Heavy, an online video play that caters to the Maxim crowd, has laid off 25 employees or about 22 percent of the company's workforce, a spokesman said Thursday.
Heavy said earlier in the week that it planned to spin off its online video ad network division. Rafat Ali at PaidContent.org, who broke the story about Heavy's layoffs, wrote that CEO Simon Assaad told him the layoffs were "a result of this spinoff, where the company realized some of the projects they were working on were not needed."
I read that as Heavy not being able to sell enough ads to keep these people around.
The layoffs come as YouTube and the major TV networks appear to be sewing up the Internet video market. It's going to get tougher for smaller video sites to attract ad dollars when they have to compete against the likes of CBS and Hulu, the video portal created by NBC Universal and News Corp.
A spokesman for Heavy declined to say what led to the downsizing. In a statement issued by the company, Heavy said the move was made to make it "more efficient and profitable."
(Credit:
Heavy.com)
Heavy, the online video site with a distinct focus on the Jackass demographic, announced Tuesday that it will be using the IP Intelligence technology from Digital Element in order to "geotarget" its advertisements, language, and video content based on where a visitor's IP address is located.
This means a couple of different things. One, by knowing where its visitors come from, Heavy can run locally targeted advertisements, which can make it a more appealing buy for advertisers. This, as we've seen with many of Google's locally-oriented applications, can be very lucrative.
And two, imagine the possibilities of geographically relevant Heavy videos: instead of just seeing videos of skateboarders falling off roofs into kiddie pools full of Jell-O, you might be able to see videos of skateboarders falling off roofs into kiddie pools full of Jell-O that were filmed in your home state. That skateboarder falling off the roof might even be your neighbor.
Heavy, as you may recall, made headlines earlier this year when it hired porn star Ron Jeremy as the host of a tech comedy show.
Online-video network Joost is expected to announce on Monday that it will feature videos from Heavy, a site popular among college-age males.
Joost, a start-up founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the duo that gave the world Skype and Kazaa, has been out striking a host of content deals with media companies ranging from Viacom to the Turner Broadcasting System to Sony Pictures.
The company aims to turn Internet video into a more TV-like experience for viewers.
One of the big questions analysts had about the company was whether it could land hot content from major TV networks and Hollywood studios. The company has gone a long way toward proving that it can.
Few had any questions about the company's peer-to-peer system. Friis and Zennstrom have built two other successful companies using similar technology.
Nonetheless, at Joost's official launch last week, customers complained of choppy images and long waits before they were able to change channels. Joost's service features more than 75 channels of video content.
A representative of New York-based Heavy said the site plans to offer three categories on its Joost channel: Heavy Animation, Heavy Comedy and Heavy Gurls.
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