Is Scott Thompson the ‘back to basics’ guy Yahoo’s needed all along?
Yahoo has once again gone outside the company to breathe new life into the once-mighty Internet titan: Scott Thompson, most recently the president of eBay’s PayPal division, takes the helm on Monday, January 9th.
The four-month search ends the latest period of uncertainty for Yahoo, which has been struggling to regain its rightful place in the hearts and minds of the digerati — to say nothing of an indifferent Wall Street.
Investors have been sour on Yahoo for a while. The news of Thompson’s hiring was met with boos on NASDAQ, where Yahoo closed Wednesday at $15.78, down 51 cents. With a “fool me twice” attitude, potential will be no substitute for results. And given the spectacular flame out of former CEO Carol Bartz, investor patience must be wearing thin (if, that is, it still exists at all).
Thompson seems to be arriving with a clean slate and marching orders that give him a fairly free hand — “he will work closely with the Board as we continue the strategic review process to identify the best approaches for the Company and its shareholders.” Indeed, Thompson hadn’t even met with the top Yahoo executives, which I would take as a sign that his allegiance is entirely to the board.
That’s a good thing, because Thompson has his work cut out for him. Consider this reaction from Lawrence Haverty, a fund manager with GAMCO investors, which owns Yahoo shares.
“It’s a positive outcome,” Haverty told Reuters, “but not as positive as a sale of the company.”
Ouch.
Tech wrap: Yahoo battle with Alibaba heats up
Yahoo’s battle with Alibaba intensified as they issued contradictory statements over the Chinese company’s transfer of a major Internet asset to its CEO. Analysts said the handover of Alipay, an online e-commerce payment system, to Alibaba CEO Jack Ma has reduced the value of Yahoo’s 43 percent Alibaba stake. Yahoo said it had been blindsided by the deal, while Alibaba countered that Yahoo was aware of the transaction by virtue of having a board seat, now held by former Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang, who is also a Yahoo director.
PR agency Burson-Marsteller, in the spotlight after it was revealed that Facebook had hired the firm to run a smear campaign against Google, said it will give the employees in charge of the operation extra training instead of firing them, The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons writes.
Cisco Systems is expected to cut thousands of jobs in possibly its worst-ever round of layoffs to meet Chief Executive John Chambers’ goal of slashing costs by $1 billion. Four analysts contacted by Reuters estimated the world’s largest maker of network equipment will eliminate up to 4,000 jobs in coming months, with the average forecast at 3,000. That would represent 4 percent of Cisco’s 73,000 permanent workers. It also has an undisclosed number of temporary contractors.
A British judge banned Twitter users from identifying a brain-damaged woman in one of the first attempts to prevent the messaging website from revealing sensitive information. Lawyers say leaks of information protected by a British injunction on U.S.-based Twitter show that court orders to gag the press are unsustainable.
Celebrities who bombard fans with Twitter updates are likely to have shorter careers than those who maintain an aura of mystique, according to a survey. Easy access to stars through social networking websites has made them less appealing and increases the likelihood of followers getting bored, music consumer research by publishers Bauer Media said.
Travelers in the western U.S. should not rely solely on technology such as GPS for navigation, authorities said, after a Canadian couple were lost in the Nevada wilderness for 48 days. Sheriff’s offices in remote, high-elevation parts of Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming report the past two years have brought a rise in the number of GPS-guided travelers driving off marked and paved highways and into trouble.
Sun Valley: The stars align
Allen & Co’s 27th Sun Valley media and technology conference starts on July 7 and ends on July 12. In the meantime, expect media writers to breathlessly report, blog, tweet, photograph and record the event. Why the fuss? There are literally hundreds of people coming who are known to do nothing else than run the universe when it comes to TV shows, movies, telecoms, the Internet and all sorts of other electronic communications. We have lists of all the people who bankroll them as well, along with a list of other interesting people you will find there.
Here, meanwhile, are the big men and women of media and technology who justify the travel budgets that increasingly hard-up news organizations have to put out for your favorite folks in the press corps to hide behind the hedges and hope for a handout that will break news, move markets and excite our editors. Keep in mind: this list is not a guarantee that these people are showing up; it’s just an invitation list (arranged alphabetically by company). We’ll update it as we learn more. (Our boldface names indicate some general viewpoint that they’re the stars of the stars.)
- James McCann, CEO, 1-800-flowers.com.
