The man behind the deal is Ryan Wuerch, the founder and CEO of the Bellevue, Wash.-based company, who has been in the spotlight for better or for worse. While being very successful at raising hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, like billionaire Carl Icahn, he was highly criticized for his decision to buy InfoSpace (NSDQ: INSP) Mobile for $135 million in 2007. That acquisition brought out his harshest critics, who were enraged after he laid off most of the Motricity’s employees; moved the headquarters from North Carolina to Bellevue; and ditched Motricity’s core technology in favor of InfoSpace’s. Still, today, it was likely the best decision for the the company given its reliance on its previous competitor’s technology, clients and employees.

Now that Motricity has filed for an IPO, there’s more information available on how the 42-year-old Wuerch managed the company from behind the scenes. We scoured the public filings to find his compensation package, which includes generous relocation benefits and incentives to either sell the company or have it go public in the next six months.

Wuerch has plenty of incentive in his employment agreement to either sell the company or have it go public by July 25:

—Salary: In 2009, Wuerch earned a salary of $365,000 and all other compensation of $73,000, which consisted of a stipend for cost of living adjustments for moving to the Seattle area. He will continue to get the adjustments until July 25, 2010 or the company’s IPO (whichever comes first). The company said that while no executives received salary increases during 2009 because of the poor economy, Wuerch’s salary will increase to $450,000 as soon as the company goes public.

—Motivation to go public: Wuerch entered into a new two-year employment agreement on Jan. 19, 2010. In 2010, he will have the chance to earn an additional 75 percent of his salary if the company hits certain financial thresholds. When the company IPOs, it will increase to 100% of his salary and it will be pro-rated from the date of the IPO.

—Motivation to sell: If Motricity is sold prior to either an IPO or July 25, Wuerch will receive a bonus. If the sale price is less than $300 million, he will receive a lump sum of $2 million. If it sells for more than $300 million, Wuerch will receive 1 percent of the value of the sale. (A $400 million-dollar sale will mean $4 million, etc.). In both circumstances, all of the company’s equity must be sold.

Motricity is still paying the price for relocating the company to Bellevue:

—Relocation: Motricity purchased both Wuerch’s house and Motricity’s COO Jim Smith’s house based on prices determined by a third-party company. Wuerch’s house was appraised at $2 million and Smith’s was worth $1.2 million. Under the arrangements, Motricity paid the mortgage and all costs associated with the homes, including taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance, repairs and improvements, until they sold. In November, Smith’s house sold for $950,000, and Wuerch’s still is on the market.

—Wuerch’s personal loans: As of November 2009, Wuerch owed $354,860 to Motricity based on loans from 2004 that were incurred as part of his move to North Carolina. In addition,  Wuerch also borrowed $80,069 for legal fees. On Dec. 18, Wuerch wiped his debt of $434,929 clean by swapping out 332,007 shares of his vested common stock. These loans are no longer outstanding.

Related

• Motricity Leaning Heavily On InfoSpace Acquisition; Laying Off 250 And Moving To Bellevue
• Infospace Exits Mobile Business; Motricity Buys Its Mobile Services Business For $135 Million
• Motricity's Jim Ryan: "Shame On Us" If The Mobile Internet Becomes Like The Internet
• Opera, Motricity Help To Roll Out AT&T's New Mobile Web Experience
• Reports Question Longevity Of Motricity's Relationship With AT&T
• Motricity Sees Gains In 2008; Hits Revenue Target Of $100 Million
• Motricity Saga Continues: Company Sues Former Top Executive
• Interview: Ryan Wuerch, CEO, Motricity: IPO Still An Opportunity; 'M&A Will Be A Part Of Our Core'

A Motricity spokesperson said they don’t comment on departing employees, however, the company believes that in addition to developing markets, they will be able to “find and capitalize on opportunities all around the world, including Western Europe.” It’s been no secret that the company has been aspiring to expand outside the U.S., and it makes sense that the low-hanging fruit may exist in developing countries, where carriers are less likely to have already rolled out significant messaging and portal services.

With Dumeny’s departure, another milestone has been reached, as well—nearly every former upper management executive from InfoSpace (NSDQ: INSP) has left the company. In 2007, Durham, NC-based Motricity purchased InfoSpace Mobile and decided to lay off almost all of its Durham employees and relocate the company to Bellevue, where InfoSpace was based. Since then, many executives have departed, including one of its highest ranking employees, Steve Elfman, who left for Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel.

