A Monster.com Divided
from the how-quickly-things-change dept
This NY Times piece compares TMP (owners of Monster.com, among others) to AOL, by noting that they used the success of their internet-based business to go out and acquire some old world businesses (mostly in the staffing world). Now, the company is struggling because the two different businesses haven’t been able to find much synergy. The big difference from AOL, though, is that in TMP’s case, Monster.com is the business that’s performing well. The problem area is the staffing businesses that they bought and tried to throw together. So, now they’re going to spin off the dreadful part of the business and focus on the dot com part. I would imagine it’s no fun to be a part of the business that’s about to be spun off, since it was hastily thrown together, and is now being cast off to fend for itself. At the same time, though, it sounds like Monster, itself, is facing a number of challenges going forward. They’ve been losing market share, and recently had an executive management shakeup. They’re still trying to figure out how to deal with a market where no one seems to be find jobs any more.