- Bobby Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard Inc. Also Brian Kelly, co-chairman.
- Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com Inc.
- Tim Armstrong, chairman and CEO, AOL
- Michael Ovitz, AMSEF LLC, former uber-talent agent at Creative Artists Agency and former Walt Disney Co executive.
- Gerhard Zeiler, CEO, RTL Group, Bertelsmann AG.
- Bill and Melinda Gates, of the foundation of the same name. Bill, of course, co-founded Microsoft Corp.
- Mark Vadon, executive chairman, Blue Nile Inc.
- James Dolan, president, CEO, Cablevision Systems Corp.
- Leslie Moonves, president, CEO, CBS Corp. Also Neil Ashe, president, CBS Interactive. Also Quincy Smith, CEO, CBS Interactive. (And a former Allen & Co man.)
- Charlie Rose, interviewer and anchor on the Charlie Rose Show
- Anthony Bloom, Cineworld plc
- Richard Parsons, chairman, Citigroup Inc. Former CEO, Time Warner Inc.
- Lowry Mays, chairman, Clear Channel Communications Inc.
- Ralph Roberts, founder, chairman emeritus, Comcast Corp. Also Stephen Burke, president and COO, Comcast Cable.
- Patrick Condo, president, CEO, Convera Corp.
- Jimmy Hayes, CEO, Cox Enterprises Inc.
- Richard Lovett, president, Creative Artists Agency Inc. Also Bryan Lourd, managing partner.
- Michael Dell, chairman and CEO, Dell Inc.
- Richard Rosenblatt, chairman and CEO, Demand Media. He used to work at MySpace’s parent company before News Corp bought it.
- Chase Carey, former DirecTV CEO and Rupert Murdoch’s new No. 2 man at News Corp.
- John Hendricks, founder and chairman, Discovery Communications. Also president and CEO David Zaslav.
- Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO, DreamWorks Animation SKG.
- John Donahoe, president and CEO, eBay Inc.
- Dara Khosrowshahi, president and CEO, Expedia Inc.
- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (We’ve heard conflicting reports about whether he’ll show. Either way, he’s still on our list.)
- Tom Freston, principal, Firefly3 LLC. Former Viacom executive.
- Martin Varsavsky, CEO, FON
- Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO, General Electric Co.
- Jeff Zucker, CEO, NBC Universal. (GE)
- Ronald Meyer, president and COO, Universal Studios. (GE)
- Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google. Also co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
- Juan Luis Cebrian, CEO, Grupo Prisa. Also Ignacio Polanco, chairman.
- Emilio Azcarraga, chairman and president, Grupo Televisa. Also Alfonso de Angoitia, executive vp.
- Christopher Schroeder, CEO, HealthCentral. Also former CEO of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.
- Cathleen Black, president, Hearst Magazines.
- R. Todd Bradley, executive vp, personal systems group, Hewlett-Packard Co. Also CEO Mark Hurd.
- Barry Diller, chairman, CEO, IAC/InterActiveCorp. Also chairman, Expedia Inc. Also Victor Kaufman, vice chairman, IAC/InterActiveCorp.
- Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman, Illyria Pty Ltd. Son of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch.
- Craig Barrett, former CEO, chairman, Intel Corp. Also Sean Maloney, executive vp, chief sales and marketing officer.
- Jeffrey Berg, chairman and CEO, International Creative Management. Also president Christopher Silbermann.
- Michael Volpi, formerly of Cisco Systems Inc and Joost.
- Eric Eisner, L+E Pictures. Son of former Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner.
- Kevin Reilly, CEO, Lamar Advertising Co.
- Michael Fries, president and CEO, Liberty Global Inc.
- John Malone, chairman, Liberty Media Corp. Also Greg Maffei, president and CEO.
- Reid Hoffman, chairman, president of products, LinkedIn Corp.
- Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO, Loopt Inc.
- Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer, advanced strategies and policy, Microsoft Corp. Also Robbie Bach, president of the entertainment and devices division, and Henry Vigil, senior vp, strategy and partnership.
- Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News Corp. Also with him is his second son, James Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp’s Europe and Asia operations. Also Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s chairman and CEO for its digital media group. Former president and COO Peter Chernin, whose last day was June 30, is coming along too, in tow with CFO David DeVoe and new MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta.
- Gina Bianchini, CEO, Ning Inc.