Dumeny is now a VP of business development at Adfonic, a company founded late last year by a handful of former Infospace/Motricity employees. Adfonic, which has offices in London, San Francisco and Paris, is building a global mobile advertising marketplace for advertisers and publishers, which will allow them to bid for ads on both mobile sites and in applications.

Related

• Industry Moves: Motricity Adds Jim Ryan As Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer
• Motricity SVP Of Sales George Fraser Departs; Memo Signals International Plans
• Motricity Sees Gains In 2008; Hits Revenue Target Of $100 Million
• Motricity Saga Continues: Company Sues Former Top Executive

Motricity SVP Brendan Benzing confirmed Fraser’s departure and said they aren’t expecting to fill the job immediately. Instead, the company is creating a flatter structure with the sales team reporting directly to Smith. In January, Motricity appointed Smith to the role of President and COO, replacing former president and COO Steve Elfman, whose departure to Sprint (NYSE: S) spurred a lawsuit between the two companies.

Related

• Industry Moves: Motricity Names Four New Execs, Including New President/COO

If you remember, the Bellevue, Wash.-based company was an online directory that quickly moved into the mobile space, by selling content to mobile phones, including ringtones and graphics. While Jain was CEO, he made outrageous statements that claimed things, like it would be the first company in the world to be worth a trillion dollars. At its height, it was worth $31 billion, or more than Boeing. The company ultimately fired Jain, and its tenuous business practices were laid out in a several part series by The Seattle Times, called “The Dot-con Job.”

Today, InfoSpace is under completely different management. Jain is now CEO of his latest venture, Intelius.com, which sells directory and background information about people. The Bellevue-based company filed for an initial public offering in January 2008.

Revenues and profitability: Wuerch: “We said $100 million was the target. We aren’t producing any external forecasts this year, but what I will say is that we are expecting and forecasting strong growth in revenues and profitability.” Wuerch didn’t say if Motricity was profitable in 2008, but added: “We are very pleased on how we ended 2008. Motricity is in a stronger position than it has ever been…Until we are required to, as a reporting entity, we’ll stay coy.”

U.S. 2008 performance: Motricity provides on-deck and portal services to operators, where consumers can find and search for news and information. With the assistance of comScore (NSDQ: SCOR), Motricity said it delivered 11.5 billion page views across all of its deployments, a 32 percent increase over 2007, and that it’s mCore Platform reached 74 percent of all mobile subscribers that browsed any news or information on their phone. The company said its infrastructure also processed $2.1 billion in gross content sales since inception in 2005, which grew 37 percent over the last year. As a reminder, operators using Motricity technology includes: Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), AT&T (NYSE: T), Alltel (NYSE: AT), T-Mobile, Cricket, U.S. Cellular and Cellular South.

Related

• Interview: Ryan Wuerch, CEO, Motricity: IPO Still An Opportunity; 'M&A Will Be A Part Of Our Core'
• Motricity Saga Continues: Company Sues Former Top Executive
• Industry Moves: Motricity Names Four New Execs, Including New President/COO

—COO Jim Smith: Smith will be responsible for Motricity’s market expansion and day-to-day execution across all company functions. For the past six years, Smith served as a senior executive at Avaya, and before Avaya, worked as COO and Co-Founder of Vector Development, an e-commerce operating company.

—SVP and General Counsel Richard Leigh: Leigh will be responsible for all legal and regulatory matters. Previously, Leigh served as EVP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Cell Therapeutics, and worked as VP and General Counsel to Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc.

—SVP Deepak Dhawan: Dhawan will be responsible for leveraging Motricity’s mCore Platform to deliver services to operators and content providers. Previously, Dhawan served as a senior marketing exec at RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) and spent five years at AT&T (NYSE: T) Mobility, where he held executive roles in corporate strategy, marketing and network business planning.

—VP Abe Danzinger: Abe has served in executive roles at Informix Software, Hyperion Solutions, Amdocs, and most recently as SVP, Services at Avolent. He will be responsible for driving growth in the sales organization and building a global team that is focused on quality, solution sales and services.

