oct17.com Blog

Vivu and CBS

Time to update the Ole Blog here with two major pieces of employment news.

• Saloni works at Vivu. It happened by slow degrees; first a get-to-know-you meeting with the CEO, then some follow-up discussions on the direction of the startup, and before you know it she’s printing business cards for the whole company including one for herself that says, “Director of Marketing.” Vivu is definitely in startup mode: barely a dozen people, still fervently pitching investors for capital, staff meetings on Sunday mornings. She’s thrilled, I’m thrilled, and a video-streaming startup makes a nice complement to my new employer…
• CNET’s being acquired by CBS. Starting in (roughly) July, I’ll work for the giant media company that’s the home of “Wheel of Fortune” and “CSI” (and CBS Sports, too, David). This is a huge relief and a presumed release from the sneaky barbarians at the gate of JANA. For CNET, I think this opens up huge advertiser opportunities in categories where CBS is a major player and CNET is not. For me personally, this means some fantastic opportunities to expand BNET onto radio and possibly TV, while learning something about those media. Hey, I made the jump from print to online more than 10 years ago; time to learn some new tricks.

Hopefully no more job updates for a while. It’s been a busy month!

Oxymoron of the day: the unaffected employee

Today I had to inform several coworkers in Louisville, KY that they were losing their jobs in a companywide layoff at CNET Networks. This was the rueful culmination of a short but intense period when we had to figure out how to make staff cuts and still produce three award-winning sites, figure out how and when to communicate to people, and generally not sleep very well. Having worked in online media before and during the dotcom bust, this was not my first experience of layoffs — not by a long shot — but practice doesn’t make this perfect. Not by a long shot.

In the vernacular of HR documents, people losing their jobs are “the affected employees,” and the 90% who are left are the “unaffected employees.” But in facing the whole staff today in an all-hands meeting, it struck me that, of course, there are no “unaffected” employees. There are just those who will be coming back into the office Monday, looking over at an empty cubicle, and wondering what happens next.

The great thing about working with pros is that they are professional when the shit hits the fan. Some saw it coming (we share a lot of info about the state of the business with the entire team), some were taken completely by surprise. But all dealt with the bad news with enormous character. It was impressive in a way that you never want to have to see.

If anyone reading this needs to hire some strong editorial or product management talent, I’ve got names for you.

• From the bitter-irony dept.: Hours before the cuts, a manager informed me that we had a previously scheduled ice cream social planned for that day. The ice cream guy could not shift it to the next day, because he had hired help to haul the gallons of frozen sweets into the office. I saw a lot of stress eating this afternoon, which I suppose was a comfort of sorts. But c’mon! An ice cream social?!

JANA and CNET: what’s up with that?

I’ve had to explain this many times to different family and friends so I thought I’d write it out once and for all, with updates as things change. Here’s the short version:

A hedge fund is trying to take over CNET Networks, my employer. They have until summer to convince CNET shareholders that the company should change strategy and stop expanding into non-technology areas, such as entertainment, lifestyle, and business. I’ve spent most of the last two years working on the business prong of CNET’s strategy, so if the hedgies win my future employment is up for grabs.

Here’s the long version:

A group of Wall Street hedge funds, high-tech venture capitalists, plus one Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, banded together to acquire a big chunk of CNET Networks. The big money outfit in this group is JANA Partners, but the former entrepreneur a guy named Paul Gardi, seems to be the visionary behind this move.

Their goal is to take over CNET’s board of directors, remove our current management, and change the strategy of the media company. Publicly they haven’t disclosed much about what they would change other than to refocus on technology content and improve the moneymaking operations of CNET.

JANA currently owns about 10% of CNET — an investment greater than $100 million — so by any fair-minded shareholder standard they deserve a hearing. Their partners in this effort control even more shares, so as a bloc they get a big say. Acquiring big chunks of a company and using that voting power to force changes in strategy or management is the formula for “activist shareholders,” which this group certainly is. (Similar activist-shareholder groups are taking a run at the New York Times, tried and failed to shift focus at Time Warner, and succeeded with disastrous results at Knight-Ridder.)

Their efforts started last fall and became public in January. The shareholder meeting where their efforts will succeed or fail is this summer, I believe in June. Between now and then, JANA must convince two-thirds of the CNET shareholders that their proposed changes are a good idea. Given that the JANA bloc controls about 20% of the shares, it seems to me they really just have to convince 50% of the other shareholders to join their cause. CNET’s executive management, on the other hand, must convince the shareholders that current strategy is right and current management is aggressive and profit-minded enough to raise the stock price.

I expect that between now and the shareholder meeting there will be an increasingly public airing of claims and counterclaims, promises and threats. I don’t know if this will be a formal proxy battle or just a broader hearts-and-minds campaign. Since CNET’s stock has performed poorly for the last two years, some shareholders may be inclined to try anything to change the status quo.

Job openings: Stephen is hiring

I’ve got two new jobs at CNET Networks Business group that I’m trying to fill, so please pass these around to any and all who might fit. Both jobs are in San Francisco.

1) Senior Product Manager for ZDNet. This position involves the thankless task of taking over many of my day-to-day responsibilities for the ZDNet.com Web site, and working side-by-side with editor-in-chief Dan Farber to remake the side as a much more exciting and news-driven brand.

2) SEO Specialist. (That’s “search-engine optimization” for those of you at home.) This job requires a strong analytical/technical bent and an understanding of content. All harnessed to get more traffic to CNET’s business brands from the big 3 search engines. We have a HitWise license, too, which should help.

I’m the hiring manager, so send the resumes to me.

Job openings: Josh Taylor is hiring

Josh, newly minted cheese of communications at Teach For America, needs to hire two communications managers and one Web producer. He doesn’t have the Web job description written yet, but Faithful Readers can contact him directly at josh.taylor@teachforamerica.org.