A couple of weeks ago Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made her first acquisition: Stamped, a mobile recommendations app/site. It turned out to be an "acqu-hire," to help build out Yahoo's mobile product and development team. Stamped itself will be shuttered. Like Stamped, Yahoo is also shuttering its Yahoo Mobile Blog. This is somewhat surprising for a company that is making mobile one of its top priorities -- if not its top priority. Mayer said the following on the Yahoo Q3 earnings call: We haven't effectively optimized our websites, we've underinvested in our mobile front-end development and we [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Mobile

Marissa Mayer has made her first buy as Yahoo's CEO, and it's a company with strong Google connections. Yahoo announced its acquisition of Stamped, a mobile/social recommendations service. And Mayer herself shared the image above on Instagram. The acquisition is more about the "who" than the "what." Stamped launched in 2011 as the brainchild of a few ex-Googlers: Robby Stein worked at Google for four years. Bart Stein (not related) was involved in Google's Creative Lab. Paul Eastlund worked at Google for five years. The company's about us page lists 11 employees (including an intern) [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Mobile Marketing | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Mobile

Yahoo's first company earnings report under new CEO Marissa Mayer is still in progress; as I type this, new CFO Ken Goldman is reviewing Yahoo's financials on his first day at the company. But the big focus of the call is Mayer herself -- it's her first opportunity to speak to investors and the public about her plans to revitalize one of the internet's oldest, and still most popular, destinations. She began by telling listeners, "This job is tailor-made for me," and explained that Yahoo's core components - search, advertising, mobile, news and the home page -- are the same core component [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Features & Analysis | Top News | Yahoo | Yahoo: Answers | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Flickr | Yahoo: Mobile

Yahoo reported its first quarterly earnings with Marissa Mayer at the helm. She got a bit of a gift as Yahoo beat consensus analyst estimates. The company's quarterly revenue grew roughly 2 percent from last year to $1.09 billion (vs. $1.07 billion). GAAP revenue was $1.2 billion. (See Matt McGee's related post about the earnings call.) Search and display revenue "stabilized" according to Mayer's quote in the press release: Yahoo! had a solid third quarter, and we are encouraged by the stabilization in search and display revenue. We're taking important steps to position Yahoo! for long- [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo announced today it has hired Henrique de Castro, currently vice president of Google’s worldwide Partner Business Solutions group, as chief operating officer (COO). It's a major role: he'll be overseeing Yahoo’s sales, operations, media and business development worldwide. According to Yahoo's press release, De Castro will join the company on or before January 22, 2013, or as soon as he has satisfied his obligations to his current employer. Newly named Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, just three months into her job and giving birth to her first child two weeks ago, is obviously moving aggre [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues

Business Insider has a screen capture of the reportedly soon to be released new Yahoo home page under Marissa Mayer's new lead as CEO. Overall, I find the new look to be cleaner, tighter and a bit more organized. But one glaring omission is featuring Flickr on the options on the left. It was listed as the fourth option from the top and now it seems to be buried under the "more" option - at best. In addition, you can see that the logo is white on a blue background, removing Yahoo's branded purple color from their Yahoo! logo. Before Screen Shot: After Screen Shot: As you [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Yahoo | Yahoo: Flickr

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer took time away last night from transforming Yahoo to give birth to another transformation, a baby boy born to her and husband Zack Bogue. BBB -- Baby Boy Bogue, as they're calling him until deciding on a name, arrived one week early at 10:22pm last night weighing in at 8 lbs, 14 ounces and 21 inches "tall," according to an email the two sent out to a number of people to announce the news. New father Bogue earlier had spread the word via Twitter: Baby boy Bogue born last night. Mom (@marissamayer) and baby are doing great--we couldn't be more excited! Congrat [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Yahoo

Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, the prodigious leaker of Yahoo internal memos, has released former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving's August 2011 internal strategy document. The 21-page memo is called "Yahoo Three-Year Product Strategy" and lays out "five strategic elements" and a number of "horizontal" areas of focus: "Personalization, Video, Mobile, Social, and Local." According to Swisher, the document's recommendations are similar to the vision recently laid out by new CEO Marissa Mayer. As reported by AllThingsD, there were lots of generalities (e.g., "shift platform to mobile") in M [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: News

Under the stewardship of new CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo is launching a new contextual advertising network -- similar to Google's AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network it abandoned in 2010. This time, the company is partnering with Search Alliance ally Bing, and technology provider Media.net. The idea, apparently, is to bulk up the amount of contextual advertising inventory Yahoo and Bing can make available to advertisers. The mainly-text contextual ads are already displaying on some Yahoo sites, and those marketers who have opted into display ads on Bing Advertising will automatically have [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Google: AdSense | Top News | Yahoo

