AtomShockwave Cuts Staff

AtomShockwave (www.atomshockwave.com) announced that it was cutting almost its entire staff on Friday. Company spokesperson Carrie Morris said that the exact amount of cuts haven't been determined yet, but did verify that AtomShockwave had 180 employees worldwide as of January 2001.

"We're looking at a 50-plus person company," said Morris.

She said the company will continue to be headquartered in San Francisco and will keep its office in London open for the time being.

The company said it would not concentrate on acquiring more content, instead focusing on its strength: distribution. "There's no need for new content, we're going back to solely distribution and paid content," said Morris. The paid content is a new initiative launched by the company in April, which lets consumers pay to play certain content.

"We have very large catalog of content — over 1500 titles since the last time we checked," said Morris. She said AtomShockwave might still acquire interesting content, but won't do it as aggressively as in the past.

Currently, the company has two separate Web sites, Shockwave.com and AtomFilms.com. Morris said that there are plans to integrate the two sites, but that there wasn't a time frame.

AtomShockwave was formed in January 2001 by a merger between Macromedia's Shockwave division and AtomFilms, an online short film site.