- Jorma Ollila, chairman, Nokia Corp.
- Greg Wyler, founder, O3B Networks Ltd.
- Jeffrey Jordan, president and CEO, OpenTable Inc.
- Jeffery Boyd, president and CEO, priceline.com Inc.
- Maurice Levy, chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe.
- Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO, Qualcomm Inc.
- Robert Johnson, founder and chairman, the RLJ Companies.
- Jay Y. Lee, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
- Kenneth Lowe, chairman, president and CEO. Scripps Networks Interactive.
- Mel Karmazin, CEO, Sirius XM Radio Inc.
- Max Levchin, CEO, Slide Inc.
- Sir Howard Stringer, chairman and CEO, Sony Corp. Also Kazuo Hirai, president of networked products and services group; Robert Wiesenthal, executive vp and CFO, Sony Corporation of America; Michael Lynton, chairman and CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment; Hiroshi Yoshioka, executive deputy president, president of consumer products and devices group; and Nicole Seligman, top lawyer.
- Nick Grouf, CEO, Spot Runner Inc.
- Thomas Glocer, CEO, Thomson Reuters Corp, along with Niall FitzGerald, deputy chairman.
- Michael Eisner, the Tornante Company LLC. Former Walt Disney Co CEO.
- Lars Buttler, CEO, Trion World Network Inc.
- Evan Williams, co-founder and chairman, Twitter Inc.
- David Levin, CEO, United Business Media plc.
- James Berkus, chairman, United Talent Agency.
- Brad Grey, chairman and CEO, Paramount Pictures Corp (Viacom).
- Sumner Redstone, chairman, Viacom. Also Philippe Dauman, president and CEO.
- Jean-Bernard Levy, CEO, Vivendi.
- Robert Iger, president and CEO, Walt Disney Co. Also Thomas Staggs, CFO.
- Edgar Bronfman Jr, chairman and CEO, Warner Music Group.
- Donald Graham, chairman, CEO, The Washington Post Co.
- Casey Wasserman, chairman and CEO, Wasserman Media Group LLC.
- Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman, The Weinstein Co.
- Shelby Bonnie, CEO, Whiskey Media LLC.
- Jim Wiatt, William Morris Endeavor.
- Terry Semel, chairman and CEO, Windsor Media. Former Yahoo CEO.
- Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP.
- Anne Mulcahy, chairman, Xerox Corp.
- Jerry Yang, chief Yahoo.
- Mark Pincus, founder, CEO, Zynga Inc.
Nick Grouf can teach on how to screw over your employees and your investors while walking away with several million dollars. maybe he can do a secondary seminar about “pump and dump” schemes. Nick is a fraud
Yahoo: new boss, and (almost) everyone’s happy!
We’ve had two months to ruminate, speculate and analyze about who will take over as Yahoo chief executive after co-founder Jerry Yang who decided 18 months in the hotseat was enough for him.
Carol Bartz, former chief executive of Autodesk, was appointed CEO on Tuesday after her name had been floated ”on sources” a few days earlier in various reports.
Yahoo shares were flat on Wednesday morning and most Wall Street analysts viewed the appointment as a positive as it clears the way for Yahoo to do some sort of merger/outsourcing deal with Microsoft.
Bartz, a director at Cisco, also got a glowing endorsement from Cisco chief John Chambers, according to the New York Times:
“She’s the best player in the draft,” said John Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco Systems, where Ms. Bartz has served as a board member since 1996. Mr. Chambers said Ms. Bartz often challenged him on strategic decisions, like mergers and acquisitions, to make sure they had been thought through well. And Ms. Bartz is not afraid to speak her mind, he said.
“You always know where she stands,” Mr. Chambers said. “You may not always like it.”
But more importantly what does the blogosphere think of Bartz?
Ballmer upstaged at first-ever CES keynote?
After watching Bill Gates deliver Microsoft’s keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show for 12 years, CEO Steve Ballmer finally got his moment in the sun on Wednesday.
We were rooting for you Steve, but next time, tell your friends not to steal your thunder.
First, it was Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg leaking the news that the U.S. phone company has picked Microsoft as its default mobile search provider. It’s a big win for Microsoft, which has been lagging behind Google and Yahoo on the Web, but Ballmer didn’t get to be the first to tell the world. Seidenberg stole the spotlight, announcing the deal at a Citi investor conference earlier on Wednesday. We were hoping Microsoft would take back the limelight by giving us more details when it was Ballmer’s turn at CES, but alas, all the CEO said was, “I’m also thrilled to announce a new long term partnership with Verizon to offer our live services on all Verizon phones.”
