On Tuesday night, BoomTown reported from the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California dinner honoring Facebook.
And, as usual, I was video-harassing Greylock Partner’s David Sze and James Slavet about the acquisition of Yahoo (YHOO) Network division head Jeff Weiner into the firm as an executive in residence.
I prodded: “This is the pair that sucked [...]
Oh, BoomTown had to say it, didn’t I?
But, as SVP Brad Garlinghouse’s fate is still uncertain at Yahoo, his edge-of-your-seat situation is the latest wrenching dramatic shift at a company that can’t seem to stop producing them.
While reports say he has quit, Garlinghouse actually has not done that yet and will not likely make a definitive move to leave for a week, unlike fellow Yahoo SVPs Qi Lu and Vish Makhijani, who have tendered their resignations this week.
As BoomTown reported earlier today, well-regarded top Yahoo techie Qi Lu will be leaving, in a move to be announced today or tomorrow by the troubled Internet company.
One Yahoo insider, who characterized Lu as a “rock star” and highly regarded, said the departure was a “blow” that will be devastating to the engineering organization at Yahoo.
It also looks as though the departure of Search SVP Vish Makhijani will also be announced today or tomorrow, although the fate of Brad Garlinghouse, the SVP who heads communications and communities, is still undetermined but precarious.
My special BoomTown Yahoo tip inbox is filling up fast this week from Yahoo employees–who, by the way, seem to like to use Gmail as their secret one–all buzzing about the next shoe to drop.
That clodhopper would be, of course, which major exec will leave the troubled Internet company, all due to a major reorg that is about the hit the company within the next weeks.
After the recent departure of Network division EVP Jeff Weiner and Chief Data Officer Usama Fayyad–along with the flashier exit of Flickr’s Co-Founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake–several sources tell BoomTown that Search and Advertising Technology group EVP Qi Lu is the next on his way out too.
BoomTown was press-ganged into attending an afternoon showing of “Kung Fu Panda” with a pair of six-year-olds (who afterwards hiii-yaaa-kicked every trash can in sight), or I would have posted Yahoo President Sue Decker’s letter to the troops she sent out today about the departure of Network division head Jeff Weiner earlier.
Actually, the movie about a misfit who conquers despite the odds would make a nice metaphor for Yahoo these days, especially if the company could be motivated to excellence simply by a desire for tasty dumplings.
Accel Partners and Greylock Partners will officially announce today that Yahoo Network head Jeff Weiner will become an executive in residence at both Silicon Valley venture capital firms.
That obviously means Weiner is officially out at Yahoo too.
Of course, loyal readers of BoomTown would have known about this development last week, when this column broke the news of Weiner’s departure from Yahoo, where he was one of its top execs, in charge of all consumer-facing products at the company.
Despite the noise around the Yahoo/Google deal and the end of the Microsoft talks, attrition among Yahoo’s top executive ranks continues. Another executive departure will be announced today at 2 p.m. PDT. Dr. Usama Fayyad, Yahoo’s chief data officer, is leaving the company.
Jeff Weiner, as BoomTown reported in a story broken by BoomTown Tuesday and also yesterday, will be leaving Yahoo to become an entrepreneur in residence at both Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.
But, despite a lot of speculation, sources at the company said that Weiner will not likely be replaced as Network division head by one of his four direct reports.
Instead, sources at the company think much of Weiner’s organization could be headed by Hilary Schneider, who is EVP Global Partner Solutions, in order to better align Yahoo’s ad revenue-producing units with its products, software, search and services side.
Yesterday, writing about executive stress at Yahoo, BoomTown posted about the swirling speculation around the fate of Jeff Weiner, the Network division EVP, who many at Yahoo think will soon be headed out the door after his recent paternity leave of four weeks.
Now, several sources in Silicon Valley’s voluble venture community confirm the high-ranking exec has been offered and seems likely to accept a spot splitting his time as an executive in residence at two firms–Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.
Yahoo’s board has been meeting today and, doubtlessly, its directors had a lot to talk about (more on that later!).
Of course, there’s the obvious topic of having to figure out how best to deal with the noisy stylings of billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who is waging a proxy war on Yahoo and calling for new management at the top.
But perhaps what the board should be focused on is the old management at Yahoo, especially in the levels just below the top, who have been operating the company under a lot of stress for far too long.
Recently, BoomTown, along with a passel of press, was invited to an outreach dinner, set to be held on June 9 at a San Francisco venue, with some top Yahoo execs.
This was somewhat of a big deal, given the typically cave-dwelling mentality of the company in recent days, due to the drama of the Microsoft takeover bid that has jacked Yahoo’s typically skittish approach to press relations up to dangerously shy levels.
Then the dinner was canceled last week suddenly, with organizers blaming scheduling issues.
That move set tongues wagging at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale HQ, of course, and sources inside the company began to pepper BoomTown with two key theories.
Here’s a few video clips of Yahoo’s Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of its Network division, onstage at paidContent’s Economics of Social Media conference on Tuesday.
In the first, he egregiously ignores BoomTown’s subtle (as a hammer!) way of asking about the Microsoft (MSFT) situation.
In the second, Weiner talks about Yahoo’s (YHOO) social-networking strategy (translation: this [...]
Yesterday, I traveled to Los Angeles for paidContent’s second Economics of Social Media conference, which opened last night and is being held all day today at the Skirball Cultural Center.
This morning, I am interviewing Steve Wadsworth, who helms Walt Disney’s (DIS) Internet businesses.
And after sating myself with as much Club Penguin info as possible, I [...]
One of BoomTown’s favorite songs in the whole wide world is “Happy Talk” from the classic musical “South Pacific,” with the great lyrics: “You got to have a dream/If you don’t have a dream/How you gonna have a dream come true?”
For Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, he could use some dreaming just about now, rather than the current night sweats he is likely getting from dealing with Yahoo, which has again rejected the software giant’s unsolicited bid to take over the troubled Internet icon.
One source close to the companies told me yesterday that Yahoo has actually been speaking with Microsoft behind the scenes, despite a spate of are-they-or-aren’t-they reports of talks and non-talks.
But, apparently, the most recent whispered words this week are terse and the same: Thanks, but no thanks.
How glad BoomTown was to finally see Jerry Yang up close and personal, after our valiant but futile efforts to get near the Yahoo co-founder and CEO in 2007.
No, we’re not stalking him in a restraining-order kind of way, although I did stake a claim to a front row seat in the intimate theater at the Las Vegas Hilton for his keynote this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show, where Yang couldn’t help but see me.
Like he cared!
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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