The news has spread quickly. AOL France is laying-off 65% of its workforce : 90 employees out of 140. I left AOL about a month ago but we knew this since the beginning of September. I don’t know the situation well enough to comment, I just want to say I am deeply saddened for all my nice and creative colleagues.
I had the chance to be part of the very first (and last) AOL Lipdub. It was meant to be a team-building event and it turned out to be much more. We had a lot of fun. We chose the Eurovision song L’amour à la française by the Fatals Picards. The video has leaked a few days later (why am I not surprised ?) and several websites are reporting on “our situation”. I just stumbled on some quite stunning numbers : the video was seen almost 100.000 times on Dailymotion and roughly 15.000 on Vimeo.
Here’s a (small) list of articles :
Silicon Alley Insider : AOL France bids AOL (TWX) Adieu
L’Expansion : Menacés de licenciement, les salariés d’AOL se disent adieu en chantant
TF1 : Un lip dub en guise de chant de cygne
20minutes : les chansons d’amour finissent mal, en général
Le Monde (AFP) : 90 postes supprimés
Echos du Net : L’adieu en chantant chez AOL
Agoravox TV : Licenciements AOL : l’adieu en chantant
Valleywag : what do Randy and Ron have against French Hotties ?
For those who were wondering, I’m the 5th person to appear in the video 
Edited on the 12/03/08 : AOL Lipdub was voted Best Lipdub at Moovement
