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Today we made the decision to restructure our business, which reduced our number of employees by roughly 15%. I have just finished an all-hands meeting where I talked about today’s events with our people.

Our thoughts today are with the people who left us. They were our friends and colleagues, each made meaningful contributions to our business and were liked. We offer them our sincere thanks for their hard work and efforts and good wishes for them as they go forward.

We decided to take this step because of the uncertainty of overall economic conditions and the fact that our performance has been impacted by a number of unanticipated challenges during the first nine months of the year, including advertising revenues being dampened by the weakness in the economy and by reduced payouts to the domain channel by Google and Yahoo, which is in turn impacting domain portfolio advertising revenues and especially bulk domain portfolio sales.

I have also never seen a macro economic environment like we are seeing now. I am old enough to have lived through a number of down cycles but there are elements of this one that make it unique and that will take time to work through.

I am immensely proud of the great work our team has done together this year. The product launches of Butterscotch, Hover and Storefront. The brand launches of OpenSRS and YummyNames, and the smooth email migration to our new platform.

We are luckier than most in that what we sell, domain names and email, is more like milk and bread than like cars and refrigerators. We are also luckier than most in that we generate cash and will continue to.

As we look forward to 2009, I believe we have a strong team who will continue to innovate, to work efficiently and maintain our positive momentum. I fundamentally believe that our strength comes from our people and I look forward to working hard together over the coming weeks and months to exceed even our own expectations.

And again, today, our thoughts are with the people who have left.

New video website offers consumers entertaining video to demystify technology and the Internet

Toronto, November 3, 2008 – Tucows Inc., (AMEX:TCX, TSX:TC) a global Internet services company, announced today the launch of butterscotch.com, a new online video network that offers educational and user-friendly instructional shows designed to demystify technology for the average technology consumer. The website’s Fall lineup features a range of handy tutorials and TV-like shows aimed at making technology fun and easy to understand. Hosted by tech veterans Amber MacArthur, Andy Walker, Sean Carruthers, and Molly MacDonald, butterscotch.com aims to be the HGTV of the technology industry.

Butterscotch.com’s technology video content helps consumers understand and use products, services and software they may otherwise find too techie. The site launches with 35 video tutorials, with plans to reach 500 clips by next spring, featuring tech tips, tricks and “how-to’s” for the non-sophisticated technology consumer. It will also publish mutli-episode tutorial specials that will examine a range of topics such as “Facebook for Grownups,” and “Flickr for the Frightened.” Visitors can also view a news show that features the Internet’s best viral videos, called the “A-List,” “Miss-Download,” a show that highlights the best file downloads on the Internet, and “Lab Rats,” a wacky, tech advice show that already enjoys 150,000 weekly downloads.

Butterscotch.com adds a new dimension to Tucows.com, one of the oldest and most respected software download sites on the web. It further illustrates the company’s goal to provide simple, useful services that help people unlock the power of the Internet.
In addition to consumers, marketers at technology companies and retail outlets can use butterscotch.com content to help their own customers better understand the products they are offering, ultimately providing an overall improved customer experience.

Butterscotch.com offers unique opportunities for marketers including in-video advertising, private-labeled shows, syndication and product placement. More information is available at http://www.butterscotch.com/advertise.html.

“We’re proud of butterscotch.com’s Fall lineup of technology shows and look forward to adding more content that will wow and educate viewers about technology, ” said Andy Walker, General Manager, butterscotch.com. “We’ve expanded on what Tucows.com is all about and continue to provide fantastic content to help consumers fully enjoy the benefits of technology and how it fits into their every-day lives.”

About Tucows

Tucows is a global Internet services company.

OpenSRS manages over 8 million domain names and millions of email boxes through a reseller network of over 9,000 web hosts and ISPs. Our Retail group sells services directly to consumers and small businesses through Domain Direct, It’s Your Domain and NetIdentity. YummyNames owns premium domain names that generate revenue through advertising or resale. Butterscotch.com is an online video network building on the foundation of Tucows.com.

More information can be found at http://tucowsinc.com.