Social network Bebo is restructuring its UK operations, cutting staff and freezing commissions from its web TV production arm.
The UK arm’s woes follows an edict from parent company AOL, which has announced a cull of 100 jobs across the US and Australian operations.
Bebo, which created groundbreaking online TV series Kate Modern and The Gap Year will continue running existing web TV until commissions finish up at the end of the year.
Consultations with the UK offices 20 staff have begun and it is believed that the team will be reduced to skeleton staff.
AOL purchased Bebo in 2008 for $850m (€572m) and has struggled to make the acquisition synergize with its overall business. In August, Comscore, revealed that Bebo had the number 2 slot behind Facebook in terms of social networking market share in the UK for the 18-24 set.
“We are in the process of re-aligning the Bebo business and need to make sure that our resources are aligned with our new business mode in order to execute effectively against our future vision and stay competitive,” an AOL spokesperson said.
The company conceded that web TV production was no longer a core focus and would be sidelined until resources were stabilized. Bebo has maintained that its web TV ventures have been profitable as they were produced with co-funding from sponsor or advertisers.
“Bebo remains a start-up at heart and as such remains a relatively small team with limited resource and in order to execute against its future vision it must focus its efforts,” she added.
“Its focus now and for the foreseeable future is to augment its core functionality, rapidly innovating in a number of key areas to further enhance its user experience and increase its user base, and commit its attention to better understanding its users, amongst other things.”