Original Story: siliconbeat.com
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer faced “credible” threats in 2015 that caused the company to drastically boost its spending on security for her and her family.
The Sunnyvale company spent $544,061 for security for Mayer last year, according to recent company filings, including one Monday. That compares with $26,891 in 2014.
Mayer, who’s been under fire from shareholders over the direction of one of Silicon Valley’s iconic companies, in 2015 “faced specific security threats that we believed were credible,” the company said in its filings, without specifying the threats.
Calling Mayer an embattled CEO might be understating it a bit; analysts, investors and the media have scrutinized her every move since the former Google executive took the helm of Yahoo in 2012 — after other CEOs before her failed to bring back the company’s mojo amid the rise of mobile, Google, Facebook and Yahoo’s own missteps.
The company said in the filing that it provides security services for Mayer and her immediate family (she has a husband and three kids) in addition to the business-related security services it pays for, “and that the reported amount of security expense is especially reasonable in light of the fact that Ms. Mayer does not ask the Company to reimburse her private aircraft costs for business travel.”
A Yahoo spokeswoman told SiliconBeat the company would have no additional comment.
This latest figure comes on the heels of other reports based on recent Yahoo filings, including how much Mayer made last year ($36 million, a 15 percent decline from the previous year), and how much she might make if the company is sold and she is fired. Under pressure from activist shareholders who recently grabbed seats on the board, the company is considering bids now, which are reportedly coming in lower than expected.
Back to the security costs: The amount Yahoo spent wasn’t unusual or outrageous compared with what other tech companies have spent on security for their top executives. For example, Pat May wrote last month about how much Facebook and Twitter shelled out in 2015 for security for Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey: $4.3 million, $1.2 million and $68,500, respectively. According to a filing, Apple spent $209,151 last year on security for CEO Tim Cook.
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Showing posts with label yahoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yahoo. Show all posts
Friday, May 27, 2016
Monday, January 25, 2016
YAHOO REPORTEDLY REJECTED 'SEVERAL' OFFERS TO BUY ITS CORE BUSINESS
Original Story: businessinsider.com
Yahoo is reported to have rejected "several" offers to take over its core internet business, Reuters reported on Thursday.
It said the potential buyers included a private-equity firm, citing three anonymous sources.
The report added that Yahoo will most likely announce its next strategic steps only after its earnings, which is scheduled for February 2.
One of the sources told Reuters that Yahoo will present its future plan during the earnings call in order to "gauge shareholder reaction." A Google SEO Company provides consulting services and expert search engine optimization guidance for leading companies.
The last time Yahoo rebuffed offers to buy its core business was in December, before the board meeting in which the company decided not to spin off its Alibaba assets, the report said. Yahoo never launched a formal sales process.
In December, Yahoo reversed its plan to spin off its holdings in Asian assets, announcing that it would explore a spin-off of its core business instead. Yahoo's chairman, Maynard Webb, said it's not looking to sell the core business, although he indicated that the company would listen to offers. A Philadelphia finance lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.
That prompted activist investor Starboard to send a letter to Yahoo's board, demanding a sale of its core business and a complete overhaul of management.
Yahoo's growth has stalled in recent years, and investors are increasingly growing impatient with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's performance. Excluding Yahoo's stake in its Asian assets, investors are essentially giving zero value to Yahoo's core business, which include its online content and advertising units.
According to Business Insider's Biz Carson, Yahoo is preparing to cut 10% or more of its workforce this month, as the company preps for a major organizational shake-up. A Poughkeepsie employment lawyer has experience defending clients in employment related matters.
Yahoo declined to comment on this story.
Yahoo is reported to have rejected "several" offers to take over its core internet business, Reuters reported on Thursday.
It said the potential buyers included a private-equity firm, citing three anonymous sources.
The report added that Yahoo will most likely announce its next strategic steps only after its earnings, which is scheduled for February 2.
One of the sources told Reuters that Yahoo will present its future plan during the earnings call in order to "gauge shareholder reaction." A Google SEO Company provides consulting services and expert search engine optimization guidance for leading companies.
The last time Yahoo rebuffed offers to buy its core business was in December, before the board meeting in which the company decided not to spin off its Alibaba assets, the report said. Yahoo never launched a formal sales process.
In December, Yahoo reversed its plan to spin off its holdings in Asian assets, announcing that it would explore a spin-off of its core business instead. Yahoo's chairman, Maynard Webb, said it's not looking to sell the core business, although he indicated that the company would listen to offers. A Philadelphia finance lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.
That prompted activist investor Starboard to send a letter to Yahoo's board, demanding a sale of its core business and a complete overhaul of management.
Yahoo's growth has stalled in recent years, and investors are increasingly growing impatient with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's performance. Excluding Yahoo's stake in its Asian assets, investors are essentially giving zero value to Yahoo's core business, which include its online content and advertising units.
According to Business Insider's Biz Carson, Yahoo is preparing to cut 10% or more of its workforce this month, as the company preps for a major organizational shake-up. A Poughkeepsie employment lawyer has experience defending clients in employment related matters.
Yahoo declined to comment on this story.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
YAHOO TO SHUTTER CHINA OFFICE AND CUT "AROUND 350" JOBS
Original Story: bbc.com
Internet giant Yahoo is closing its China office as part of a worldwide consolidation aimed at cutting costs.
The Beijing research centre is Yahoo's only remaining physical presence in the country after it sold its Chinese operations to Alibaba in 2005.
A spokesperson said "around 350 jobs" would be eliminated.
"We are constantly making changes to align resources, and to foster better collaboration and innovation across our business," Yahoo said in a statement.
The news that Yahoo was closing its last remaining office in mainland China travelled fast.
Outside the Yahoo research centre, an employment agency staged a guerrilla-style PR campaign offering the sacked staff new jobs.
Many Yahoo employees appeared unimpressed as they walked by men dressed up in silver, alien outfits.
One employee said the news was "very sad." He added, "I had good relations with my colleagues and now I need to say goodbye."
The move by the internet giant, however, doesn't come as a huge surprise.
Yahoo has been rapidly retreating from the Chinese market. In 2013, it stopped offering services to email users in China.
It's had an often fraught relationship with the Chinese government. Controversially the firm handed over information to the authorities that led to the jailing of two Chinese dissidents.
But according to reports, this closure was nothing to do with government pressure or censorship. Instead it's been driven by the internet giant's desire to cut its global operating costs.
Yahoo has been struggling to maintain profit growth in the face of growing competition from rival online search portals like Google.
The Sunnyvale, California-based firm has also been trying to adapt to consumers increasingly using mobile devices, which attract less advertising revenue.
As a result, Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer has made a slew of acquisitions in a bid to diversify business and add new revenue streams.
Earlier this year, Yahoo also announced plans to spin off its stake in Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce company, which is valued at more than $30bn.
The tech giant also owns a lucrative stake in Yahoo Japan. Yahoo had a global workforce of about 12,500 workers at the end of 2014.
China Operations
Yahoo is the latest US technology firm to exit operations in China.
Google partially withdrew in 2010 after clashing with Chinese authorities over censorship.
Earlier this year gamemaker Zynga closed its office and shed more than 70 jobs after its products failed to gain traction against local competition.
Shaun Rein, managing director of consultancy China Market Research said it was very difficult for consumer-facing foreign internet players to find success in China.
"Unlike rest of the world, they're facing well-funded, aggressive home-grown players," he said.
"In China you have really strong entrepreneurship in the online space and they're able to react quicker to consumer trends."
Mr Rein added that it makes sense for Yahoo to "cull through headcount and business lines that aren't making a profit".
"When you're as weak as Yahoo globally, it doesn't make sense to have a research and development arm in China since its too expensive."
Internet giant Yahoo is closing its China office as part of a worldwide consolidation aimed at cutting costs.
The Beijing research centre is Yahoo's only remaining physical presence in the country after it sold its Chinese operations to Alibaba in 2005.
A spokesperson said "around 350 jobs" would be eliminated.
"We are constantly making changes to align resources, and to foster better collaboration and innovation across our business," Yahoo said in a statement.
The news that Yahoo was closing its last remaining office in mainland China travelled fast.
Outside the Yahoo research centre, an employment agency staged a guerrilla-style PR campaign offering the sacked staff new jobs.
Many Yahoo employees appeared unimpressed as they walked by men dressed up in silver, alien outfits.
One employee said the news was "very sad." He added, "I had good relations with my colleagues and now I need to say goodbye."
The move by the internet giant, however, doesn't come as a huge surprise.
Yahoo has been rapidly retreating from the Chinese market. In 2013, it stopped offering services to email users in China.
It's had an often fraught relationship with the Chinese government. Controversially the firm handed over information to the authorities that led to the jailing of two Chinese dissidents.
But according to reports, this closure was nothing to do with government pressure or censorship. Instead it's been driven by the internet giant's desire to cut its global operating costs.
Yahoo has been struggling to maintain profit growth in the face of growing competition from rival online search portals like Google.
The Sunnyvale, California-based firm has also been trying to adapt to consumers increasingly using mobile devices, which attract less advertising revenue.
As a result, Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer has made a slew of acquisitions in a bid to diversify business and add new revenue streams.
Earlier this year, Yahoo also announced plans to spin off its stake in Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce company, which is valued at more than $30bn.
The tech giant also owns a lucrative stake in Yahoo Japan. Yahoo had a global workforce of about 12,500 workers at the end of 2014.
China Operations
Yahoo is the latest US technology firm to exit operations in China.
Google partially withdrew in 2010 after clashing with Chinese authorities over censorship.
Earlier this year gamemaker Zynga closed its office and shed more than 70 jobs after its products failed to gain traction against local competition.
Shaun Rein, managing director of consultancy China Market Research said it was very difficult for consumer-facing foreign internet players to find success in China.
"Unlike rest of the world, they're facing well-funded, aggressive home-grown players," he said.
"In China you have really strong entrepreneurship in the online space and they're able to react quicker to consumer trends."
Mr Rein added that it makes sense for Yahoo to "cull through headcount and business lines that aren't making a profit".
"When you're as weak as Yahoo globally, it doesn't make sense to have a research and development arm in China since its too expensive."
Thursday, March 05, 2015
MARISSA MAYER SAYS YAHOO HAS TRANSFORMED INTO MOBILE-FIRST COMPANY
Original Story: latimes.com
For Yahoo these days, it's all about mobile.
At its first-ever mobile developers conference Thursday, the Sunnyvale, Calif., tech company shared some impressive stats about the growth of its app business. In the last two years, Yahoo has increased its internal mobile apps team to 500 people from 50; last year, its mobile gross revenue reached $1.2 billion.
“Over the past few years we’ve really reinvented our business with a mobile focus,” Chief Executive Marissa Mayer told attendees. “The opportunity here is huge.”
Mayer, speaking to a crowd of more than 1,000 developers and journalists at the Masonic in San Francisco, noted that the average smartphone user in the U.S. spends 177 minutes on his or her device daily, 88% of that time on mobile apps.
“Mobile apps have won,” she said. “You’ve made the right choice.”
Now Yahoo wants to help “move mobile forward” for its users, developers and advertisers. To that end, it introduced a new mobile developer suite of services designed to help developers measure, advertise, monetize and enhance their mobile apps.
