Engage hands walking papers to 550 workers
Online advertising company Engage has fired 550 people--about half its staff. The measure appears to be a desperate attempt to cut costs in order to become profitable. Firing half its staff, Engage says, will save it between $120 million and $150 million. The restructuring will costs up to $20 million in cash and up to $25 million in non-cash expenses. These latest layoffs arrive on top of the 175 Engage fired in September. As part of the restructuring, the company says it will shift its focus to software instead of online ad placement, but it will still serve ads for its AdKnowledge subsidiary. Engage will relocate the main operations of the remainder of its media group from San Francisco to its headquarters in Andover.

EToys also slims ranks, lopping 70 % of staff
A day after shutting down its European operations, online toy seller eToys has announced it will let go of 70 percent of its employees. EToys also plans to close two warehouses, one in Commerce City, Calif., and the other in Greensboro, N.C. Approximately 380 staff members were fired immediately; 320 others will lose their positions by March 31. A number of the layoffs took place at eToys unit BabyCenter.com. The move was made necessary by a combination of bad circumstances for eToys--sluggish holiday sales, a skeptical investment community and the general dot.com malaise. In mid-December, the company revealed that its holiday sales were just half of what it had hoped. The e-commerce site no longer claims that it will be profitable by March 2003. It is now considering merging or selling itself; either way the company, once hailed as the harbinger of our retail future, is not long for this world.

Kmart: We'll charge heavy BlueLight.com users
Kmart’s version of free web access, BlueLight.com, is no longer all-free, all-the-time. Users who spend more than 25 hours a month online will have to pay a yet unspecified fee. According to BlueLight, most of its users spend about 15 hours a month dialed up -- but the small fraction of users who were spending more than 25 hours online was proving burdensome. Bluelight’s change reflects the current shakeup among free web access providers. BlueLight.com’s main rival, NetZero, recently began requiring users who spend more than 40 hours online to pay $9.95 a month. 1stUp.com, which powered free net access for companies such as AltaVista, closed down last month, as did rival Spinway.com, which powered Bluelight.com. Bluelight purchased Spinway’s assets, but a company known as Marin Access is now providing its dialup infrastructure.

Barnesandnoble.com will publish e-books
Here's news about something that's actually starting rather than ending on the web:  Online book vendor Barnesandnoble.com has announced it will launch an in-house electronic publishing venture this spring. The publishing imprint, to be known as Barnes & Noble Digital, will pay writers a royalty of 35 percent of the retail sale price for the e-books, as long as the books sell through Barnesandnoble or its partners. That figure is lower than most e-book royalties; Random House, in comparison, divides the proceeds from e-books equally with the authors. Barnes & Noble Digital titles will sell for $5.95 to $7.95--prices as much a two-thirds lower than typical e-book price tags. Best-selling suspense writer Dean Koontz has already signed on with the electronic book publisher to produce an original work, "The Book of Counted Sorrows."

'Cast Away' movie props for sale online
A volleyball that co-stars with Tom Hanks in the movie "Cast Away" has sold for $18,400 in an internet auction. Known in the story as "Mr. Wilson"--it had a face and served as a surrogate companion for Chuck, the Hanks character stranded on a desert island--the ball is one of three used in filming that’s up for grabs.  20^th Century Fox is auctioning off props from "Cast Away" in addition to other movies, such as "Quills" and "Dude, Where’s My Car?" Other goodies for sale include Chuck’s socks, khaki pants, flashlight and tennis shoes. The ragged, diaper-like garment he wears while stranded on the island, as of Thursday afternoon, had attracted 13 bids and was priced at $306. The sale can be found on fox-auctions.com, which is powered by Yahoo. Proceeds from the sale go to the studio. The auction ends in five days.

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