Excite lays off 500

In a moved geared toward staying in business, Excite@Home yesterday announced it will streamline its Excite.com portal, shut down its MatchLogic interactive marketing subsidiary, and lay off about 500 employees to lower operating costs and continue its focus on its broadband access business.

Yesterday’s announcement coincides with the company’s plans of evaluating its media assets to survive the current economic climate.

“It’s positioning us for the long term to survive the cash crunch that we’re currently in,” an Excite@Home spokeswoman said. “The portal is not shutting down. We’re planning on being here for the long-term.”

The Excite.com portal is expected to continue providing core applications and content. In addition, support will continue for @Home 2000, a personalized broadband content portal for subscribers.

According to the Excite@Home spokeswoman, very little will change for end users of the Excite.com portal, maintaining that it will continue to feature e-mail and instant-messaging applications, as well as support popular content like stock pages.

“What will change is the co-branding portion of some the channel areas, like shopping and cars,” she said. “To lower costs, shopping links will be a redirected to partner sites. It’s a way to maintain the portal but lower costs.”

Most of the 500 employees were laid off yesterday. Two hundred were MatchLogic employees; the remainder were members of the engineering and administrative staff who supported the portal. A skeleton crew will remain to help with the transition. MatchLogic is expected to close by the end of the year.