Among the new tools is mobile ad network Yahoo App Publishing. Developers can use the resource to integrate native ads from Yahoo’s Gemini marketplace and video ads from its BrightRoll video ad platform subsidiary into their apps.
There's also a new offering that enables developers to integrate Yahoo Search directly into their apps, so users can search the Web within an app.
Mayer encouraged developers to take advantage of the app technologies, including its mobile management and analytics tool Flurry, which Yahoo purchased in July for more than $200 million. There are now 200,000 mobile app developers who have built 630,000 apps on the Flurry platform.
“We want to help you take your apps from being great apps into being great businesses,” Mayer said.
For Yahoo these days, it's all about mobile.
At its first-ever mobile developers conference Thursday, the Sunnyvale, Calif., tech company shared some impressive stats about the growth of its app business. In the last two years, Yahoo has increased its internal mobile apps team to 500 people from 50; last year, its mobile gross revenue reached $1.2 billion.
“Over the past few years we’ve really reinvented our business with a mobile focus,” Chief Executive Marissa Mayer told attendees. “The opportunity here is huge.”
Mayer, speaking to a crowd of more than 1,000 developers and journalists at the Masonic in San Francisco, noted that the average smartphone user in the U.S. spends 177 minutes on his or her device daily, 88% of that time on mobile apps.
“Mobile apps have won,” she said. “You’ve made the right choice.”
Now Yahoo wants to help “move mobile forward” for its users, developers and advertisers. To that end, it introduced a new mobile developer suite of services designed to help developers measure, advertise, monetize and enhance their mobile apps.
Among the new tools is mobile ad network Yahoo App Publishing. Developers can use the resource to integrate native ads from Yahoo’s Gemini marketplace and video ads from its BrightRoll video ad platform subsidiary into their apps.
There's also a new offering that enables developers to integrate Yahoo Search directly into their apps, so users can search the Web within an app.
Mayer encouraged developers to take advantage of the app technologies, including its mobile management and analytics tool Flurry, which Yahoo purchased in July for more than $200 million. There are now 200,000 mobile app developers who have built 630,000 apps on the Flurry platform.
“We want to help you take your apps from being great apps into being great businesses,” Mayer said.
Monday, February 02, 2015
YAHOO TO SPIN OFF ITS REMAINING ALIBABA STAKE
Original Story: cnbc.com
Yahoo on Tuesday said it would spin off its remaining Alibaba stake in a tax-free deal. The stock jumped more than 7 percent after the announcement.
Yahoo's 384 million shares of Alibaba, valued at $40 billion, will be wrapped into a newly formed independent entity, SpinCo.
The stock of the new company will be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders, resulting in SpinCo becoming a separate publicly traded company, Yahoo said in a statement.
"Post-spin, using the closing price for Alibaba as of Jan. 26, we will have returned nearly $50 billion of value to our shareholders," CEO Marissa Mayer said.
"This level of capital return is historic, especially for a company of our size."
The deal is expected to close sometime in the fourth quarter of this year.
The Internet giant also reported fourth-quarter earnings of 30 cents per share, down from 46 cents a share in the year-earlier period. Revenue decreased to $1.18 billion from $1.20 billion.
Analysts had expected the company to report earnings of 29 cents a share on $1.19 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.
Excluding traffic acquisition cost, display revenue contracted 5.5 percent, year over year, to $464 million. Revenue generated from search rose modestly, year over year, to $462 million.
Much of Yahoo's mobile revenue comes from search ads, an area that is becoming more competitive as companies like Yelp, Amazon and TripAdvisor continue to fragment the market, according to research firm eMarketer.
Looking forward, the company forecast current-quarter revenue of between $1.02 billion and $1.06 billion. That's lower than the $1.10 billion Wall Street currently expects.
Yahoo has discontinued more than 60 products and services over the past two years in an effort to "focus on the offerings that matter most" to its users, the company said in December.
Uncertainty around Yahoo's plans for the stake and how the market could react to the potential news was reflected in the options market.
Options data on Monday showed traders were expecting a 8 percent swing in the stock the after earnings announcement. That's nearly twice as much as shares have moved on average after reporting earnings.
Yahoo on Tuesday said it would spin off its remaining Alibaba stake in a tax-free deal. The stock jumped more than 7 percent after the announcement.
Yahoo's 384 million shares of Alibaba, valued at $40 billion, will be wrapped into a newly formed independent entity, SpinCo.
The stock of the new company will be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders, resulting in SpinCo becoming a separate publicly traded company, Yahoo said in a statement.
"Post-spin, using the closing price for Alibaba as of Jan. 26, we will have returned nearly $50 billion of value to our shareholders," CEO Marissa Mayer said.
"This level of capital return is historic, especially for a company of our size."
The deal is expected to close sometime in the fourth quarter of this year.
The Internet giant also reported fourth-quarter earnings of 30 cents per share, down from 46 cents a share in the year-earlier period. Revenue decreased to $1.18 billion from $1.20 billion.
Analysts had expected the company to report earnings of 29 cents a share on $1.19 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.
Excluding traffic acquisition cost, display revenue contracted 5.5 percent, year over year, to $464 million. Revenue generated from search rose modestly, year over year, to $462 million.
Much of Yahoo's mobile revenue comes from search ads, an area that is becoming more competitive as companies like Yelp, Amazon and TripAdvisor continue to fragment the market, according to research firm eMarketer.
Looking forward, the company forecast current-quarter revenue of between $1.02 billion and $1.06 billion. That's lower than the $1.10 billion Wall Street currently expects.
Yahoo has discontinued more than 60 products and services over the past two years in an effort to "focus on the offerings that matter most" to its users, the company said in December.
Uncertainty around Yahoo's plans for the stake and how the market could react to the potential news was reflected in the options market.
Options data on Monday showed traders were expecting a 8 percent swing in the stock the after earnings announcement. That's nearly twice as much as shares have moved on average after reporting earnings.
Friday, October 24, 2014
SNAPCHAT ADVERTS TO APPEAR THIS WEEKEND AS THEY 'NEED TO MAKE MONEY'
Original Story: dailymail.co.uk
Snapchat is to show its users adverts for the first time this weekend.
Despite not having a regular source of revenue, Snapchat was recently valued in the region of $10 billion (£6 billion).
Co-founder Evan Spiegel revealed the plans to show adverts on the app last week - but the firm has so far refused to say who the first buyer is.
'This weekend we’re placing an advertisement in “Recent Updates” for Snapchatters in the United States,' the firm said.
'It’s the first time we’ve done anything like this because it’s the first time we’ve been paid to put content in that space.
'It’s going to feel a little weird at first, but we’re taking the plunge.'
The firms 24-year-old co-founder Speigel told Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit that sponsored posts will only show up on the app's Stories feature.
Snapchat Stories add Snaps together to create a narrative.
When a user adds a Snap to a Story it lives for 24 hours before it disappears, making room for the new.
Mr Spiegel said: 'People are going to see the first ads on Snapchat soon. We think they're pretty cool.'
He added that the adverts will be opt-in, and users can choose to look at them, or skip.
'The best advertisements tell you more about stuff that actually interests you,' the firm promised today.
'An advertisement will appear in your Recent Updates from time to time, and you can choose if you want to watch it.
No biggie. It goes away after you view it or within 24 hours, just like Stories.'
The firm also admits exactly why it is introducing the feature.
'The answer is probably unsurprising – we need to make money.
'Advertising allows us to support our service while delivering neat content to Snapchatters.
'We promise that we’ll use the money we make to continue to surprise the Snapchat community with more terrific products – that’s what we love to do!'
It also pledged it will never put ads in personal communications.
'That would be totally rude. We want to see if we can deliver an experience that’s fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted.'
Earlier this week, reports claimed Yahoo was reportedly preparing to invest £12 million ($20 million) in Snapchat.
Despite not yet having a source of revenue, more than 100 million users use the app - which is apparently enough to convince companies to spend vast sums on the three-year old startup.
Yahoo’s move follows an almost identical investment from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byer in August.
The move comes after a similar, albeit much larger, investment in Chinese technology firm Alibaba reaped huge dividends for Yahoo, with its $1 billion investment in 40 per cent of the company in 2005 now valued at tens of billions of dollars.
This latest move, according to the Wall Street Journal, comes as Snapchat starts to seek funding from venture-capital firms, money managers and companies.
Snapchat may be a key partner to Yahoo as it gets set to release Snapchat Discovery next year.
This is a rumoured service that will display brief ads alongside news and video clips on the app, which will likely become a key source of revenue for Snapchat.
Snapchat Discovery would provide a platform for Yahoo to distribute its own content.
However, the £6 billion ($10 billion) valuation of a company that hasn't, yet, monetised its users, has been dubbed a risky proposition.
That’s not to say it hasn’t worked before; Microsoft’s 2007 investment in Facebook valued the then three-year old company at £9.4 billion ($15 billion), and later proved hugely successful.
Last year Snapchat infamously turned down a £1.8 billion ($3 billion) offer from Facebook - a decision that left many stunned.
But the move seems to have paid off, as Snapchat’s owners Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are set to become billionaires according to the current valuations of the company.
If the valuation holds true, Snapchat would join a select club of tech startups with valuations of £6 billion ($10 billion) or more, including car-ride service Uber and rooms-to-let startup AirBnB.
Snapchat lets users send photo-messages that vanish within seconds, but is expected to soon begin offering advertising or branch out into additional services.
This may include the ability to send instant money transfers to other users.
Although Snapchat, and other similar mobile messaging apps, don't have established business models yet, its rapid user growth and perceptions of advertising potential have aroused intense investor interest over the past year or so.
Snapchat is continuing to grow in popularity, with people sending more than 700 million disappearing messages a day.
In June, Facebook launched a similar app called Slingshot in the hope of replicating Snapchat’s success.
The app lets consumers exchange photos and videos, which later disappear, without requiring Facebook accounts.
But despite its rapid growth, Snapchat has had a number of obstacles to contend with.
The group this year settled charges with US regulators, which accused it of deceiving consumers by promising that photos sent on its service disappeared forever after a period of time.
According to the Federal Trade Commission at the time, photos sent on Snapchat could, in fact, be saved by recipients using several methods, such as taking a screenshot.
Snapchat is to show its users adverts for the first time this weekend.
Despite not having a regular source of revenue, Snapchat was recently valued in the region of $10 billion (£6 billion).
Co-founder Evan Spiegel revealed the plans to show adverts on the app last week - but the firm has so far refused to say who the first buyer is.
'This weekend we’re placing an advertisement in “Recent Updates” for Snapchatters in the United States,' the firm said.
'It’s the first time we’ve done anything like this because it’s the first time we’ve been paid to put content in that space.
'It’s going to feel a little weird at first, but we’re taking the plunge.'
The firms 24-year-old co-founder Speigel told Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit that sponsored posts will only show up on the app's Stories feature.
Snapchat Stories add Snaps together to create a narrative.
When a user adds a Snap to a Story it lives for 24 hours before it disappears, making room for the new.
Mr Spiegel said: 'People are going to see the first ads on Snapchat soon. We think they're pretty cool.'
He added that the adverts will be opt-in, and users can choose to look at them, or skip.
'The best advertisements tell you more about stuff that actually interests you,' the firm promised today.
'An advertisement will appear in your Recent Updates from time to time, and you can choose if you want to watch it.
No biggie. It goes away after you view it or within 24 hours, just like Stories.'
