Chinese Web Portal TOM.com Fires 60+ Workers, Struggling to Survive

Chinese web portal TOM.com is struggling to survive, as yesterday 70% of its Sports channel employees were laid off, leaving only about a dozen there. Local news outlets are reporting that TOM Group’s entire website division risks being shut-down, after today’s purging of “60 to 70 workers”.

Further employees have been fired from the site’s Auto and Entertainment portals, too, albeit in smaller numbers than suffered by the Sports department. All departing workers have been a given severance package plus RMB 2000 (US$ 310) in compensation. However, it seems they were only given a few hours notice, and departed the building after an internal meeting yesterday afternoon.

TOM’s Sports channel (pictured in screenshot, above) was financially well-backed, fairly popular, and strategically important to the portal as a whole. At the moment, the Sport’s section is backed by the western sports brand, Jordan, and still holds the rights to stream on-demand some English Premiership football games. Rival news portals such as MSN China, the Sina main page, and 163.com will be looking to take advantage.

Although Chinese web users love their web portals much more so than western netizens, it’s inevitable that there’s consolidation in this crowded market. TOM might be the biggest name to date to be killed off.

Groundhog Day

This week’s lay-offs look very similar to what happened last November, when worker numbers at the Auto and Entertainment sections were slashed, again with only a few hours notice.

TOM has a joint venture with Skype – known as TOM-Skype – to run Skype’s China operations. That division is unaffected by this week’s upheavals at the main portal.

[Source: Tech.QQ.com]