On Wednesday, China handed out its long-awaited 3G licenses, with China Mobile, which has a 72 percent share of the market, being saddled with TD-SCDMA, the homegrown standard which has proved buggy in testing and trials. A decent handset wouldn’t be a bad thing for China Mobile, and there’s anecdotal evidence from sales of grey market G1’s in China that an Android based handset could be popular. Illegal G1s were being sold at a lofty 3,999 remminbi ($584) in Bejing’s Zhongguancun, its consumer electronics shopping area, plus another 500 remminbi ($73) to unlock the phone. China Mobile’s 3G services will be up against those of China Unicom running on Europe’s WCDMA standard, and China Telecom using North America’s CDMA 2000 standard. Both technologies have a wider range of handsets available to them. Meanwhile, no word on when the iPhone might launch in China.

Related

• China Issues Long-Awaited 3G Licenses
• Illegal G1's "Pouring" Into China

Well, that optimism apparently vanished quickly: Just two days after the interview appeared in mocoNews, Motricity sued Elfman, according to the Kansas City Business Journal. The suit alleges that Elfman knew Motricity would only buy the InfoSpace mobile business if he committed to take the job of president and COO and stay for two years after the sale closed.

It’s the latest drama for Motricity, whose fortunes and set-backs are intensely followed in the wireless industry. When the company purchased InfoSpace’s mobile division, it moved to Bellevue and laid-off hundreds of employees who had worked at its headquarters in Raleigh, N.C. The company, which develops back-end infrastructure for wireless operators, such as AT&T (NYSE: T), has raised nearly $500 million to date, including money from investor activist Carl Icahn.

The suit, filed on July 16 in Superior Court of Washington for King County, alleges that Elfman’s “duplicitous conduct” enriched himself and damaged Motricity. The Motricity-InfoSpace deal closed on Dec. 28., and Elfman left about three months later to become Sprint’s president of network operations and wholesale. The Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint said in a SEC filing last week that it had agreed on Aug. 4 to pay Elfman’s legal expenses in the case “to help mitigate distractions to the business and to protect (Sprint’s) interests.” Sprint told the Kansas City Business Journal that the company “reviewed the allegations, and Steve continues to have our full support.” Motricity’s general counsel said he was not allowed to comment. The suit seeks monetary penalties against Elfman “in an amount to be proven at trial.”

History of the Motricity-Infospace saga in our section

Related

• Interview: Ryan Wuerch, CEO, Motricity: IPO Still An Opportunity; 'M&A Will Be A Part Of Our Core'
• Motricity Announces Exec Team; Loses COO Steve Elfman To Sprint
• Motricity Takes Most Of The Hits With The InfoSpace Merger; Shelves IPO Plans
• Motricity Leaning Heavily On InfoSpace Acquisition; Laying Off 250 And Moving To Bellevue

Disclosure: Motricity was a sponsor of our recent Seattle event

Who’s Motricity?: Wuerch: “We are a brand behind the brand. If you open up your AT&T (NYSE: T) phone today, you see ringtones, games and graphics, that’s us…If you are configuring your portal, and choosing stocks, weather and news feeds, that’s Motricity via InfoSpace. If someone is texting to vote on CNN, whether it’s to Obama or McCain, that’s Motricity…we work with 10 of the 13 top carriers in North America, and the top six use our infrastructure.”

By the numbers: Wuerch: “The core of our business, and majority of revenues this year will be from mobile content. We will have $1.2 billion in gross mobile content revenues flowing through our network… We have positioned ourselves as one of the leading brands in the industry. We are well positioned. This year we will have $100-plus million in net revenues.”

On the integration of InfoSpace Mobile: Wuerch:  “We are still in the earliest days and someone is going to build the multi-billion company… Motricity was very strong on the marketing and the sales and forward leaning version and being very loud about it. InfoSpace mobile was very strong on the business side and execution… You’ll see several announcements shortly for renewals with current customers and new wins. We announced at the beginning of the year that this was our new focus and anything on the fringes was out.  We sold the direct-to-consumer business and in December we sold eReader.com. We have 350 employees still in Raleigh, but it will come down to 125 at year-end. There’s about 400 people at InfoSpace, and we’ll have 550 by mid-year next year.”