This afternoon Yahoo announced that its new CFO would be Ken Goldman. Tim Morse, who had been CFO and acting CEO for a brief time, will be leaving shortly. Morse started in mid-2009. Goldman brings a solid tech-industry resume to the position. According to his bio on Fortinet site (still up): Ken Goldman is an accomplished executive with extensive financial, operational and business management experience and a solid track record of success. He served as senior vice president, finance and administration, and CFO of Siebel Systems from August 2000 until the close of Oracle Corporation's acqu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo's wallet just got a bit fatter. The company has closed the $7+ billion sale of roughly half of its interest in Alibaba (initially purchased for $1 billion). Reportedly, after taxes, Yahoo will net $4.5 billion. Yahoo owned roughly 40 percent of the Chinese e-commerce company. Now it owns 20 percent. The deal is part of a stock repurchase program by Alibaba. (As an aside, Alibaba is embroiled in the Acer Android-OS compatibility drama with Google.) Ultimately Yahoo will sell its entire interest in Alibaba. The disposition of Yahoo's Alibaba's assets had been a matter of controversy [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues

There's a widely held belief that as part of putting her stamp on Yahoo, new CEO Marissa Mayer will make a significant acquisition very soon. The speculation has begun about who or what that acquisition will be. One very likely candidate is Foursquare. Foursquare could give a big boost to Yahoo in "SoLoMo": social, local and mobile. While Yahoo has mobile apps, it badly lags Google's efforts -- especially in local. At one time Yahoo had the leading local property online and squandered that lead through literally years of neglect. Mayer Was in Charge of Local at Google Ironically Marissa M [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Features & Analysis | Foursquare | Top News | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Mobile

According to Business Insider, Marissa Mayer has convinced at least one more Google employee to come over and work with her at Yahoo. That person is Andrew Schulte, who is now "Chief of Staff" at Yahoo. Previously Schulte held a number of positions at Google since joining in 2007. Most recently he was a product manager and managed Google+ marketing. The first Google employee Mayer hired was Anne Espiritu, who was in PR at Google and now has a similar job at Yahoo. It's a safe bet that Mayer is talking to others at Google in an effort to recruit them. Beyond her force of personality and e [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues

Passed over for the top job in favor of former Googler Marissa Mayer, former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn is departing Yahoo, as first reported by AllThingsD and confined by a Yahoo spokesperson. Levinsohn had headed up the company's key Americas unit, including overseeing advertising sales. According to the terms of the separation agreement and 8K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Levinsohn will receive 67,000 shares of stock currently valued at $1.1 million, along with 250,000 stock options at a per share exercise price of $15.80, the closing per share price on July 26. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues

According to AllThingsD freshly minted Yahoo CEO is making some initial changes at the Sunnyvale company intended to boost morale and inject new energy into the place. Among the changes being implemented are a Friday afternoon "all-hands" meeting, free food and forthcoming reworking of the workspaces. In these moves Mayer is apparently using Google as the model. However, product changes and upgrades are coming too. AllThingsD's Kara Swisher says that her indefatigable sources at Yahoo suggest there will be an acquisition or product-related announcement coming soon, to signal Yahoo's return [...]

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What did it take to lure Marissa Mayer from Google to the CEO post at Yahoo? A package that could be worth as much as $71 million in salary, bonuses, and stock grants over the next five years, according to a regulatory filing. Mayer will receive an annual salary of $1 million and be eligible for an annual bonus that's expected to come in at $2 million. She's also slated to get an "annual equity award" of $12 million in 2012 that will vest over the next three years, and she will be eligible for future annual equity grants after 2012, which are targeted to also come in at $12 million -- th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues

The Internet is speaking, and it wants new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to save and fix Flickr. The screenshot above is the entirety of DearMarissaMayer.com, a website that launched in the hours after Mayer was named Yahoo's new CEO on Monday. It asks Mayer to "please make Flickr awesome again," and is signed, "Love, the internet." But it's actually the work of Los Angelean Sean Bonner, who writes on his blog about why he put up the website: I think flickr is their most underrated product and if they would put some support behind it, bring it up to date, give it an actually functional [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Flickr

It's a small sample size, but the numbers are still impressive: Almost 78 percent of respondents say Yahoo's hiring of Marissa Mayer as CEO is a good move, and only two percent feel it's a bad move. Those are the results of the poll that we ran Monday on Marketing Land in the hours immediately after Mayer's move to Yahoo became public. We asked readers to choose between the move being a "good move," a "bad move," or to tell us if they're not sure yet. A whopping 78 percent called it a good move and another 20 percent said they would wait and see, leaving only about two percent of respond [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues

Yahoo announced second quarter earnings today, where revenues remained flat, as did their display ads and search ads. Quarterly revenue was just about the same, with Q2 2012 revenue at $1,076M and Q2 2012 revenue at $1,081M. Income from operations was down 71% from Q2 2011 of $191M to Q2 2012 of $55M. The highlights include that their Non-GAAP net earnings per diluted share was up 47% year over year and that they hired Google's Marissa Mayer as their new CEO. On the display side revenue ex-TAC was $473 million, a 1 percent increase compared to $467 million for the second quarter of [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues

With Marissa Mayer's appointment as Yahoo's new CEO, a painful two-month period since disgraced CEO Scott Thompson left has drawn to a very welcome close. Though many believed that interim CEO Ross Levinsohn would eventually be handed the reins at the troubled internet media giant after Thompson's resume scandal-fueled departure, Mayer's appointment signals the opening of a new chapter with fresh leadership. Many were surprised at Yahoo's ability to lure Mayer, given its recent difficulties and loss of luster, as well as the formidable challenges she will face in trying to turn the once-str [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues