Surprise deal for Traffic.com staff saves 191 Malvern jobs (Update)
The Matchbin-Traffic.com combination will be run by Traffic.com veteran Chris Rothey
Surprise deal for Traffic.com staff saves 191 Malvern jobs (Update)
Joseph N. DiStefano
Matchbin, a Web media-software company in Salt Lake City, has purchased the radio and TV advertising group at Nokia's Navteq Traffic.com operation in Malvern, Matchbin ceo Hal Widlansky told me. (Revised to clarify that the Traffic.com site is not part of the sale.) The office that includes Traffic.com had been scheduled to close by the end of next year, idling 300, Nokia said last month. But Widlansky told me all 191 engineers, technicians, sales people and others involved with Traffic.com in the Malvern office are now employees of the new, combined operation, which has been renamed RadiateMedia. More here.
Widlansky also told me Chris Rothey, a Penn grad who was one of Traffic.com's first employees, is now CEO of RadiateMedia, bossing him and around 55 other Matchbin employees along with his Malvern coworkers. He said the two groups had been in talks well before Nokia announced the closing. Buyer and seller agreed not to tell the price. UPDATE: Navteq will continue to operate the Traffic.com site, the company said in a subsequent statement.
I thought only government could save jobs, through large tax increases and bailouts.— Barbouze
Comment removed.- don't call them rich people, the new term is "job creators"— Eman84
- positive stuff. how much money changed hands?— Tyrone Biggums
- @Fernando08 Oh, that's right; we're not to supposed to think. We're just supposed to swallow everything Comrade Obama dishes out, like you do.— Barbouze
- I hope Matchbin finds a way to make Traffic.com to earn with a different business model. The site is quite useful and innovative, unlike some dead-in-the-water websites of the dot-com era.— gfstallin
Now, if they could only find a way to gather the correct information at all times it would be a tremendous improvement. Something tells me there will be cutbacks somewhere, because they were bleeding money like a stuck pig. More than likely those would come in information gathering operations, which would make the product suffer even further. But at least they have their jobs still, so that's a good thing.
