Technorati has joined the long list of tech companies tightening their belts in anticipation of a long hard year ahead. The company’s laid off six staff and implemented pay cuts across the board, as CEO Richard Jalichandra announced yesterday.

Jalichandra strikes a suitably sombre tone, saying: “There’s not much I can say about the economy that hasn’t been said a hundred times already. We’re facing the worst crisis of our lifetimes, and no one can say with certainty what lies ahead or how long it will last. … We simply need a leaner and reconfigured mix to get us through 2009.”

Having delivered the bad news, Jalichandra makes a heroic effort to look on the bright side with a brief round-up of Technorati’s good news, including a positive look ahead to the launch of Technorati Engage, currently in beta, in early 2009.

Technorati now joins 230 other companies gracing the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker.

Social network advertising falls short of promise
MediaWeek reports on a market research report from IDC which describes social networking site advertising as “anemic”.

Writing for MediaWeek, Mike Shields says: “Up until recently, the promise sites like MySpace and Facebook have offered is that as long as users provide information on their age, location, personal interests and the like—advertisers will be able to offer highly targeted ads. But IDG’s study found that only 3 percent of users surveyed are OK with publishers using their contact information for advertising. ‘That idea is stillborn,’ says the report.”

“So what do social networking sites do to improve ad effectiveness?  Become more like portals, says IDC, and give users something to do other on these sites other than communicate. That’s something MySpace has gradually done over the past few years as its added more professionally produced content and video.”

Nathan Lovejoy at Swarming Media takes a pessimistic view of the story: “…what if the two giants of online social networking are forced to shift their offering to squeeze out some dollars – or even cease operating? Who would be in a position to take their place and what would happen to our copious data on these services?
“Maybe this is the ideal time for social and politically-conscious (and thus probably low-cost/low-revenue) services to begin to compete. Something in the mold of Riseup or Indymedia with more of a user-centric perspective could probably gain some ground if things really turn for the worse with the big two.”

Crowdsourcing local sport pays off for ITV.com
ITV.com’s crowdsourced approach to covering the FA Cup early rounds, which relies on a blend of professional and user-uploaded content, appears to be paying off, according to this Broadcast article: “ITV’s online video highlights of the early rounds of the FA Cup have drawn more than 300,000 video views since the competition began.”

The piece quotes ITV.com head of content Marc Webber saying the figures prove the “massive interest in grassroots football”.

Robert Andrews at paidContent writes: “ITV has done something right online. … As we said at the time of the launch, ITV Local’s Grassroots Sports area, which gives upload access to fans of teams not covered by ITV’s own cameras, is creating a new local audience by catering to hitherto unserved users.”