Motricity Leaning Heavily On InfoSpace Acquisition; Laying Off 250 And Moving To Bellevue

Motricity has confirmed its much anticipated layoffs, putting the official number at 250. The elimination of more than one third of its workforce will occur over the next nine months, with all affected workers getting an unspecified severance. Previous guesses had pegged the number at about 200 of its 600-person workforce. Also, as rumored, the Durham, NC-based company, which is taking these steps following the acquisition of InfoSpace (NSDQ: INSP) Mobile last year, has also decided to relocate its headquarters to InfoSpace's Bellevue offices to be closer to customers. Release.

Based on the details of the announcements, it appears Motricity is leaning heavily on the InfoSpace acquisition for people, technology and location:

-- The technology: Motricity will migrate customers from its own Fuel platform to InfoSpace's mCore platform for Portal, Storefront, Search, Messaging and Managed Web products, although some elements from Fuel will be integrated into mCore. 

-- The headquarters: The company will consolidate office locations, moving the headquarters location from Durham to Bellevue, "which is in close proximity to some of Motricity's largest customers." No word on where the affected employees are being laid off from, however, prior to the merger Motricity had 350 employees and InfoSpace had 250. There's no details on relocation requirements, even for CEO Ryan Wuerch. Currently, Steve Elfman, former EVP of InfoSpace mobile, is serving as the president and COO from Bellevue.

-- Divestitures: Along with the layoffs, Motricity said it will be selling off its direct-to-consumer business Pocketgear.com, and will sever certain business relationships in media and entertainment, though it doesn't go into further detail on that. The planned sale of Pocketgear follows the sale of eReader to Fictionwise in December.

Related

• Rumors Of Major Cutbacks Swirl Around Motricity—What's The Deal?


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