“All of us are vulnerable”

Yesterday Adbrite, one of the smartest dotcoms around, laid off 40% of its staff, including two honchos, in an effort to become cashflow positive in anticipation of the coming advertising ice age. As Techcrunch noted

The irony of Adbrite making cuts isn’t lost on us. The company was originally spun off from FuckedCompany.com in 2003 by founder Philip Kaplan. FuckedCompany, of course, brutally chronicled the layoffs and liquidations that marked the end of the 2000 Internet bubble (and was the subject of our 2007 April Fools prank, which was much funnier in the middle of a bull market). If the site were still live today, Kaplan would be writing about this there.

Meanwhile, Clickz has started a “red ink calculator” and here’s a layoff tracker from Techcrunch. And let’s not forget the deadpool.

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday, “All of us are vulnerable. It’s a race between a contraction in advertising, which would affect everybody, and a very positive shift from offline to online.”

Blogads is not immune to an ice age, and we’re looking for notches on our belt to tighten. Meanwhile, we’re pleased to be cash flow positive and profitable since 2004 and the low cost operator in our space serving bloggers who are themselves the low cost operators in the media marketplace.

Update: Meanwhile, a reader writes in to point out that VCs are turning the screws on unprofitable long-shot companies they’ve invested in.