Besides the Verizon deal, Ballmer also announced at CES the beta test launch of Windows 7, Halo Wars, a Windows Live deal with Dell, and a bunch of other stuff. But most of it, while good news, didn’t seem to wow the crowds at the Palazzo Ballroom in the Venetian hotel.
The funniest moment of the keynote, in our opinion, was when Ballmer joked about the advice Bill Gates gave him for his first-ever keynote. Ballmer flashed a message on the screen from Gates that said “There are always two conventions going on during CES – make sure you go to the right one.” The other conference is the adult entertainment expo, of course (if you didn’t know).
He then followed with supposed messages from President-elect Barack Obama, disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and others, including this faux gem from Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang:
“Why do you keep ignoring my Facebook requests?”
Really dull. Where have all the stars gone. Bill’s gone and now even Jobs isnt there at Macworld
Steve Ballmer might as well take applications for Yahoo job
Able to use a computer? Check. High school diploma? Check. Work well with others? Check. Willing to strike a deal with Microsoft? Ummmm….
Indeed, in the hunt for the next top dog at Yahoo that last issue — whether the candidate can do a deal with Microsoft — may be the most pressing.
Since Yahoo’s announcement on Monday that Jerry Yang would step aside, the tech/media world has been abuzz with speculation about his replacement. Silicon Alley Insider is even running a terrific mock election — letting its readers vote among six candidates.
(News Corp’s Peter Chernin is one of them. Wouldn’t it be great if he got the job? It would let us spend some time chattering about what will happen over at Rupert Murdoch’s empire).
But as Anupreeta Das points out in the Reuters story, the only way Yahoo may be able to satisfy its investors is either a massive turnaround plan, which would be very difficult in this environment, or an M&A deal. And the best shot at a deal may be with Microsoft.
“Microsoft wants Yahoo’s search audience, the traffic, the clicks,” Needham & Co. analyst Mark May said. “They want to have as much as Google does. So it’s important for Microsoft to have a big presence in search and display.”
What does Yahoo need in a new CEO? They need someone who is a business and technology person. They also need someone with a strong background in mergers in case Yahoo’s board decides to sell.
The best executive I know with those skills is James Kennedy
Robert
Fight on the blogs! Fight on the blogs!
There’s the story, and there’s always the side-story. The snarky, juicy, lip-smacking stuff.
Case in point is last night’s news that Jerry Yang is stepping down as chief executive of Yahoo — which itself is an interesting tale. But we’d like to draw your attention to RealDanLyons.com, where you’ll find a wonderfully catty distraction.
In his blog, Dan Lyons rips into Kara Swisher, the AllThingsD honcho and prominent tech writer, who apparently took issue with him for not crediting her with getting the scoop on Yang’s departure.
“Kara, honey, I love you dearly, but girl-child, having a company send you a press release ten minutes before they put it on the wire isn’t a scoop. That’s called taking dictation,” he writes. ”One thing you have to admire about Kara is that in a blogosphere that all too often resembles an echo chamber, she’s managed to cut out the middleman; she just echoes herself. And while others engage in logrolling, Kara keeps it real and rolls her own log. Kara, listen. You’re not the story. Bokay? You’re the reporter. This isn’t about you. It really isn’t. Now stop it or I will fly out there and sit you down for a talk. You’re getting Mossberg Syndrome, honey, and that’s not a good thing.”
Is Swisher going to take that? No way, no chance.
“How would a snarktastic wonder like you know what a reporter was?” she responds in the comment section. ”I was teasing you, you twit, as you well know (I would dearly love to mangle emails you sent to me recently about your work, but I am too much of a gentleman!). When you come here, we’ll have a “talk” all right–my people like to call it a “sit-down” though. Love and kisses, Kara.”
What a way to start the morning.
Well,don’t fight!
SHE is the reporter,and reporter comes out of the latin Re Portum;namely BEARER,of the NEWS(0r scoop).
Re Portum is a shortening of Rethimnae excelcior;Portum;and the last two letters -UM stands for Urbi(URBAN)Maxim(MAXIM)..in full,the reporter is just the bearer and not the initiator of the reported.