The firm also admits exactly why it is introducing the feature.
'The answer is probably unsurprising – we need to make money.
'Advertising allows us to support our service while delivering neat content to Snapchatters.
'We promise that we’ll use the money we make to continue to surprise the Snapchat community with more terrific products – that’s what we love to do!'
It also pledged it will never put ads in personal communications.
'That would be totally rude. We want to see if we can deliver an experience that’s fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted.'
Earlier this week, reports claimed Yahoo was reportedly preparing to invest £12 million ($20 million) in Snapchat.
Despite not yet having a source of revenue, more than 100 million users use the app - which is apparently enough to convince companies to spend vast sums on the three-year old startup.
Yahoo’s move follows an almost identical investment from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byer in August.
The move comes after a similar, albeit much larger, investment in Chinese technology firm Alibaba reaped huge dividends for Yahoo, with its $1 billion investment in 40 per cent of the company in 2005 now valued at tens of billions of dollars.
This latest move, according to the Wall Street Journal, comes as Snapchat starts to seek funding from venture-capital firms, money managers and companies.
Snapchat may be a key partner to Yahoo as it gets set to release Snapchat Discovery next year.
This is a rumoured service that will display brief ads alongside news and video clips on the app, which will likely become a key source of revenue for Snapchat.
Snapchat Discovery would provide a platform for Yahoo to distribute its own content.
However, the £6 billion ($10 billion) valuation of a company that hasn't, yet, monetised its users, has been dubbed a risky proposition.
That’s not to say it hasn’t worked before; Microsoft’s 2007 investment in Facebook valued the then three-year old company at £9.4 billion ($15 billion), and later proved hugely successful.
Last year Snapchat infamously turned down a £1.8 billion ($3 billion) offer from Facebook - a decision that left many stunned.
But the move seems to have paid off, as Snapchat’s owners Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are set to become billionaires according to the current valuations of the company.
If the valuation holds true, Snapchat would join a select club of tech startups with valuations of £6 billion ($10 billion) or more, including car-ride service Uber and rooms-to-let startup AirBnB.
Snapchat lets users send photo-messages that vanish within seconds, but is expected to soon begin offering advertising or branch out into additional services.
This may include the ability to send instant money transfers to other users.
Although Snapchat, and other similar mobile messaging apps, don't have established business models yet, its rapid user growth and perceptions of advertising potential have aroused intense investor interest over the past year or so.
Snapchat is continuing to grow in popularity, with people sending more than 700 million disappearing messages a day.
In June, Facebook launched a similar app called Slingshot in the hope of replicating Snapchat’s success.
The app lets consumers exchange photos and videos, which later disappear, without requiring Facebook accounts.
But despite its rapid growth, Snapchat has had a number of obstacles to contend with.
The group this year settled charges with US regulators, which accused it of deceiving consumers by promising that photos sent on its service disappeared forever after a period of time.
According to the Federal Trade Commission at the time, photos sent on Snapchat could, in fact, be saved by recipients using several methods, such as taking a screenshot.
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
AOL AND YAHOO MERGER MAKES LITTLE SENSE
Original Story: CNBC.com
A former president and chief financial officer of Yahoo said a merger with AOL would make little sense.
"We've all looked at that deal so many times," said Sue Decker, who left Yahoo in 2009. "And I think you just get something that's even bigger, growing slower"—a line that generated chuckles around a roomful of female executives who had gathered in Dana Point, Calif., for the Fortune Most Powerful Women's conference. A Boston M&A Lawyer provides professional legal counsel and extensive experience in many aspects of merger and acquisitions law.
Decker's comments on Monday came days after an activist hedge fund, Starboard Value, urged Yahoo to consider a pairing with AOL, cut bloat, and sell Asian assets. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer responded by saying she would review Starboard's letter, but Yahoo executives said as recently as July that they would not consider an AOL deal. A St. Louis Business Lawyer has experience in corporate dispute cases.
Yahoo did not immediately respond to a CNBC email sent Tuesday seeking comment.
Meanwhile, a crucial question hangs over Yahoo: What should it do with the roughly $5 billion it will receive in cash for selling a portion of its Alibaba Group holdings?
So far, Yahoo has said it will return at least some of the money to shareholders, and Mayer is in talks about a likely investment with the messaging-service start-up Snapchat, a move that would be the latest in a string of Yahoo deals with smaller companies.
Decker, a onetime Wall Street analyst who joined Yahoo in 2000 and now serves on several corporate boards, including Berkshire Hathaway, suggested that her former employer would be best served by returning to its core competencies: content about topics such as sports, finance and general news.
"If they could get deeper in the things they're really great in, and shed other things," she said, "I'd like to see that." Yahoo has long struggled with botched attempts to expand by reaching beyond its basic strengths, Decker added, and the company had suffered for it.
"To get identity is going to be critical," Decker said.
In other remarks at the Fortune gathering, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch was somewhat dubious about the role of activist hedge funds in reforming companies in general.
Bresch said hedge funds seem to quickly flip in and out of stock holdings.
"It used to be about building value. Now it's about trading value," she said. "If they hold your stock for five minutes, that's more than their algorithms will let them."
A former president and chief financial officer of Yahoo said a merger with AOL would make little sense.
"We've all looked at that deal so many times," said Sue Decker, who left Yahoo in 2009. "And I think you just get something that's even bigger, growing slower"—a line that generated chuckles around a roomful of female executives who had gathered in Dana Point, Calif., for the Fortune Most Powerful Women's conference. A Boston M&A Lawyer provides professional legal counsel and extensive experience in many aspects of merger and acquisitions law.
Decker's comments on Monday came days after an activist hedge fund, Starboard Value, urged Yahoo to consider a pairing with AOL, cut bloat, and sell Asian assets. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer responded by saying she would review Starboard's letter, but Yahoo executives said as recently as July that they would not consider an AOL deal. A St. Louis Business Lawyer has experience in corporate dispute cases.
Yahoo did not immediately respond to a CNBC email sent Tuesday seeking comment.
Meanwhile, a crucial question hangs over Yahoo: What should it do with the roughly $5 billion it will receive in cash for selling a portion of its Alibaba Group holdings?
So far, Yahoo has said it will return at least some of the money to shareholders, and Mayer is in talks about a likely investment with the messaging-service start-up Snapchat, a move that would be the latest in a string of Yahoo deals with smaller companies.
Decker, a onetime Wall Street analyst who joined Yahoo in 2000 and now serves on several corporate boards, including Berkshire Hathaway, suggested that her former employer would be best served by returning to its core competencies: content about topics such as sports, finance and general news.
"If they could get deeper in the things they're really great in, and shed other things," she said, "I'd like to see that." Yahoo has long struggled with botched attempts to expand by reaching beyond its basic strengths, Decker added, and the company had suffered for it.
"To get identity is going to be critical," Decker said.
In other remarks at the Fortune gathering, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch was somewhat dubious about the role of activist hedge funds in reforming companies in general.
Bresch said hedge funds seem to quickly flip in and out of stock holdings.
"It used to be about building value. Now it's about trading value," she said. "If they hold your stock for five minutes, that's more than their algorithms will let them."
YAHOO IN TALKS TO INVEST IN SNAPCHAT
Original Story: nytimes.com
Yahoo, flush with cash from selling a portion of its stake in the Alibaba Group, appears ready to bet on what it believes will be the next big Internet phenomenon.
The company has held talks to invest in Snapchat — a popular app that allows people to share photos and messages that self-destruct — people briefed on the matter said on Friday. The deal has not yet closed, some of these people added.
Should Yahoo make the investment, it will join other prominent investors, including the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who have valued the service at about $10 billion.
While Yahoo is not expected to put a huge amount of money into Snapchat, the investment could give it access to the messaging phenomenon and help Yahoo become more relevant to young consumers. It would also give the company a more strategic stake in mobile technology, an area in which Yahoo has long been seen as a laggard compared with competitors like Facebook and Google.
Yahoo has been bolstered by a roughly $6 billion haul from selling a significant portion of its holdings in Alibaba, the large, fast-growing Chinese e-commerce company that went public last month. At least half of the proceeds from the sale will go toward buying back stock, but some of the money could go toward strategic acquisitions and investments.
Talks between Yahoo and Snapchat gained steam late this summer, some of the people briefed on the matter said.
In that vein, Yahoo confirmed that it recently bought MessageMe, a small photo and text-messaging start-up in San Francisco. For Yahoo, it is another in a string of acquisitions of small mobile start-ups, which began soon after Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, took the top position in 2012. That strategy could expose Yahoo to criticism from shareholders leery that the Alibaba windfall will lead to another spending spree. Though Snapchat has millions of regular users, who send hundreds of millions of photos and videos every day, it has yet to generate any revenue.
The young company attracts attention in Silicon Valley circles, particularly because of its popularity in the much coveted millennial demographic. Snapchat, which is based in Venice, Calif., has raised more than $160 million in venture capital; last fall, the company spurned a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook.
Snapchat has been experimenting with ways to distribute content on its popular network. It has worked with musicians, large brands and popular users to figure out different ways to distribute “snaps” — the company’s name for its disappearing messages — that will keep its members coming back regularly.
This could be where the two companies see eye to eye. Ms. Mayer has repeatedly said that Yahoo is a “digital content company at its core” and has worked to increase its content offerings.
The company has commissioned two television-length comedy series that will air exclusively on Yahoo’s mobile apps and website. Last fall, Ms. Mayer hired Katie Couric, the seasoned journalist who has been the anchor of news programs for NBC, CBS and ABC, to be Yahoo’s global news anchor.
Ms. Couric recently attended a small private party thrown by Snapchat’s founders during Advertising Week, an annual media industry event held in New York, according to a person familiar with the guest list.
Representatives for Yahoo and Snapchat declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on the talks, which were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
Yahoo, flush with cash from selling a portion of its stake in the Alibaba Group, appears ready to bet on what it believes will be the next big Internet phenomenon.
The company has held talks to invest in Snapchat — a popular app that allows people to share photos and messages that self-destruct — people briefed on the matter said on Friday. The deal has not yet closed, some of these people added.
Should Yahoo make the investment, it will join other prominent investors, including the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who have valued the service at about $10 billion.
While Yahoo is not expected to put a huge amount of money into Snapchat, the investment could give it access to the messaging phenomenon and help Yahoo become more relevant to young consumers. It would also give the company a more strategic stake in mobile technology, an area in which Yahoo has long been seen as a laggard compared with competitors like Facebook and Google.
Yahoo has been bolstered by a roughly $6 billion haul from selling a significant portion of its holdings in Alibaba, the large, fast-growing Chinese e-commerce company that went public last month. At least half of the proceeds from the sale will go toward buying back stock, but some of the money could go toward strategic acquisitions and investments.
Talks between Yahoo and Snapchat gained steam late this summer, some of the people briefed on the matter said.
In that vein, Yahoo confirmed that it recently bought MessageMe, a small photo and text-messaging start-up in San Francisco. For Yahoo, it is another in a string of acquisitions of small mobile start-ups, which began soon after Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, took the top position in 2012. That strategy could expose Yahoo to criticism from shareholders leery that the Alibaba windfall will lead to another spending spree. Though Snapchat has millions of regular users, who send hundreds of millions of photos and videos every day, it has yet to generate any revenue.
The young company attracts attention in Silicon Valley circles, particularly because of its popularity in the much coveted millennial demographic. Snapchat, which is based in Venice, Calif., has raised more than $160 million in venture capital; last fall, the company spurned a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook.
Snapchat has been experimenting with ways to distribute content on its popular network. It has worked with musicians, large brands and popular users to figure out different ways to distribute “snaps” — the company’s name for its disappearing messages — that will keep its members coming back regularly.
This could be where the two companies see eye to eye. Ms. Mayer has repeatedly said that Yahoo is a “digital content company at its core” and has worked to increase its content offerings.
The company has commissioned two television-length comedy series that will air exclusively on Yahoo’s mobile apps and website. Last fall, Ms. Mayer hired Katie Couric, the seasoned journalist who has been the anchor of news programs for NBC, CBS and ABC, to be Yahoo’s global news anchor.
Ms. Couric recently attended a small private party thrown by Snapchat’s founders during Advertising Week, an annual media industry event held in New York, according to a person familiar with the guest list.
Representatives for Yahoo and Snapchat declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on the talks, which were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
Monday, September 29, 2014
YAHOO RAKES IN ANOTHER JACKPOT FROM ALIBABA'S IPO
Original Story: CNBC.com
Yahoo is making amends for years of blundering with one smart move: an early investment in China's Alibaba Group that has turned into a multibillion-dollar boon.
The latest windfall will be delivered with Alibaba's record-setting IPO completed late Thursday, which is expected raise up to $25 billion for the e-commerce company and its early backers. The company's shares will begin trading for the first time on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Yahoo is in line to make anywhere from $8.3 billion to $9.5 billion from the initial public offering, depending on whether investment bankers exercise their right to buy additional stock in the deal. The payoff supplements the $7.6 billion jackpot that Yahoo collected two years ago after selling another chunk of its Alibaba holdings and reworked a licensing agreement with the Chinese company.
Even if Yahoo ends up selling its maximum allotment of 140 million shares in the IPO, the Sunnyvale, California, company will still retain a roughly 16 percent stake in Alibaba worth another $26 billion to $27 billion.
Not a bad return, considering Yahoo acquired its Alibaba stake for $1 billion in 2005 in a deal engineered by company co-founder Jerry Yang and former CEO Terry Semel.
The Alibaba investment has helped ease the pain of Yahoo's struggles in Internet advertising, the heart of its business. Yahoo's annual revenue has slipped from a peak of $7.2 billion to projected $4.5 billion this year, a decline of nearly 40 percent.
The downturn has occurred even as advertisers steadily shift more of their budgets to the Internet and mobile devices, but most of that money is flowing to Yahoo rivals such as Google and Facebook—companies that have built more compelling digital services.
Yahoo has gone through seven different CEOs since 2006, including current leader Marissa Mayer, trying to figure out how to rejuvenate its growth.
Wall Street's exasperation with Yahoo's financial malaise caused the company's stock to sink below $9 in late 2008. The company's stock is now hovering around $43, a level that hasn't been touched since 2006. Most of the comeback occurred during the last two years as investors latched on to Yahoo's stock to profit from Alibaba's success leading up to the IPO.
Yahoo now must decide what to do with the money that will pour in from Alibaba's IPO. Mayer has promised that at least half the amount, after taxes, will be returned to shareholders through dividends or, more likely, buying back stock. That leaves open the possibility that Yahoo might use the rest of the money from the Alibaba IPO to help finance an acquisition of another Internet company such as AOL or a hot startup such as social media company Pinterest in its latest attempt to revive its business.
Yahoo is making amends for years of blundering with one smart move: an early investment in China's Alibaba Group that has turned into a multibillion-dollar boon.
The latest windfall will be delivered with Alibaba's record-setting IPO completed late Thursday, which is expected raise up to $25 billion for the e-commerce company and its early backers. The company's shares will begin trading for the first time on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Yahoo is in line to make anywhere from $8.3 billion to $9.5 billion from the initial public offering, depending on whether investment bankers exercise their right to buy additional stock in the deal. The payoff supplements the $7.6 billion jackpot that Yahoo collected two years ago after selling another chunk of its Alibaba holdings and reworked a licensing agreement with the Chinese company.
Even if Yahoo ends up selling its maximum allotment of 140 million shares in the IPO, the Sunnyvale, California, company will still retain a roughly 16 percent stake in Alibaba worth another $26 billion to $27 billion.
Not a bad return, considering Yahoo acquired its Alibaba stake for $1 billion in 2005 in a deal engineered by company co-founder Jerry Yang and former CEO Terry Semel.
The Alibaba investment has helped ease the pain of Yahoo's struggles in Internet advertising, the heart of its business. Yahoo's annual revenue has slipped from a peak of $7.2 billion to projected $4.5 billion this year, a decline of nearly 40 percent.
The downturn has occurred even as advertisers steadily shift more of their budgets to the Internet and mobile devices, but most of that money is flowing to Yahoo rivals such as Google and Facebook—companies that have built more compelling digital services.
Yahoo has gone through seven different CEOs since 2006, including current leader Marissa Mayer, trying to figure out how to rejuvenate its growth.
Wall Street's exasperation with Yahoo's financial malaise caused the company's stock to sink below $9 in late 2008. The company's stock is now hovering around $43, a level that hasn't been touched since 2006. Most of the comeback occurred during the last two years as investors latched on to Yahoo's stock to profit from Alibaba's success leading up to the IPO.
Yahoo now must decide what to do with the money that will pour in from Alibaba's IPO. Mayer has promised that at least half the amount, after taxes, will be returned to shareholders through dividends or, more likely, buying back stock. That leaves open the possibility that Yahoo might use the rest of the money from the Alibaba IPO to help finance an acquisition of another Internet company such as AOL or a hot startup such as social media company Pinterest in its latest attempt to revive its business.
STARBOARD ENCOURAGES YAHOO TO EXPLORE STRATEGIC COMBINATION WITH AOL
Original Story: CNBC.com
Activist investor Starboard Value sent a letter to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer on Friday listing several opportunities to increase shareholder value and recommended that it merge with AOL.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer acknowledged the letter Friday evening.
"As part of our regular evaluation of Yahoo's strategic initiatives to drive sustainable shareholder value, we will review Starboard's letter carefully and look forward to discussing it with them," she said, in a statement.
Starboard, which recently went after Darden for wasting money at its Olive Garden restaurants, said a tie-up between Yahoo and AOL could "offer synergies of up to $1 billion" and reduce corporate overhead cost.
Starboard said it had acquired a significant stake in Yahoo, adding that a possible AOL deal, along with other recommendations, would unlock tremendous value for shareholders.
AOL shares jumped as much as 6 percent after the news before easing, while Yahoo rose about 4 percent.
"[W]e believe a merger of AOL and Yahoo's core business may be one of the best ways to both fully seize the cost reduction opportunity and also to tax efficiently monetize Yahoo's noncore equity holdings," the letter said.
Starboard said the deal could help the companies navigate the ongoing industry changes, such as the growth of programmatic advertising and migration to mobile.
The letter, which was signed by Starboard CEO Jeffrey Smith, described Yahoo as "deeply undervalued relative to the sum of its parts" and said the company must take immediate steps to "remedy this valuation discrepancy."
Starboard pointed to a valuation gap of about $11 billion.
"The core problem for Yahoo, outside of Alibaba, is they don't really have an exciting story," said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. "If they could use acquisitions as a way to drum up some excitement in a longer-term business I think that most investors would look upon that favorably."
Munster, who has a $48 share price target on the stock, said a potential AOL acquisition would add to Yahoo's financial value, but it wouldn't solve Yahoo's core issue: user growth. "AOL is a fading giant as is Yahoo ... the combination of that doesn't add excitement that new users are going to come to," he said.
Instead he said he believes Yahoo should should explore acquiring "something on the content angle."
While the proposed tie-up with AOL may not be "sexy," there are a lot of reasons to think a combined company would work, said Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Partners.
For one thing, AOL would bring original video and original content that Yahoo has been openly seeking, Gillis said.
There's enough overlap that possibly significant cost savings could be found. And Yahoo clearly needs help gaining market share in the "raging bull market for online advertising," Gillis said.
Yahoo currently has a market valuation of $40 billion, in comparison to industry leader Google's nearly $200 billion market cap.
This is not the company's first encounter with a high-profile hedge fund. In 2012, activist investor Daniel Loeb sent a letter to Yahoo's board demanding that its then-CEO Scott Thompson be fired.
Loeb was a primary player in recruiting Mayer as Thompson's successor, but the two reportedly had major differences in opinion about Yahoo's strategy going forward, which eventually lead to Loeb's departure from the board, the New York Post reported last year.
AOL declined to discuss the matter, while Yahoo did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.
Activist investor Starboard Value sent a letter to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer on Friday listing several opportunities to increase shareholder value and recommended that it merge with AOL.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer acknowledged the letter Friday evening.
"As part of our regular evaluation of Yahoo's strategic initiatives to drive sustainable shareholder value, we will review Starboard's letter carefully and look forward to discussing it with them," she said, in a statement.
Starboard, which recently went after Darden for wasting money at its Olive Garden restaurants, said a tie-up between Yahoo and AOL could "offer synergies of up to $1 billion" and reduce corporate overhead cost.
Starboard said it had acquired a significant stake in Yahoo, adding that a possible AOL deal, along with other recommendations, would unlock tremendous value for shareholders.
AOL shares jumped as much as 6 percent after the news before easing, while Yahoo rose about 4 percent.
"[W]e believe a merger of AOL and Yahoo's core business may be one of the best ways to both fully seize the cost reduction opportunity and also to tax efficiently monetize Yahoo's noncore equity holdings," the letter said.
Starboard said the deal could help the companies navigate the ongoing industry changes, such as the growth of programmatic advertising and migration to mobile.
The letter, which was signed by Starboard CEO Jeffrey Smith, described Yahoo as "deeply undervalued relative to the sum of its parts" and said the company must take immediate steps to "remedy this valuation discrepancy."
Starboard pointed to a valuation gap of about $11 billion.
"The core problem for Yahoo, outside of Alibaba, is they don't really have an exciting story," said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. "If they could use acquisitions as a way to drum up some excitement in a longer-term business I think that most investors would look upon that favorably."
Munster, who has a $48 share price target on the stock, said a potential AOL acquisition would add to Yahoo's financial value, but it wouldn't solve Yahoo's core issue: user growth. "AOL is a fading giant as is Yahoo ... the combination of that doesn't add excitement that new users are going to come to," he said.
Instead he said he believes Yahoo should should explore acquiring "something on the content angle."
While the proposed tie-up with AOL may not be "sexy," there are a lot of reasons to think a combined company would work, said Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Partners.
For one thing, AOL would bring original video and original content that Yahoo has been openly seeking, Gillis said.
There's enough overlap that possibly significant cost savings could be found. And Yahoo clearly needs help gaining market share in the "raging bull market for online advertising," Gillis said.
Yahoo currently has a market valuation of $40 billion, in comparison to industry leader Google's nearly $200 billion market cap.
This is not the company's first encounter with a high-profile hedge fund. In 2012, activist investor Daniel Loeb sent a letter to Yahoo's board demanding that its then-CEO Scott Thompson be fired.
Loeb was a primary player in recruiting Mayer as Thompson's successor, but the two reportedly had major differences in opinion about Yahoo's strategy going forward, which eventually lead to Loeb's departure from the board, the New York Post reported last year.
AOL declined to discuss the matter, while Yahoo did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.
Friday, September 12, 2014
U.S. THREATENED YAHOO WITH HUGE FINE OVER DATA: REPORT
Original Story: Marketwatch.com
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo Inc. YHOO, +1.41% $250,000 a day in 2008 if the company didn't comply with a demand to hand over user data, the Washington Post reported. The Post's report has details from documents unsealed Thursday that show an ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by Yahoo to resist the government's demands. The documents show how federal officials forced U.S. tech companies to participate in the National Security Agency's PRISM surveillance program, the Post said.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo Inc. YHOO, +1.41% $250,000 a day in 2008 if the company didn't comply with a demand to hand over user data, the Washington Post reported. The Post's report has details from documents unsealed Thursday that show an ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by Yahoo to resist the government's demands. The documents show how federal officials forced U.S. tech companies to participate in the National Security Agency's PRISM surveillance program, the Post said.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
YAHOO CEO TAKES HEAT FOR STILTED PRESENTATION IN CANNES
Original Story: USAToday.com
CANNES, France — This is an advertising conference, so some spinning and selling is expected. Yet, a Tuesday presentation from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was flagged by some attendees as an excessively hard sell.
Audience members took to Twitter to criticize Mayer's speech as being stilted and overly promotional for Yahoo.
"Yahoo CEO at Cannes — am I at a sales pitch??" said Jim Donaldson, tweeting under ?@jdonaldson1.
Uwe Gutschow, tweeting under ?@uweg, said Mayer was "doing a hard sell on Yahoo," and she should "know your audience."
Bruce Rogers, tweeting under ?@Brogers825, said "Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer reads from script, says nothing new."
During her scripted talk at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Mayer highlighted Yahoo's assets such as social-media blogging site Tumblr, which it acquired last year.
She provided the packed audience with examples of advertiser campaigns on Yahoo properties and highlighted the site's digital magazines.
She also talked about art, as well as trends in areas such as mobile, video, social media and native advertising.
Mayer played up to the egos of the ad industry audience by noting that commercials are often more interesting than programming, saying that ads can be "30-second stories."
The Yahoo chief was one of more than 300 speakers at this festival, which is the advertising industry's biggest awards competition and trade show.
Traditionally, festival speakers are more uninhibited. For example, in the middle of being interviewed on stage Monday, filmmaker Spike Jonze turned to the audience and asked the crowd to ask him questions.
On Sunday, Baywatch star David Hasselhoffran walked through the audience carrying a red buoy just before he took to the stage. After that presentation, Hasselhoff readily took pictures with attendees that rushed the stage to snap his image.
CANNES, France — This is an advertising conference, so some spinning and selling is expected. Yet, a Tuesday presentation from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was flagged by some attendees as an excessively hard sell.
Audience members took to Twitter to criticize Mayer's speech as being stilted and overly promotional for Yahoo.
"Yahoo CEO at Cannes — am I at a sales pitch??" said Jim Donaldson, tweeting under ?@jdonaldson1.
Uwe Gutschow, tweeting under ?@uweg, said Mayer was "doing a hard sell on Yahoo," and she should "know your audience."
Bruce Rogers, tweeting under ?@Brogers825, said "Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer reads from script, says nothing new."
During her scripted talk at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Mayer highlighted Yahoo's assets such as social-media blogging site Tumblr, which it acquired last year.
She provided the packed audience with examples of advertiser campaigns on Yahoo properties and highlighted the site's digital magazines.
She also talked about art, as well as trends in areas such as mobile, video, social media and native advertising.
Mayer played up to the egos of the ad industry audience by noting that commercials are often more interesting than programming, saying that ads can be "30-second stories."
The Yahoo chief was one of more than 300 speakers at this festival, which is the advertising industry's biggest awards competition and trade show.
Traditionally, festival speakers are more uninhibited. For example, in the middle of being interviewed on stage Monday, filmmaker Spike Jonze turned to the audience and asked the crowd to ask him questions.
On Sunday, Baywatch star David Hasselhoffran walked through the audience carrying a red buoy just before he took to the stage. After that presentation, Hasselhoff readily took pictures with attendees that rushed the stage to snap his image.
YAHOO LATEST TECH ICON TO REVEAL LACK OF DIVERSITY
Original Story: USAToday.com
SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo on Tuesday shared some basic demographic information on its work force, the latest Silicon Valley company to reveal the stark lack of diversity in its ranks.
For years technology companies have resisted reporting this information even though they collect it and report it to the federal government.
But Google late last month swung open the door by revealing the gender and racial breakdown of its work force, bringing to the fore an issue that Silicon Valley has long wanted to keep hidden from public view: that these work forces are predominantly white and male.
Google made the move after Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. stood up at its annual shareholder meeting to urge Google to disclose its numbers. He made a similar plea at the Facebook shareholder meeting. But the giant social network where Sheryl Sandberg is the No. 2 executive, said it preferred to share the data internally first.
Yahoo, which is also run by a woman and another former Google executive, Marissa Mayer, said 50% of its work force of more than 12,000 is white, 39% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 2% black and 4% undisclosed or more than one race.
Asians comprise 57% of Yahoo's tech workers while 35% of tech workers are white. About 37% of Yahoo workers are women and 23% of senior managers are women.
Last week, LinkedIn also disclosed its diversity figures, which were very similar to those released by Google and Yahoo. But LinkedIn also released the demographic report it provides to the federal government.
Only Intel, Cisco and a smattering of other companies routinely disclose their demographic reports to the federal government.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo on Tuesday shared some basic demographic information on its work force, the latest Silicon Valley company to reveal the stark lack of diversity in its ranks.
For years technology companies have resisted reporting this information even though they collect it and report it to the federal government.
But Google late last month swung open the door by revealing the gender and racial breakdown of its work force, bringing to the fore an issue that Silicon Valley has long wanted to keep hidden from public view: that these work forces are predominantly white and male.
Google made the move after Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. stood up at its annual shareholder meeting to urge Google to disclose its numbers. He made a similar plea at the Facebook shareholder meeting. But the giant social network where Sheryl Sandberg is the No. 2 executive, said it preferred to share the data internally first.
Yahoo, which is also run by a woman and another former Google executive, Marissa Mayer, said 50% of its work force of more than 12,000 is white, 39% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 2% black and 4% undisclosed or more than one race.
Asians comprise 57% of Yahoo's tech workers while 35% of tech workers are white. About 37% of Yahoo workers are women and 23% of senior managers are women.
Last week, LinkedIn also disclosed its diversity figures, which were very similar to those released by Google and Yahoo. But LinkedIn also released the demographic report it provides to the federal government.
Only Intel, Cisco and a smattering of other companies routinely disclose their demographic reports to the federal government.
Thursday, March 06, 2014
WOLFF: YAHOO WANTS TO BE VOGUE? FAT CHANCE
Original Story from USATODAY.com.
Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, gave an extraordinary interview to The New York Times last week in which she said that magazine pages were better for advertising than digital space.
Referring to Vogue and InStyle, she said "The ads in those magazines are as interesting as the photo shoots and the articles." She added, for good measure, "I miss the ads when they are not there. I feel less fulfilled."
This says, I suspect, something about her own reading habits. Mayer, in the picture accompanying the interview, is wearing Oscar de la Renta, a favorite of Vogue and its editor, Anna Wintour. (Vogue lavishly profiled Mayer in August wearing Michael Kors.) But it also says something about the nature of advertising, a business that is key to the company she runs, but one that she does not seem to know all that much about.
Putting aside that magazine advertising is in radical structural decline — hence, probably not what you want to emulate — high-end glossies specialize in the kind of brand and image advertising that is pretty much absent from most online venues, and certainly from mass market portals.
What exactly is Mayer's point?
Not, I'd suppose, that advertisers ought to return to magazines. Possibly that she'd like to see lots of fashion and luxury goods advertising on Yahoo, not a probable outcome.
More likely, she's voicing a general digital angst that Web and mobile advertising ought to somehow be something that advertisers want to pay more for. More integrated, more compelling, better at making people want to buy stuff. The example Mayer cited was Knorr, the dehydrated soup mix packets that are now advertised on Yahoo in space adjacent to Yahoo Food, something described as a "digital magazine," recently launched by Yahoo. (In general, the intermingling of ads like this with content is less about showcasing product than an effort to confuse Yahoo users with what's an ad and what's not an ad.)
Mayer, a technologist who made her career and fortune at Google, might perhaps be forgiven for not understanding the disconnect between Knorr and Vogue and Oscar de la Renta. Yet, of course, the subtleties of advertising and media, much more so than difficult algorithms, are now her primary responsibility.
Seldom has a CEO of a large company sounded so maladroit as Mayer does when she talks about her company's strategy in its core business.
Nor has justice been done to the company's failure in these areas. It's not just the ever-steady decline in its performance as an advertising-based company (many CEOs before Mayer have gone to the gallows for this). There's seeming total chaos among Yahoo's marketing and sales executives. In January, Mayer fired the company's top ad executive, Henrique de Castro, after just 15 months on the job, costing the company more than $100 million in severance. Mayer said she will lead ad sales efforts herself.
This is a peculiar, even ludicrous, state of affairs that goes on because most of Yahoo's value is not in its core business, but in its holdings in Alibaba, the vast Chinese e-commerce company. People invest in Yahoo to invest in Alibaba; the fact that they get a stumblebum enterprise in the bargain is of minor concern.
Mayer herself — in Vogue, in a recent profile in Vanity Fair, and in her recent Times interview — tends to get the benefit of the doubt, because Alibaba is holding up her stock price, because she once worked for Google and is otherworldly rich herself, and because, well, Oscar de la Renta probably helps.
Yet, the existential predicament continues: Yahoo, as an operating company, is a failed business.
There is, too, a much larger, perplexing question: How do you create advertising-supported businesses in which advertising doesn't seem to work all that well?
This is a mighty digital conundrum that is always clouded by Google's success. While Google's dominance is in advertising, it is not as a media company, but rather as a middle-man connector (in the great days of direct-mail advertising, Google would have been more like the post office). Everybody else, on the other hand, is for all practical purposes, in the media business — that is, having to create a propitious environment for seller to meet buyer (an exciting and commodious enough environment for buyer to seduce seller).
In this, there are two major hulking digital disaster areas: Yahoo and AOL. There are all of Microsoft's failed efforts with consumer media. There are countless content sites with ever-falling advertising rates. Then there are the digital ad behemoths, YouTube and Facebook, each with per-user revenue an increment of traditional media's.
The problem in a sense begins with the optimism or hubris of technologists who thought advertising was largely a problem of efficient connections instead of emotional connections. Marissa Mayer reads a magazine and thinks, why don't we do that? Easy breezy. In a sense, it is just a lack of obvious skill sets: You ought to have sold advertising before taking over a company whose job is to sell it. And, in another sense, it is structural; digital media has a fleeting and shallow effect on people.
Mayer is right. Magazines look pretty good.
Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, gave an extraordinary interview to The New York Times last week in which she said that magazine pages were better for advertising than digital space.
Referring to Vogue and InStyle, she said "The ads in those magazines are as interesting as the photo shoots and the articles." She added, for good measure, "I miss the ads when they are not there. I feel less fulfilled."
