Social Media Struck by Slowdown - Scoble, Seesmic Included

Image by b_d_solis via FlickrReports have been coming out of Silicon Valley for the past couple days regarding emails from Venture Capital groups and Angel investors telling their partners and clients how the new economy will impact them.

Within an hour's time this afternoon, I ran across two separate communications dealing with work force reductions at companies working in the social networking area.

The first was news from Robert Scoble on his Friendfeed and Twitter accounts that he had a new boss and that Fast Company had laid off twenty of his associates. Robert blogged about shortly thereafter on his Scobleizer site , discussing how the economic crisis had hit home.

A little later, there was a blog post and a video from Loic Lemeur at Seesmic regarding tough times and tough decisions at Seesmic. Both items announced the regrettable news that he had been forced to reduce seven associates at his company. In the vide0, Loic mentions the plummeting rate of advertising as one of the causes. The pain and emotion is palpable in the video, which can be seen below.

Here is hoping that this nightmare will soon come to an end.

Tough times. Tough decisions.also read my blog post http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/10/tough-times-tou.html

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