Of that follows the full meaning in Re;PORTUM=Rethimnae Excelcior;Prophessus Omnibus Rethimnae Thesis Urbi maxim;meaning -”As of the thesis as invented in the City state of Rethimnon(Crete) according to the Urban Maxim.”-
and it was up to the Urban Maxim to CREDIT the said Tale;not up to the BEARER of the same Tale;but the BEARER was ALWAYS by habit CREDITED with having brought forward the Tale itself, as a matter of FACT!
It IS a technical question, who was actually first to do the NOTICE;but a shrewed habit by females is to intrigue themeselves into the knowing!..thereby such faiblesse for intelligence organizations for USING women dearly in the trade of the Reporting business…
wshrp
Yahoo rejected again (and again)
Yahoo: Shun me once, shame on you. Shun me three times in one day, shame on… uh, shame on all of you.
First, Google walked away from their search advertising partnership, saying that it had enough with interference from U.S. antitrust regulators. That’s no surprise — remember the deal was originally conceived as a way for Yahoo to fend off Microsoft’s takeover ambitions? On that score, Google can certainly say: mission accomplished.
Then, investors and bloggers started speculating that Google’s withdrawal could make room for Microsoft to return to the negotiating table. Shares of Yahoo jumped as much as 11 percent on rumors that the companies were in advanced talks … before several people familiar with the situation roundly denied that Microsoft was close to making an offer.
Finally, when News Corp was asked on its earnings call about the status of its previously reported discussions with Yahoo or Microsoft, Rupert Murdoch said, “There are no talks.”
That seems to leave Yahoo with only one possible partner: Time Warner’s AOL. The two companies are supposed to be in due diligence on a combination, but when questioned on its earnings call, Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes was vague:
You know all of the usual suspects and things that go on, including even some breaking news today, in some of our competitors. So the opportunities or possibilities remain open for this whole business to restructure itself, and to build adequate scale to compete with whoever is in the lead position and I think we have all seen the interest at both, just to mention a few companies, Microsoft, Yahoo and even Google, to bulk up and increase scale. And we’re no different in that regard. So beyond that, we can’t really say what is possible, or what is under way.
At this point they should offer to PAY microsoft to take them.
APT question: A big win or an empty promise?
Cheaper? Easier?!??? Those words are the lifeblood of the advertising community.
Now Chief Executive Jerry Yang is using them to tout Yahoo’s new advertising system, telling Reuters in an interview that the so-called APT will make life better for advertisers and publisher.
“This system allows cross-selling between sales forces, it allows us to have visibility of what pricing is happening and where,” Yang said in the interview.
What Yahoo wants is a system as efficient for online display advertising as the one run by Google in search advertising. APT will roll out in the fourth quarter, and from early 2009, will place Yahoo’s own inventory on the system as well as other publishers and advertisers. Yahoo has teamed with nearly 800 newspaper websites.
But can they pull it off? That remains to be seen. As Ben Schachter, analyst at UBS says, “Given Yahoo’s scale and position as the leader in online display advertising, it is Yahoo’s position to lose. The problem is, given Yahoo’s execution history over the past few years, we are afraid that they could lose it.”
What do ad executives think? The New York Times spoke to one…
Just what Yahoo needs: more controversy
Hey, did someone mention hanging chads?
Not yet, but one of Yahoo Inc’s largest and most critical shareholders, Capital Research Global Investors, has asked for a probe of last week’s shareholder vote, which was widely seen as a pat on the back for Chief Executive Jerry Yang.
Yang, who has been under pressure since Yahoo and Microsoft failed to agree to a deal, received 85.4 percent support in the results announced on Friday, with the remaining votes withheld in protest.
“I guess Jerry Yang didn’t come out of the meeting as unscathed as it seemed,” Canaccord Adams analyst Colin Gillis said of the uncertainty raised by calls for a recount.
The New York Times describes the situation this way: “The recount was requested because the total number of votes cast appeared too low, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to discuss it. The person said that Capital Research believed that any undercounting of votes was most likely due to a technical mistake, not any tampering with the vote.”
Questions over the vote – first reported by the D: All Things Digital blog – is the last headache Yang/Yahoo need. Yang’s position seems secure, even if the final vote count changes somewhat. But the point is that the company is still trying to put the Microsoft mess behind it, and would clearly rather avoid any more bad publicity.
Keep an eye on:
