever cog Brian Zeug, who operated consumer package-goods sales; former Starcom exec and Kmart CMO Steven Feuling, who headed retail; HP's ex-interactive director Mary Bermel, who ran technology and telco marketing; and Justin Merickel, formerly of Compete and Euro RSCG, who operated finance sales.

Members of the blogosphere and Twitter reported yesterday's victims of the revolving door with salacious glee — and almost in real-time, AdAge said. Of the pixel pundits caught rubbernecking:

• Silicon Alley Insider provided live coverage of the layoffs, including continuously updated comments and tips from employees.
• Valleywag, which leaked an internal PowerPoint document explaining how managers should distribute their pile of pinks.
• VentureBeat, where writer Eric Eldon surreptitiously managed to score a job opportunity for a just-downsized colleague.
• Other sites, like CNET and Search Engine Land, watched the situation unfold on Twitter.

Others thought to profit from the mass departures. Tokbox, for example, parked a taco trunk outside Yahoo headquarters. (According to TechCrunch, the video chat firm has five open spots to fill.)

Yahoo's been in dire straits for some time, but it's certainly not the only online company slimming down fast. In the past several months a panoply of digital media companies unleashed spades of just-unemployed professionals into the wild.

Disgusted by the practice — and likely by the ravenous coverage it attracts — Chairman Barry Diller of InterActive Corp. snarled, "The idea of a company that's […] not, let's say, 'industrially endangered,' to have just cutbacks so they can earn another $12 million or $20 million or $40 million in a year where no one's counting is really a horrible act." Mass layoffs "throw people out to a larger unemployment heap for frankly no good reason," he added.

But the speed with which new media entities like Twitter can disseminate news have made it next to impossible to keep large-scale cuts private. Some even believe that "Twittering your pink slip" could prove a self-marketing benefit:

"People in this business know the internet as their go-to place to express themselves," said managing director Don Leon, Stephen Bradford Search, to AdAge. "The benefits of […] getting your name out there and letting people know you're available outweigh the potential downside of being perceived as bitter."

One blogger, Sally Hogshead, compared Twittering your woes to the so-called "pink-slip parties" following the dot-com crash. "This is no different — just a different venue. Instead of a martini bar, it's on Twitter," she pronounced.

For the remaining 90% of Yahoo's labor force, the party's hardly over. Kara Swisher of All Things Digital suggested the rolling heads could ultimately total 2000 — five hundred more people than originally estimated.

Still, the figures are small-fry compared to some. The Webguild claims Google may shaft a full 10,000 jobs, mostly freelance and part-timers.