Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Monday, October 20, 2008 at 4:51 PM PT

Veoh: No U.S. Layoffs

A Veoh spokesperson has denied a news report published today that the company has laid off 40 percent of its staff. Veoh’s CEO Steve Mitgang was unavailable for comment, but company spokesperson Gaude Paez said Veoh did let go of a 15-18 person technical operations and engineering team working in St. Petersburg, Russia earlier this month. Those positions are in the process of being re-hired here in the U.S.. Veoh currently has 110 employees.

Veoh also denied a rumor left in our comment section that the company would be $20 million in the hole by the end of this year. Paez said this was “not true” and that the company was still on track to reach profitability in 2009.

If the layoffs were true, it wouldn’t come as a complete surprise as such news has become par for the daily course in this economy.

And Veoh hasn’t done itself any favors by being all over the place in the past six months. The company sparked a ruckus when it blocked access to all but 33 countries to its site in June, and then days later announced it was getting another $30 million, raising it’s total funding to $69.5 million.

In July it dumped its original video programming and rolled out new behavioral ad targeting system. Then in August the company won a legal victory when a California court ruled that the company was not liable for infringing content uploaded to its site.

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Topic: Hitlines, Startups

Comments (7)

I did not know Valleywag was issuing “news reports” you have interesting “news” sources :)

Loic — 5:49 PM on October 20, 2008 Reply
How disappointing to see NewTeeVee recognize Valleywag as a credible source. You guys are way better than that.

Jeff M — 6:00 PM on October 20, 2008 Reply
@Jeff M and @loic — interesting points of view for actually fact checking what was an erroneous report.

Om Malik, NewTeeVee — 6:13 PM on October 20, 2008 Reply
Om, yes you fact checked which is good. But just the first sentence “A Veoh spokesperson has denied a news report published today” with “news report” referring to Valleywag is both hilarious and sad for NewTeeVee. You can call them anything you want, but not a “news report”. Come on Om, you said you were not interested in blogging but in true journalism, then don’t call that type of content a “news report”. It is amusing at times, very mean most of the times, but clearly it is not reliable news. I do not think this is good advertising for GigaOM network, and because I care, I give you some love. If I did not care I would not bother.

Loic — 8:41 PM on October 20, 2008 Reply
@Loic

it is a report and it was making the rounds on the blogs and yes it was an incorrect news report. It doesn’t matter where it came from. chris did his job and did it well. I disagree with your read on the situation.

Om Malik, NewTeeVee — 10:19 PM on October 20, 2008 Reply
Despite the layoff news, I see thousands of high paying jobs posted on employment sites -

http://www.linkedin.com (networking for professionals)
http://www.indeed.com (aggregated listings)
http://www.realmatch.com (jobs matched to your skills)

These folks will find new jobs…maybe better ones!

Matthew — 7:54 AM on October 22, 2008 Reply
no problem Om, agreed Chris did a good job fact checking and writing about it. We will disagree on calling VW news report I can live with that :)

Loic — 2:52 PM on October 22, 2008 Reply

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