joshsilverman
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Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff in attempt to refocus
Etsy is widely recognized as perhaps the premiere place online to go for handmade goods from sellers big and small. But despite the company's ubiquity and influence, Etsy may have taken on too many projects that aren't relevant to its core business. To that end, CEO Josh Silverman announced this morning that Etsy was laying off 15 percent of its workforce. That's in addition to layoffs that were announced in early May; the total workforce reduction comes in at 22 percent, or about 230 employees.
Skype lands Cisco's Tony Bates as new CEO
It may sound fairly bland on paper, but the potential implications here are notable. Tony Bates, who was seen as a major player within Cisco reporting directly to CEO John Chambers, has just left to take over the CEO role at Skype. Cisco's own blog affirmed that Bates was leaving "to pursue another opportunity," and The New York Times has it that Joshua Silverman is stepping aside to make room for Mr. Bates. He'll arrive just in time to make a serious push for an IPO, grab more profit from its blossoming user base (which largely doesn't pay anything to make Skype-to-Skype calls) and possibly "make a deeper push into carrier and enterprise markets," as GigaOM puts it. Frankly, we'd be interested in seeing if any leftover synergies (yeah, we said it) could lead to a Skype-enabled Flip Video camcorder. Bates would obviously have great contacts with Cisco in order to make it happen, and honestly, it'd be a win-win for both parties. Crazier things have happened, right?
