Layoff-happy Glam Media losing customers
Samir Arora, the superslick salesman who runs online-advertising startup Glam Media, spun last week's layoffs of 14 people as a routine move to contain costs. Just another amazing act of presciently efficient management at a company Arora has sold to investors as the future of all media. What story, we wonder, will Arora come up with to explain the company's disappearing customers?As an online ad network, Glam buys ad inventory from publishers and resells it — hopefully, at a markup. Some of those publishers are now becoming restive. We hear Lifetime, which signed with Glam less than a year ago, wants out of its deal. MyYearbook, the second-rate social network which provides much of the traffic count Glam touts to advertisers, is said to be disappointed with the revenues Glam has been providing. And Global Grind, a hip-hop social network startup which only signed with Glam in June, may also be moving on. CEO Navarrow Wright tells me the company is already "seeing success" with its Glam partnership, but at the recent Mixx conference in New York, talk was that Global Grind was examining its options and thinking about breaking its Glam deal. (Photo via San Francisco Chronicle)