This says, I suspect, something about her own reading habits. Mayer, in the picture accompanying the interview, is wearing Oscar de la Renta, a favorite of Vogue and its editor, Anna Wintour. (Vogue lavishly profiled Mayer in August wearing Michael Kors.) But it also says something about the nature of advertising, a business that is key to the company she runs, but one that she does not seem to know all that much about.
Putting aside that magazine advertising is in radical structural decline — hence, probably not what you want to emulate — high-end glossies specialize in the kind of brand and image advertising that is pretty much absent from most online venues, and certainly from mass market portals.
What exactly is Mayer's point?
Not, I'd suppose, that advertisers ought to return to magazines. Possibly that she'd like to see lots of fashion and luxury goods advertising on Yahoo, not a probable outcome.
More likely, she's voicing a general digital angst that Web and mobile advertising ought to somehow be something that advertisers want to pay more for. More integrated, more compelling, better at making people want to buy stuff. The example Mayer cited was Knorr, the dehydrated soup mix packets that are now advertised on Yahoo in space adjacent to Yahoo Food, something described as a "digital magazine," recently launched by Yahoo. (In general, the intermingling of ads like this with content is less about showcasing product than an effort to confuse Yahoo users with what's an ad and what's not an ad.)
Mayer, a technologist who made her career and fortune at Google, might perhaps be forgiven for not understanding the disconnect between Knorr and Vogue and Oscar de la Renta. Yet, of course, the subtleties of advertising and media, much more so than difficult algorithms, are now her primary responsibility.
Seldom has a CEO of a large company sounded so maladroit as Mayer does when she talks about her company's strategy in its core business.
Nor has justice been done to the company's failure in these areas. It's not just the ever-steady decline in its performance as an advertising-based company (many CEOs before Mayer have gone to the gallows for this). There's seeming total chaos among Yahoo's marketing and sales executives. In January, Mayer fired the company's top ad executive, Henrique de Castro, after just 15 months on the job, costing the company more than $100 million in severance. Mayer said she will lead ad sales efforts herself.
This is a peculiar, even ludicrous, state of affairs that goes on because most of Yahoo's value is not in its core business, but in its holdings in Alibaba, the vast Chinese e-commerce company. People invest in Yahoo to invest in Alibaba; the fact that they get a stumblebum enterprise in the bargain is of minor concern.
Mayer herself — in Vogue, in a recent profile in Vanity Fair, and in her recent Times interview — tends to get the benefit of the doubt, because Alibaba is holding up her stock price, because she once worked for Google and is otherworldly rich herself, and because, well, Oscar de la Renta probably helps.
Yet, the existential predicament continues: Yahoo, as an operating company, is a failed business.
There is, too, a much larger, perplexing question: How do you create advertising-supported businesses in which advertising doesn't seem to work all that well?
This is a mighty digital conundrum that is always clouded by Google's success. While Google's dominance is in advertising, it is not as a media company, but rather as a middle-man connector (in the great days of direct-mail advertising, Google would have been more like the post office). Everybody else, on the other hand, is for all practical purposes, in the media business — that is, having to create a propitious environment for seller to meet buyer (an exciting and commodious enough environment for buyer to seduce seller).
In this, there are two major hulking digital disaster areas: Yahoo and AOL. There are all of Microsoft's failed efforts with consumer media. There are countless content sites with ever-falling advertising rates. Then there are the digital ad behemoths, YouTube and Facebook, each with per-user revenue an increment of traditional media's.
The problem in a sense begins with the optimism or hubris of technologists who thought advertising was largely a problem of efficient connections instead of emotional connections. Marissa Mayer reads a magazine and thinks, why don't we do that? Easy breezy. In a sense, it is just a lack of obvious skill sets: You ought to have sold advertising before taking over a company whose job is to sell it. And, in another sense, it is structural; digital media has a fleeting and shallow effect on people.
Mayer is right. Magazines look pretty good.
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
Raising Morale is Goal of Yahoo's New Policy
Story first appeared on The New York Times -
When Marissa Mayer took over as chief executive at Yahoo last summer, she confronted a Silicon Valley campus that was very different from the one she had left at Google.
Parking lots and entire floors of cubicles were nearly empty because some employees were working as little as possible and leaving early.
Then there were the 200 or so people who had work-at-home arrangements. Although they collected Yahoo paychecks, some did little work for the company and a few had even begun their own start-ups on the side.
These were among the factors that led Ms. Mayer to announce last week that she was abolishing Yahoo’s work-from-home policy, saying that to create a new culture of innovation and collaboration at the company, employees had to report to work.
The announcement ignited a national debate over workplace flexibility — and within Yahoo has inspired much water cooler conversation and some concern.
But former and current Yahoo employees said that Ms. Mayer made the decision not as a referendum on working remotely, but to address problems particular to Yahoo. They painted a picture of a company where employees were aimless and morale was low, and a bloated bureaucracy had taken Yahoo out of competition with its more nimble rivals.
“In the tech world it was such a bummer to say you worked for Yahoo,” said a former senior employee who, like many Yahoo insiders, would speak only anonymously to preserve professional relationships. The employee added, “I’ve heard she wants to make Yahoo young and cool.”
Restoring Yahoo’s cool — from revitalizing behind-the-times products to reversing deteriorating morale and culture — is hard to do if people are not there, Ms. Mayer concluded. That view was reflected in Yahoo’s only statement on the work-at-home policy change: “This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home. This is about what is right for Yahoo, right now.”
Yahoo declined to comment further.
On Monday, another ailing company, Best Buy, announced that it, too, would no longer permit employees to work remotely, reversing one of the most permissive flexible workplace policies in the business world.
Inside Yahoo, there has been mixed reaction to the policy change. Some employees said that they were able to be highly productive by working remotely, and that it helped them concentrate on work instead of the chaos inside Yahoo.
Brandon Holley, former editor of Shine, Yahoo’s women’s site, said she built the site and signed on big-name advertisers while she and most of her team worked from homes across the country.
“It grew very rapidly,” said Ms. Holley, who is now editor of Lucky, Condé Nast’s shopping magazine. “A lot of that had to do with the lack of distraction in a very distracted company.”
The change to the work-at-home policy initially angered some employees who had such arrangements, and worried others who occasionally stayed home to care for a sick child or receive a delivery. Reports that Ms. Mayer built a nursery for her young son next to her office made parents working at Yahoo even angrier.
This week, the policy continued to be the topic of much discussion at the company, as people wondered aloud whether they would lose that flexibility, said employees who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
But for the most part, those employees said, those concerns have been eased by managers who assured them that the real targets of Yahoo’s memo were the approximately 200 employees who work from home full time.
One manager said he told his employees, “Be here when you can. Use your best judgment. But if you have to stay home for the cable guy or because your kid is sick, do it.”
Many of Yahoo’s problems are visible to people outside the company. It missed the two biggest trends on the Internet — social networking and mobile. Its home page and e-mail services had become relics used by people who had never bothered to change their habits. It ceded its crown as the biggest seller of display ads to Facebook and Google. Its stock price was plummeting.
Inside the company, though, there were deeper cultural issues invisible from the outside. For Ms. Mayer’s ambitious plans to turn around the company to work, employees briefed on her strategy said, she believed Yahoo needed “all hands on deck.”
Jackie Reses, Yahoo’s director of human resources and the author of the new policy, is an extreme example of this philosophy. She commutes to Yahoo’s campus in Sunnyvale, Calif., from her home in New York, where she lives with her children.
“Morale was terrible because the company was thought to be dying,” said a former manager at Yahoo, who would speak only anonymously to preserve business relationships. “When you have those root issues, an employee work force that is not terribly motivated, it built bad habits over years.”
Yahoo has withstood many changes over the years, starting with a turnover of six chief executives in five years, each with his or her own deputies and missions for the company. This led to confusion among the work force about the company’s goals and frustration that projects would be pulled midstream by a new chief executive.
The company had hired many managers to oversee new tech products, but the extra levels of management slowed product development, former employees said.
“Where Yahoo competes, with companies like Facebook churning out a new release every single day, there was a lot of bloat slowing down product decisions,” the former manager said.
The new policy is the first unpopular big move Ms. Mayer has made. Yahoo insiders said they did not expect the employee and media outcry that followed.
Employees said that unlike previous chief executives, who focused outside Yahoo, she has prioritized fixing the company internally and motivating employees.
She introduced free food in the cafeterias, swapped employees’ BlackBerrys for iPhones and Android phones and started a Friday all-employee meeting where executives take questions and speak candidly.
A recent internal employee survey found that 95 percent of employees were optimistic about the company’s future, a 32 percent bump from the previous survey, Ms. Mayer said in a call with analysts in January.
Résumés have begun arriving from employees at competitors like Facebook and Google, which rarely happened in the past, according to one person briefed on Yahoo hiring.
Since Ms. Mayer made food free, there are now crowds in the cafeterias, lingering to talk about new ideas, employees say — exactly what she wants to encourage by requiring people to work in the office.
“I understand why Marissa Mayer would want to call everybody back into work,” Ms. Holley said. “It’s kind of a necessary step.”
When Marissa Mayer took over as chief executive at Yahoo last summer, she confronted a Silicon Valley campus that was very different from the one she had left at Google.
Parking lots and entire floors of cubicles were nearly empty because some employees were working as little as possible and leaving early.
Then there were the 200 or so people who had work-at-home arrangements. Although they collected Yahoo paychecks, some did little work for the company and a few had even begun their own start-ups on the side.
These were among the factors that led Ms. Mayer to announce last week that she was abolishing Yahoo’s work-from-home policy, saying that to create a new culture of innovation and collaboration at the company, employees had to report to work.
The announcement ignited a national debate over workplace flexibility — and within Yahoo has inspired much water cooler conversation and some concern.
But former and current Yahoo employees said that Ms. Mayer made the decision not as a referendum on working remotely, but to address problems particular to Yahoo. They painted a picture of a company where employees were aimless and morale was low, and a bloated bureaucracy had taken Yahoo out of competition with its more nimble rivals.
“In the tech world it was such a bummer to say you worked for Yahoo,” said a former senior employee who, like many Yahoo insiders, would speak only anonymously to preserve professional relationships. The employee added, “I’ve heard she wants to make Yahoo young and cool.”
Restoring Yahoo’s cool — from revitalizing behind-the-times products to reversing deteriorating morale and culture — is hard to do if people are not there, Ms. Mayer concluded. That view was reflected in Yahoo’s only statement on the work-at-home policy change: “This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home. This is about what is right for Yahoo, right now.”
Yahoo declined to comment further.
On Monday, another ailing company, Best Buy, announced that it, too, would no longer permit employees to work remotely, reversing one of the most permissive flexible workplace policies in the business world.
Inside Yahoo, there has been mixed reaction to the policy change. Some employees said that they were able to be highly productive by working remotely, and that it helped them concentrate on work instead of the chaos inside Yahoo.
Brandon Holley, former editor of Shine, Yahoo’s women’s site, said she built the site and signed on big-name advertisers while she and most of her team worked from homes across the country.
“It grew very rapidly,” said Ms. Holley, who is now editor of Lucky, Condé Nast’s shopping magazine. “A lot of that had to do with the lack of distraction in a very distracted company.”