On more acquisitions: Will there be further consolidation? Wuerch: Absolutely. Will you be the one acquiring? Absolutely. What are you looking at? “We aren’t going to speak about it right now, but it’s been in our DNA. Because it’s in the earliest of innings, there’s still some great technologies and companies. There’s things that will help further our core business today that will help the carriers. M&A will be a part of our core strategically domestically and internationally.”

On fundraising: Wuerch: “It typically takes cash to acquire, whatever form that is. You can pay for things in stock or cash.” Are you still interested in an IPO? “It’s all about us executing every single day. And that’s one of the opportunities for the company, but I see that as a financing event. We have large investors that delivered over a quarter of a million dollars in our last round and we were oversubscribed. And the scale of our investors, like Carl Icahn. He is a great person and doesn’t invest in private companies….I have such a high degree of respect for him, we talk very frequently. He delivers a great degree of insight, we aren’t a company that’s public—and he’s not just extracting shareholder value by doing this.” 

On the reaction to the InfoSpace merger: You have the distinction of getting some of the most comments on our blog than any other company: Wuerch: “We’ve talked about the screenplay that could come out of it, but wherever there’s that much emotion, you could look at it as bad, but also if someone has that much emotion, than something was really there. You don’t get that emotional if something isn’t that important to you. In Raleigh-Durham, we worked really hard, and I really liked that place, and it wasn’t my intention to leave….I’m the CEO; the buck stops with me. I’ll handle it. If I’m making a decision, a barometer of how I’m doing is am I doing what’s right for shareholders and customers. And every employee we had has options that are exercised, and is a shareholder. So for me, even if I’m making the right decisions for the shareholders – that means even the employees. ... But when people started going after great people, even leave family aside, when they come after your kids it’s another thing. I had to be heads down; even though it hurts a little more than you like, you have to focus on the end goal.”

On morale at Motricity:Wuerch: “It depends on where you are. In Raleigh, in the early days, it was the people leaving that were writing. Here, it’s different. This is where we are growing and because ultimately they were the beneficiaries. It’s something I’m very aware of. I made this statement in an all-hands meeting. I believe the brand of Motricity is going to enable all of you—that won’t find yourself with the company anymore—as benefiting more because you are working with this company because of the brand, because of what you learned here or because of what it empowered you to do. Almost everyone who was reporting to me has gone on to better jobs, higher positions and for better pay.”

On the departure of Steve Elfman, the No. 1 guy from InfoSpace Mobile: Wuerch: “Where did he go? Sprint (NYSE: S). He’s the president at Sprint, which is a customer. Sprint was never a good customer, right? “No, it was never a good InfoSpace customer, but for Motricity it has been a customer for awhile. Stay tuned. We are quiet not because we aren’t working, but because when we come out, we want to come out right. We want to be very clear and have our partnerships aligned.”

On iPhone’s impact: Wuerch: “There’s about 10 million projected devices to to be sold. So it’s a really, really small number, but what Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has done is that they have raised the bar. But for us as a company, it’s about the mass average user, it’s about a consumer who’s never used a phone to get content…And, frankly, that’s where Motricity lives. We can help facilitate it.”

On Apple disrupting the traditional business model: Isn’t the iPhone changing that, and Apple is in effect playing your role with its App store?  Wuerch: “There’s no question it is. And in their world, there’s only 10 million or 12 million phones. But that’s estimated to be a $1 billion-dollar market by some estimates in the first year. “Good. Good. For us as a company, this is where I go back and there will be ways Motricity finds its way to capture something where today it can’t…We want to live where the masses live and make it better. That’s where Motricity is living. We are becoming the enabler of the industry. We are positioned and working hard to become the layer that creates better usage and consumption, and frankly we don’t look at content as ringtones or game, it’s all the above. What’s an ad? It’s a piece of content that’s flowing through the industry. “

On the walled garden: Are the walls crumbling? Wuerch: “I think the wall has come down. What we knew as a walled garden is gone. The moment you created doors, you created open, and the walls really came down. Today, you see things on your phone. You get an AT&T device, and you get what I call AT&T proprietary, which is their store, their portal, called MediaNet and MediaMall. ... It’s still very hard to get out of the walls But it’s getting better….Some of the things we are rolling out this year are very open.” Benzing: “I liken it to the early days of the internet when there were Prodigy, AOL (NYSE: TWX) and Compuserve, and they were building the things they were building because the market was so immature. I see the browser wars coming to mobile…There’s a lot of browsers in the mobile space. If you think about mobile as a platform to develop on things really start to open up.”

On Motricity’s role as carriers become more open: Benzing: “We are certainly a player in that space….We look at this model—what we call off-deck today—and more and more companies will have a need for mobile specialists, and more companies will need help in understanding the ecosystems. So while we’ve dominated in the carrier sector, we believe the market is maturing and will create new opportunities for us. Apple, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) and now Nokia (NYSE: NOK) are beginning to invest in new services, and that’s a new potential channel for us. What we’d like to see in ideal world, is what if the carrier, our technology and handsets were being built together on a single roadmap. We all have to step up on our game; right now experiences are built to the lowest common denominator.

On the longevity of storefronts and portals: Benzing: ” I don’t anticipate that the carriers will hand that off to anyone and they’ll just ship a browser….We are still very far from the Internet, and the technology being used today around portals and personalization and customization are very much at the forefront of in mobile. A lot of the limitations are in the browser, and you have to ask how much content people actually want to consume and in what format on a mobile phone. But as you start to think about widgets and the concept of info-snacking, and then go to the full Internet browser when you want the meal.”

EMI changed some parts of the lawsuit in August, and asked for lower damages. Infospace had filed a counterclaim. According to the SEC filing: “The EMI Parties charged that the Company breached two ringtone license agreements by underpaying royalties and infringed the EMI Parties’ copyrights by making unlicensed use of the EMI Parties’ works. The EMI Parties claimed in excess of $10 million in damages for the alleged breaches of contract, and claimed statutory damages for alleged copyright infringement of ‘many millions’ of dollars. The Company denied the EMI Parties’ allegations and counterclaimed for no less than $1.5 million based upon the EMI Parties’ alleged breach of contract and tortious interference.”

As for the settlement: “The Settlement Agreement concludes the EMI Litigation, and InfoSpace does not expect that the settlement reached with the EMI Parties pursuant to the Settlement Agreement will materially and adversely affect the Company’s business or results of operations.”

Related

• EMI Modifies Ringtone Lawsuit Against Infospace; Asking For Lower Damages
• Infospace Protests On EMI's Auditors On $100 million Ringtones Lawsuit
• Infospace Responds To EMI's $100 Million Ringtones Lawsuit
• i>EMI Publishing Files $100 Million Lawsuit Against Infospace, Alleging Ringtone Abuse

Coincidentally, the second most-compensated exec in the Northwest also came from the telecom sector. It was Clearwire’s CEO Ben Wolff, who made $15.1 million in 2007 with options awards worth $12.1 million, and a salary of $705,462.

Here’s a PDF of the Top 5.

Related

• Infospace's Mobile Division Sale To Motricity Complete; Motricity Raises $185 Million
• InfoSpace Sells Online Directory Business To Idearc For $225 Million

Here’s a rundown of the results:

—40 percent of marketing agencies said they currently spend less than 2 percent on mobile marketing initiatives, however, one-third of the group said they expected to increase spending by more than 25 percent next year. 

—71 percent of the content providers and 58 percent of technology providers polled said that advertisers aren’t using mobile marketing and advertising because the channel is underdeveloped.

—31 percent of wireless operators reported that they are looking for more information from the mobile ecosystem on the strategies used for executing mobile marketing campaigns.

—49 percent of content providers and 36 percent of aggregators said that “targeting and demographics” are most critical to effective mobile marketing campaigns.

—23 percent of wireless operators said they felt that content customization and personalization are the key to increasing mobile marketing.

—48 percent of agencies said opt-ins or registrations are most important for demonstrating return-on-investment.

In the Velocity release, Miller is credited with turning around AOL by restructuring its core business lines and helping the company deliver record annual profit growth of 21 percent. Motricity itself is in the middle of a restructuring. Following the purchase of InfoSpace, it announced last week, that it would meld the two company’s products together, leaning heavily on the InfoSpace mCore platform, lay off 250 people at its headquarters at Durham, N.C. and relocate to Bellevue to be with InfoSpace (NSDQ: INSP). The investment also follows comments by Icahn this week that questioned whether he should have made the investment, although he reaffirmed his faith in the technology.

Motricity’s CEO Ryan Wuerch, said in the release: “He understands the complexity of our ecosystem and how to structure a business that scales. He’ll add substantial value to Motricity as we continue to grow.”

UPDATE: PaidContent’s David Kaplan caught Jon Miller after a panel discussion today, and got his thoughts on Motricity:

—Motricity’s potential: “What’s fascinating about Motricity is that $1 billion of carrier-related revenue currently goes through it, which generates over $100 million [in revenue] for them. And that is just a really advanced ad scale platform that touches the entire mobile industry in the United States. We were attracted by a wide range of opportunities that it presents.”

—Restructuring challenge: “It’s just gone through a merger and consistent with many mergers the company’s being restructured. The CEO and the company has made a commitment to move to Seattle. I think they’re through the toughest part, though none of these things are ever easy for the people involved.”

Related

• Icahn Questions Motricity Investment; Has Faith In The Technology
• Motricity Leaning Heavily On InfoSpace Acquisition; Laying Off 250 And Moving To Bellevue
• Rumors Of Major Cutbacks Swirl Around Motricity—What's The Deal?

Icahn told Private Equity Hub’s Dan Primack about his second-thoughts. He said: “I did ask Icahn why he did a pure venture capital deal last year for Motricity, which is now laying off 250 workers and moving its headquarters out of North Carolina. He answered that his son came to him with the deal one night, and he basically said “Why not?” He now admits it probably wasn’t a good decision, but still expressed faith in the company’s technology.” Video of his talk here and here.

Brett, who is Icahn’s son, is a member of Motricity’s board.

If Icahn expresses faith in the company’s technology, he must be referring to the technology the company purchased through the acquisition of InfoSpace since going forward most of the company’s cellphone infrastructure platform will be based on the mCore platform built by InfoSpace.

Related

• Motricity Leaning Heavily On InfoSpace Acquisition; Laying Off 250 And Moving To Bellevue
• Rumors Of Major Cutbacks Swirl Around Motricity—What's The Deal?

Here’s some more details about the integration based on conversations with employees at the company who preferred not to be named:

—Executive changes: Motricity’s Wuerch will move to the Seattle-area to work alongside Steve Elfman, the former EVP of InfoSpace mobile, who is now serving as the president and COO. A few of Wuerch’s direct reports were offered the option to move, but haven’t yet decided on whether they’ll go. Those not offered relocation packages will be laid off. Almost all of Elfman’s direct reports in the new organization are people who reported to him before the merger.

—Layoffs: Of the 250 layoffs, only a few were laid off in Bellevue, meaning that of the 350 employees in Durham, about 100 will remain. It will take nine months for the layoffs to be completed, with the first wave occurring May 3.

—Headquarters move: The headquarters move also has to do with customers. One of Motricity’s big customers—T-Mobile USA—is also based in Bellevue. Likewise, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), which is just a few miles away, recently purchased the search company FAST, a partner of InfoSpace.

—IPO plans: The company shelved IPO plans because revenues were not high enough and the company wasn’t profitable. Together, the two companies will have about $100 million in annual revenues and will be closer to profitability when the layoffs are completed in nine months. At that time, the company will re-evaluate its opportunities, whether that means going public, or being sold.

Related

• Motricity Leaning Heavily On InfoSpace Acquisition; Laying Off 250 And Moving To Bellevue
• Motricity Announcement May Come As Early As Next Week
• Rumors Of Major Cutbacks Swirl Around Motricity—What's The Deal?
• Motricity May Slash As Many As 200 Employees; May Move To Bellevue: Report

Based on the details of the announcements, it appears Motricity is leaning heavily on the InfoSpace acquisition for people, technology and location:

—The technology: Motricity will migrate customers from its own Fuel platform to InfoSpace’s mCore platform for Portal, Storefront, Search, Messaging and Managed Web products, although some elements from Fuel will be integrated into mCore. 

—The headquarters: The company will consolidate office locations, moving the headquarters location from Durham to Bellevue, “which is in close proximity to some of Motricity’s largest customers.” No word on where the affected employees are being laid off from, however, prior to the merger Motricity had 350 employees and InfoSpace had 250. There’s no details on relocation requirements, even for CEO Ryan Wuerch. Currently, Steve Elfman, former EVP of InfoSpace mobile, is serving as the president and COO from Bellevue.

—Divestitures: Along with the layoffs, Motricity said it will be selling off its direct-to-consumer business Pocketgear.com, and will sever certain business relationships in media and entertainment, though it doesn’t go into further detail on that. The planned sale of Pocketgear follows the sale of eReader to Fictionwise in December.

Related

• Motricity Announcement May Come As Early As Next Week
• Rumors Of Major Cutbacks Swirl Around Motricity—What's The Deal?
• Motricity May Slash As Many As 200 Employees; May Move To Bellevue

A reduction in staff has been expected since Motricity closed the acquisition of the mobile services group of Bellevue-based InfoSpace (NSDQ: INSP) on Dec. 28. Nearly a month later, Motricity held an employee-wide meeting on Jan. 31 to tell the 600 employees that they are still working on an integration plan and that it was expected to be completed by the end of this month.

Related

• Rumors Of Major Cutbacks Swirl Around Motricity--What's The Deal?
• Motricity May Slash As Many As 200 Employees; May Move To Bellevue: Report

Motricity Fast Facts:

—Ryan Wuerch, the company’s current chairman and CEO, founded Nashville, Tenn,-based PowerByHand in 2001, which later became Motricity following a number of mergers and acquisitions.

—Has raised more than $380 million in venture capital, including funds from investor activist Carl Icahn. That included a $180 million round in December to fund the $135 million all-cash acquisition of InfoSpace (NSDQ: INSP) mobile services business. Its next move could be to file for an initial public offering.

—Motricity’s main platform, called Fuel 5 Suite, helps operators and content providers deal with mobile content storefronts, where ringtone, games and graphics downloads, subscriptions, community applications and data services are sold to consumers.

—Employees: about 350 mostly based in Durham, N.C.

InfoSpace Fast Facts:

—Steve Elfman, former EVP of InfoSpace’s mobile services business unit, is now the president and COO of Motricity, and is based out of Bellevue.

—InfoSpace main platform, called mCore, mostly provides portal services to help mobile operators deliver search, messaging, storefront and the managed Web services.

—The sale of its mobile business was initiated after one of its big carrier partners (largely assumed to be AT&T) decided to create direct partnerships with music labels rather than use InfoSpace as a ringtone aggregator. InfoSpace total mobile revenues in 2006 were $185 million, but without ringtone sales, InfoSpace core mobile services generated about $37 million.

—Employees: About 250, mostly based in Bellevue.

Together:

—Motricity and InfoSpace’s customer base is fairly extensive. They serve 11 of the top 13 carriers in North America including AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), Sprint (NYSE: S), T-Mobile, Bell Mobility, Tracfone and Alltel (NYSE: AT). The two power storefronts and communities for nine of the top 13 carriers in North America, and they power five of the top six carrier “start screens” which result in billions of page views a year.

—One point of merger contention—there are no direct flights between Seattle and Raleigh, N.C.

Related

• Motricity May Slash As Many As 200 Employees; May Move To Bellevue: Report
• Infospace To Cut 20 Percent of Jobs; Reducing Costs

Motricity, one of the biggest mobile content and applications firm in U.S. now after the buyout of Infospace’s mobile division last year, may now slash as many as 200 jobs out of its workforce of 650, reports WRAL, citing sources. Motricity is also considering moving its headquarters out of Durham, NC to Bellevue, Wash, where Infospace’s mobile unit was based.

This comes after a big round of funding as well, where it raised $185 million, out of which $135 million was used to finance the acquisition. The round was led by Advanced Equities, Carl Icahn and New Enterprise Associates. Steve Elfman, former EVP of InfoSpace’s mobile services business unit, and now the president and COO of Motricity, is based in Bellevue as well.

The combination of the two companies has resulted in significant duplication, the story says, and rumors have been going on for weeks internally, though no action has been taken yet.

Editor’s note: So after watching this thread for along time, we’re finally closing comments on this as the discussion has devolved into name calling. We tried to give as much leeway as we could for open discussion…

Related

• Infospace To Cut 20 Percent of Jobs; Reducing Costs
• Infospace's Mobile Division Sale To Motricity Complete; Motricity Raises $185 Million
• Infospace Exits Mobile Business; Motricity Buys Its Mobile Services Business For $135 Million