Not surprisingly, MySpace has announced the layoff of hundreds of employees—30% of the workforce. In an email to employees, CEO Owen Van Natta hit all the right notes, explaining the reasons for the RIF, empathy for those affected, and hope for the future.

I especially liked this statement.

“These decisions are difficult for everyone, but especially for our friends and colleagues who contributed to MySpace’s success and are directly affected by the changes. Through no fault of theirs our company’s size became unsustainable.”

Then MySpace issued a press release. That nice statement about the company’s size being unsustainable turned into this quote: “Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company.”

Pretty poor choice of words. If I had been laid off after being a loyal, dedicated employee who helped put MySpace on the map, I would resent being characterized as “bloat”. Van Natta (or the PR team) should have stuck with his earlier description, “unsustainable”.

Yes, sticks and stones may break my bones…and…yes, words can hurt a lot.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 9:56 am and is filed under Crisis Communication, Mistakes in the Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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