The change to the work-at-home policy initially angered some employees who had such arrangements, and worried others who occasionally stayed home to care for a sick child or receive a delivery. Reports that Ms. Mayer built a nursery for her young son next to her office made parents working at Yahoo even angrier.
This week, the policy continued to be the topic of much discussion at the company, as people wondered aloud whether they would lose that flexibility, said employees who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
But for the most part, those employees said, those concerns have been eased by managers who assured them that the real targets of Yahoo’s memo were the approximately 200 employees who work from home full time.
One manager said he told his employees, “Be here when you can. Use your best judgment. But if you have to stay home for the cable guy or because your kid is sick, do it.”
Many of Yahoo’s problems are visible to people outside the company. It missed the two biggest trends on the Internet — social networking and mobile. Its home page and e-mail services had become relics used by people who had never bothered to change their habits. It ceded its crown as the biggest seller of display ads to Facebook and Google. Its stock price was plummeting.
Inside the company, though, there were deeper cultural issues invisible from the outside. For Ms. Mayer’s ambitious plans to turn around the company to work, employees briefed on her strategy said, she believed Yahoo needed “all hands on deck.”
Jackie Reses, Yahoo’s director of human resources and the author of the new policy, is an extreme example of this philosophy. She commutes to Yahoo’s campus in Sunnyvale, Calif., from her home in New York, where she lives with her children.
“Morale was terrible because the company was thought to be dying,” said a former manager at Yahoo, who would speak only anonymously to preserve business relationships. “When you have those root issues, an employee work force that is not terribly motivated, it built bad habits over years.”
Yahoo has withstood many changes over the years, starting with a turnover of six chief executives in five years, each with his or her own deputies and missions for the company. This led to confusion among the work force about the company’s goals and frustration that projects would be pulled midstream by a new chief executive.
The company had hired many managers to oversee new tech products, but the extra levels of management slowed product development, former employees said.
“Where Yahoo competes, with companies like Facebook churning out a new release every single day, there was a lot of bloat slowing down product decisions,” the former manager said.
The new policy is the first unpopular big move Ms. Mayer has made. Yahoo insiders said they did not expect the employee and media outcry that followed.
Employees said that unlike previous chief executives, who focused outside Yahoo, she has prioritized fixing the company internally and motivating employees.
She introduced free food in the cafeterias, swapped employees’ BlackBerrys for iPhones and Android phones and started a Friday all-employee meeting where executives take questions and speak candidly.
A recent internal employee survey found that 95 percent of employees were optimistic about the company’s future, a 32 percent bump from the previous survey, Ms. Mayer said in a call with analysts in January.
Résumés have begun arriving from employees at competitors like Facebook and Google, which rarely happened in the past, according to one person briefed on Yahoo hiring.
Since Ms. Mayer made food free, there are now crowds in the cafeterias, lingering to talk about new ideas, employees say — exactly what she wants to encourage by requiring people to work in the office.
“I understand why Marissa Mayer would want to call everybody back into work,” Ms. Holley said. “It’s kind of a necessary step.”
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
'New, More Modern' Yahoo Being Introduced
Story first appeared on Business Insider -
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just put up a blog post announcing a "new, more modern" Yahoo.
It's her long-expected, this-time-it's-official update to the Yahoo homepage She says the page is more personal.
Features:
At a Goldman Sach's conference in San Francisco last week, Mayer put it this way: "I'm not confused, our biggest problem right now is impressions. We're growing prices, we need to grow usage."
Here is Mayer's entire blog post:
Yahoo! first began as Jerry and Dave’s Guide to the World Wide Web, a directory of links created to help organize the Internet during its very early days. That simple directory evolved through the years into the Yahoo! we know today -- a starting point for your daily habits. Whether checking the latest news, sports scores, or just searching, Yahoo! has always been about bringing you the very best of the web. And, today, we’re introducing a new, more modern experience to do just that.
Designed to be more intuitive and personal, the new Yahoo! experience is all about your interests and preferences. Since streams of information have become the paradigm of choice on the web, we’re introducing a newsfeed with infinite scroll, letting you experience a virtually endless feed of news articles. Whether you are a sports fanatic or entertainment buff, you can easily customize your newsfeed to your interests. And, to make Yahoo! even more social, you can log in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID to get articles from thousands of news sources as well as those shared by your friends.
Because you come to Yahoo! everyday for must-know information, we’ve also introduced newly designed applications. From your local weather forecast to Facebook friends’ birthdays, you’ll always have the information you need. We’ve also refreshed some of what you love most -- including our Yahoo! editorial features, and the daily snapshot into popular trending web searches.
The new Yahoo! experience works well on the go -- we’ve optimized it for smartphones and tablets. And, thanks to some under-the-hood improvements, Yahoo! is also faster.
Over the next few days, our U.S. users will begin to see the new Yahoo! experience and we’re excited to see the response. Over the coming months, we’ll continue to make changes and improvements, so today is just the beginning.
Here's a more detailed blog post from Mike Kearns, Yahoo VP of product::
If you’ve had a chance to visit Yahoo! today, you may have noticed a few changes. We’ve launched a fresh, dynamic and personalized Yahoo! experience that brings you relevant content even faster. It’s now easier for you to get your daily dose of weather, stock quotes, sports scores, and more. These changes are just the first step in making Yahoo! personalized, and the more you visit Yahoo!, the better it will become. Below are a few top tips on how to get the most out of the new Yahoo!.
Get personal, sign-in
To view more personally relevant content in the newsfeed, just sign in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID in the upper right corner of your screen.
Filter your newsfeed.
The newsfeed defaults to a "blend" of story types, but also allows you to filter your view through a handful of popular categories, such as news, local, entertainment and sports. For additional choices in the newsfeed filter, just click the “More” button to choose from other categories that interest you like business, technology, politics or science. If you want to see fewer stories about a particular topic in the future, hover your cursor to the right of the story and click on the “X” button. And remember, the more feedback you provide, the more personalized and relevant your experience will be.
Share your favorite content from Yahoo!.
In addition to seeing news stories that your friends have read and shared, you can easily share with them. When you come across a news item that you’d like to share, hover over it to view a button that allows you to share the story via email, Facebook, or Twitter.
Reach the bottom of the page? Quickly navigate back up to the top.
If you’ve scrolled far down and want to head back to the top, click on the handy back-to-top arrow in the lower right-hand corner of your screen to be taken back to the top of your Yahoo!.
Check out weather, sports, stocks and more with new applications.
There are seven new applications on the right side of the screen to connect you with information you view everyday, like weather, stocks, sports, friends’ birthdays, horoscopes, Flickr photos and popular videos from Yahoo!. To personalize the applications, simply hover over the upper right side to click on the gears icon. For example, getting ready for March Madness? Add your favorite teams to the Sports application to catch up on the latest scores. Keeping an eye on your investments? To view stock quotes, click on the gears icon in the Quotes application to integrate your portfolio, look up quotes, or add new stocks. Travel often? Add as many cities as you’d like to the Weather application.
Customize your applications.
To remove a particular application, click the “x” button in the upper right corner of the application box. Change your mind? You can add them all back by selecting “Restore all” in the area where the applications used to be displayed.
Never forget a birthday.
If you’ve signed into Yahoo! via Facebook, the Birthday application offers an easy way to be reminded of upcoming birthdays from your circle of friends.
View the latest Flickr photos.
If you love photos, you can customize the Flickr application to display photos taken by the people you’re following. If you don’t have a Flickr account or if you’re not signed into Yahoo!, you’ll be shown some of the most recent and most interesting photos on Flickr.
On an iOS or Android device? Try swiping.
Simply visit yahoo.com on your tablet or mobile device, swipe through the “Today” stories to browse the freshest content. As you scroll down the newsfeed you can swipe left to take action on content. Find a story you like? Swipe left to share it. You also can swipe left to experience the different applications.
The best way to learn your way around the new Yahoo! is by checking it out yourself. Visit Yahoo! today to see what’s new!
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just put up a blog post announcing a "new, more modern" Yahoo.
It's her long-expected, this-time-it's-official update to the Yahoo homepage She says the page is more personal.
Features:
- "A newsfeed with infinite scroll."
- "You can log in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID to get articles from thousands of news sources as well as those shared by your friends."
- New applications, like a list of your Facebook friends' birthdays.
- Refreshed "Yahoo! editorial features."
- The list of popular searches of the moment has a "refreshed" look.
- It's faster.
- It's optimized for tablets and smartphones.
- The business goal for the new homepage is simple: Yahoo needs to grow its userbase, and it needs all of it users to spend more time on the site.
At a Goldman Sach's conference in San Francisco last week, Mayer put it this way: "I'm not confused, our biggest problem right now is impressions. We're growing prices, we need to grow usage."
Here is Mayer's entire blog post:
Yahoo! first began as Jerry and Dave’s Guide to the World Wide Web, a directory of links created to help organize the Internet during its very early days. That simple directory evolved through the years into the Yahoo! we know today -- a starting point for your daily habits. Whether checking the latest news, sports scores, or just searching, Yahoo! has always been about bringing you the very best of the web. And, today, we’re introducing a new, more modern experience to do just that.
Designed to be more intuitive and personal, the new Yahoo! experience is all about your interests and preferences. Since streams of information have become the paradigm of choice on the web, we’re introducing a newsfeed with infinite scroll, letting you experience a virtually endless feed of news articles. Whether you are a sports fanatic or entertainment buff, you can easily customize your newsfeed to your interests. And, to make Yahoo! even more social, you can log in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID to get articles from thousands of news sources as well as those shared by your friends.
Because you come to Yahoo! everyday for must-know information, we’ve also introduced newly designed applications. From your local weather forecast to Facebook friends’ birthdays, you’ll always have the information you need. We’ve also refreshed some of what you love most -- including our Yahoo! editorial features, and the daily snapshot into popular trending web searches.
The new Yahoo! experience works well on the go -- we’ve optimized it for smartphones and tablets. And, thanks to some under-the-hood improvements, Yahoo! is also faster.
Here's a more detailed blog post from Mike Kearns, Yahoo VP of product::
If you’ve had a chance to visit Yahoo! today, you may have noticed a few changes. We’ve launched a fresh, dynamic and personalized Yahoo! experience that brings you relevant content even faster. It’s now easier for you to get your daily dose of weather, stock quotes, sports scores, and more. These changes are just the first step in making Yahoo! personalized, and the more you visit Yahoo!, the better it will become. Below are a few top tips on how to get the most out of the new Yahoo!.
Get personal, sign-in
To view more personally relevant content in the newsfeed, just sign in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID in the upper right corner of your screen.
Filter your newsfeed.
The newsfeed defaults to a "blend" of story types, but also allows you to filter your view through a handful of popular categories, such as news, local, entertainment and sports. For additional choices in the newsfeed filter, just click the “More” button to choose from other categories that interest you like business, technology, politics or science. If you want to see fewer stories about a particular topic in the future, hover your cursor to the right of the story and click on the “X” button. And remember, the more feedback you provide, the more personalized and relevant your experience will be.
Share your favorite content from Yahoo!.
In addition to seeing news stories that your friends have read and shared, you can easily share with them. When you come across a news item that you’d like to share, hover over it to view a button that allows you to share the story via email, Facebook, or Twitter.
Reach the bottom of the page? Quickly navigate back up to the top.
If you’ve scrolled far down and want to head back to the top, click on the handy back-to-top arrow in the lower right-hand corner of your screen to be taken back to the top of your Yahoo!.
Check out weather, sports, stocks and more with new applications.
There are seven new applications on the right side of the screen to connect you with information you view everyday, like weather, stocks, sports, friends’ birthdays, horoscopes, Flickr photos and popular videos from Yahoo!. To personalize the applications, simply hover over the upper right side to click on the gears icon. For example, getting ready for March Madness? Add your favorite teams to the Sports application to catch up on the latest scores. Keeping an eye on your investments? To view stock quotes, click on the gears icon in the Quotes application to integrate your portfolio, look up quotes, or add new stocks. Travel often? Add as many cities as you’d like to the Weather application.
Customize your applications.
To remove a particular application, click the “x” button in the upper right corner of the application box. Change your mind? You can add them all back by selecting “Restore all” in the area where the applications used to be displayed.
Never forget a birthday.
If you’ve signed into Yahoo! via Facebook, the Birthday application offers an easy way to be reminded of upcoming birthdays from your circle of friends.
View the latest Flickr photos.
If you love photos, you can customize the Flickr application to display photos taken by the people you’re following. If you don’t have a Flickr account or if you’re not signed into Yahoo!, you’ll be shown some of the most recent and most interesting photos on Flickr.
Simply visit yahoo.com on your tablet or mobile device, swipe through the “Today” stories to browse the freshest content. As you scroll down the newsfeed you can swipe left to take action on content. Find a story you like? Swipe left to share it. You also can swipe left to experience the different applications.
The best way to learn your way around the new Yahoo! is by checking it out yourself. Visit Yahoo! today to see what’s new!
The New Yahoo.com Homepage
Story first appeared on Business Insider -
Marissa Mayer made her fame and fortune at Google, where she was responsible for the original design of Google.com. And now, two months after becoming Yahoo CEO, she has updated Yahoo.com. A new version is slowly being rolled out into the wild, and we've got a screen-grab that a source close to Yahoo tells us is authentic.
Yahoo.com is Yahoo's most important product. ComScore says 170 million people visit Yahoo sites everyday, and a huge percentage of them are funneled to this page. Its ad units are perhaps the most valuable on the Internet. Sources tell us more changes are on the way. The page is going to get more personalized and customizable, we hear.
Marissa Mayer made her fame and fortune at Google, where she was responsible for the original design of Google.com. And now, two months after becoming Yahoo CEO, she has updated Yahoo.com. A new version is slowly being rolled out into the wild, and we've got a screen-grab that a source close to Yahoo tells us is authentic.
Yahoo.com is Yahoo's most important product. ComScore says 170 million people visit Yahoo sites everyday, and a huge percentage of them are funneled to this page. Its ad units are perhaps the most valuable on the Internet. Sources tell us more changes are on the way. The page is going to get more personalized and customizable, we hear.
- The search bar is now centered, and is part of a darker toolbar that is fixed to the top of the page as the user scrolls down.
- The Yahoo! logo is smaller, and no longer purple.
- The word "search" has been replaced with a magnifying glass icon.
- There are far fewer links to Yahoo Sites on the left side. Losers are: Dating, Flickr, Games, Jobs, Messenger, Music, My Yahoo!, and TV.
- Local weather has its own module.
- What's trending has been de-emphasized and moved to the left column.
- There is now a second large story tout below the top stories.
- Instead of just headlines, the news river has story summaries.
- Astrology has its own module.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Yahoo Profits On The Upswing
Story first appeared on USA Today -
Marissa Mayer has brought the yippee! back to Yahoo.
Under a company reboot, the Internet pioneer reported earnings that beat analyst forecasts after the close of markets Monday.
Shares of Yahoo initially jumped 4.5% to $21.22 in after-hours trading following the report.
Yahoo reported fourth-quarter profit of $272 million on revenue of $1.22 billion, compared with a profit of $295 million on revenue of $1.17 billion a year ago.
The revenue uptick marks a first year-over-year gain in four years as CEO Mayer has begun turnaround efforts at Yahoo.
Yahoo's adjusted earnings per share of 32 cents beat the 27 cent average of analyst estimates from Thomson Reuters.
"There's a lot of work to be done," Mayer said on a conference call with investors and analysts. "Mobile will be key to our business."
There's a huge exodus of consumers from PCs spending more time on mobile devices that's causing companies ranging from Google, Facebook, Zynga and Yahoo to scramble to meet new advertising needs.
Shares of Yahoo have shot up 30% since Mayer took the role in July on optimism that the former Google executive can turn around the company's fortune as it battles for advertising.
Yahoo reported a 14% increase in search revenue in the quarter compared with last year. "Theoretically, there's a lot of growth potential if they can boost search," says IDC analyst Karsten Weide, a former Yahoo employee.
Google holds 66.7% of the search market, trailed by Microsoft, with 16.3%, Yahoo's 12.2%, Ask.com's 3% and AOL's 1.8%, according to market researcher ComScore.
Despite gains, Yahoo saw a 5% decline in display advertising revenue from a year ago. Yahoo has been dogged by a need for better tools to serve advertisers. "Agencies are increasingly looking for more automation — Yahoo is kind of tepid in that regard," Weide says. I "think that's one of the ways that Yahoo can get out of a crisis."
Yahoo is the No. 2-most visited U.S. Internet destination behind Google, according to ComScore. Ranking after Yahoo comes Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon.com and AOL.
Yahoo said Flickr usage is up 25% since the company refreshed the online photo service in the quarter.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Mayer (Yahoo) Looking for Mobile Growth
Article first appeared on CNBC -
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is confident that her company will be able to capitalize on the explosion in mobile communication, saying Yahoo will focus on strong partnerships with Apple, Google and Facebook.
"The nice thing at Yahoo is we have all of the content that people want on their phones. We have these daily habits. Whenever you're dealing with a daily habit, and really providing a lot of value around it,there's an opportunity," Mayer said at the World Economic Forum in Davos,Switzerland on Friday.
"There's really an opportunity for strong partnerships. That's what we'll be focused on. So we work with for example Apple and Google in terms of the operating system. In terms of the social network we have a strong partnership with Facebook," she said.
She played down mobile privacy concerns, saying it would always be "something users should consider."
"But I also think that privacy is always a trade-off. When you give up some of your personal information, you get some functionality in return. It's really about making those trade-offs in a very informed way," she said.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Yahoo Exceeds Sales & Profit Estimates
Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), the biggest U.S. Web portal, reported profit and sales that beat estimates as Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer benefited from advertising demand and cost cuts during her first three months on the job.
Third-quarter earnings, excluding some items, were 35 cents a share, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said in a statement. Sales, excluding revenue passed to partner sites, was $1.09 billion. Analysts on average had estimated profit of 26 cents on revenue of $1.08 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The fifth CEO in four years, Mayer is working to restore stability to management ranks and reverse three years of declining revenue as Web users ditched Yahoo in favor of competitors Google Inc. (GOOG) and Facebook Inc. (FB) Her turnaround effort is getting a boost from expense reductions as well as demand in the U.S., where the online advertising market is projected to grow 17 percent to $37.3 billion this year, according to researcher EMarketer Inc.
“The U.S. seems to be an area of strength, and Yahoo is bigger in the U.S.” than its competitors, said Herman Leung, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group who has a neutral rating on the shares.
Yahoo advanced in extended trading. The stock decreased less than 1 percent to $15.77 at the close in New York. The shares have dropped 2.2 percent this year.
Net income attributable to Yahoo rose to $3.16 billion, or $2.64 a share, from $293.3 million, or 23 cents, a year earlier. Income in the 2012 period included a net gain of $2.8 billion related to the sale of a stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Ad Revenue
Revenue for display advertising, minus sales passed to partner sites, was little changed at $451.6 million in the quarter, while search revenue increased 11 percent to $414.1 million.
In a departure from past practice, Yahoo didn’t provide an outlook for sales and operating income. Google, Mayer’s former employer, doesn’t issue earnings forecasts.
Mayer has kicked off her Yahoo comeback strategy by hiring several senior deputies. Earlier this month she named Henrique de Castro, previously Google’s vice president of global partner business solutions, as operating chief. Last month, she hired Ken Goldman away from network-security provider Fortinet Inc. to replace Tim Morse as chief financial officer. In August, Mayer added former American Eagle Outfitters Inc. executive Kathy Savitt to lead marketing efforts.
Yahoo’s share of display ads, including banners, will be 9.3 percent this year in the U.S., down from 11 percent last year, EMarketer estimates. Facebook’s portion of the market will be little changed at 14 percent, while Google’s stake will rise about 2 percentage points to 15 percent.
Mayer has taken steps to curtail operations outside the U.S. She completed Yahoo’s sale of half its stake in Chinese partner Alibaba in September, and last week said Yahoo will shut its South Korea business.
Yahoo said it will return $3 billion in proceeds from the Alibaba transaction to investors, after using $646 million for buybacks in recent months.
Third-quarter earnings, excluding some items, were 35 cents a share, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said in a statement. Sales, excluding revenue passed to partner sites, was $1.09 billion. Analysts on average had estimated profit of 26 cents on revenue of $1.08 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The fifth CEO in four years, Mayer is working to restore stability to management ranks and reverse three years of declining revenue as Web users ditched Yahoo in favor of competitors Google Inc. (GOOG) and Facebook Inc. (FB) Her turnaround effort is getting a boost from expense reductions as well as demand in the U.S., where the online advertising market is projected to grow 17 percent to $37.3 billion this year, according to researcher EMarketer Inc.
“The U.S. seems to be an area of strength, and Yahoo is bigger in the U.S.” than its competitors, said Herman Leung, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group who has a neutral rating on the shares.
Yahoo advanced in extended trading. The stock decreased less than 1 percent to $15.77 at the close in New York. The shares have dropped 2.2 percent this year.
Net income attributable to Yahoo rose to $3.16 billion, or $2.64 a share, from $293.3 million, or 23 cents, a year earlier. Income in the 2012 period included a net gain of $2.8 billion related to the sale of a stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Ad Revenue
Revenue for display advertising, minus sales passed to partner sites, was little changed at $451.6 million in the quarter, while search revenue increased 11 percent to $414.1 million.
In a departure from past practice, Yahoo didn’t provide an outlook for sales and operating income. Google, Mayer’s former employer, doesn’t issue earnings forecasts.
Mayer has kicked off her Yahoo comeback strategy by hiring several senior deputies. Earlier this month she named Henrique de Castro, previously Google’s vice president of global partner business solutions, as operating chief. Last month, she hired Ken Goldman away from network-security provider Fortinet Inc. to replace Tim Morse as chief financial officer. In August, Mayer added former American Eagle Outfitters Inc. executive Kathy Savitt to lead marketing efforts.
Yahoo’s share of display ads, including banners, will be 9.3 percent this year in the U.S., down from 11 percent last year, EMarketer estimates. Facebook’s portion of the market will be little changed at 14 percent, while Google’s stake will rise about 2 percentage points to 15 percent.
Mayer has taken steps to curtail operations outside the U.S. She completed Yahoo’s sale of half its stake in Chinese partner Alibaba in September, and last week said Yahoo will shut its South Korea business.
Yahoo said it will return $3 billion in proceeds from the Alibaba transaction to investors, after using $646 million for buybacks in recent months.
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