Former Google exec Tim Armstrong officially started his job as new AOL chairman and CEO today and sent out a hello-there memo to the troops.
According to Armstrong, he is poised to “bring back the magic of AOL.”
BoomTown loves magic tricks!
Armstrong is also promising to look closely at AOL over the next 100 days, which “will end in Dulles with an All-Hands meeting in mid-July.”
BoomTown is not going to go all servers and Solaris on you, as I am leaving the complicated details of the collapsed IBM bid for Sun Microsystems to Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski to sort out.
But I wonder if every failed tech merger with a squabblefest and a board in chaos will now be accused of blowing it, as most think Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang did in rejecting the $41 billion buyout offer from Microsoft.
And former Netscape CFO Peter Currie certainly has his hands full–he is on the Sun board and also just signed up to be the financial adviser to Facebook, after it abruptly parted ways with its former CFO.
Misguided managers, Luddite corporate raiders, a thuggish hostile takeover from a software giant, a revolving door of employees, a dash of Internet moolah and a tough-talking lady CEO to the rescue! Also some Googzilla action thrown in for good measure.
Of course, it has all the elements of a good story for Vanity Fair magazine!
Actually, Yahoo has all the elements of a good Mexican telenovela, but it’s only a magazine article that is apparently in the cards to chronicle the stumbles and bumbles of the Internet giant.
Oh dear, one endless, screwed-up global airline ride without Internet connectivity and when I finally manage to get online (looking right at the Spanish Steps in Rome–sweeeeet!), BoomTown finds that a new round o’ MicroHoo is apparently on again.
(In the immortal words of Michael Corleone–see video below–in the otherwise awful “Godfather: Part III”: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”)
Except, judging from exactly how loud the loudmouthed chatter from a trio of Microsoft execs has become about wanting to make a search deal with Yahoo, it’s actually not.
Today, Twitter’s investors are in rainy San Francisco for a board meeting of the hyped microblogging service, where they will presumably discuss revenue options that the start-up keeps promising are coming soon.
Right now, Twitter has no revenues.
Well, why wait? As with BoomTown’s 100-Day Yahoo Countdown, which was initiated here after former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said he was taking that many days to rethink Yahoo from top to bottom, it’s just about time for a Twitter Count-Up to come up with some ka-ching ideas.
Goodness gracious, make it stop!
You must know by now how much BoomTown loves internal Yahoo memos. But this is getting ridiculous.
It’s been like a flash flood after a long drought at Sunnyvale HQ today, as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz turns on the firehose of a whole lot of communicating.
“I know you guys have reorg fatigue,” wrote Bartz in the latest email to employees about the management reorganization finally announced this morning.
Also memo fatigue at All Things Digital HQ, if you can believe it.
About 10 days ago, BoomTown posted a piece titled, “With a King’s Ransom in Cash, Why Is There Still No Buying Spree in the Tech Space Yet?”
Noting the big cash hordes being held by a plethora of giant tech and Internet companies and their strong cash flows too, even in the midst of the economic meltdown–I wondered when the mergers and acquisitions would ever begin.
With no hooking up as yet–which feels about as annoying as the persistently unconsummated flirtation of Chuck and Blair on “Gossip Girl”–that just won’t do!
So, here are a few suggestions to get this party started.
Yahoo’s top mobile exec, Marco Boerries, is departing Yahoo, according to an internal email obtained by BoomTown that he sent to some staffers on Sunday.
I have also since confirmed Boerries’s departure with company insiders familiar with the situation.
In a post on Monday on a restructuring at Yahoo that new CEO Carol Bartz is likely to unveil to the company this week–sources tell me it is now set to be announced internally tomorrow–I noted that Boerries was one of the more likely high-level execs to go.
“With a very heavy heart I have to tell you, that I will be leaving Yahoo!,” Boerries wrote, attributing his departure in an email titled “Personal Update,” to issues related to his family.
On Friday, BoomTown first reported that new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is likely to be announcing a sweeping new management structure soon, which can only mean the possibility that some existing top execs are likely to be broomed out, even as some new ones are ushered in.
“This is going to be a full-scale peanut butter recall,” joked one exec, referring to the infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which was sent around the company several years ago by former exec Brad Garlinghouse. It laid bare the problems at Yahoo, most especially a decided lack of decision-making and lugubrious levels of managers.
Here is the sticky skinny.
Several sources inside and outside Yahoo told BoomTown that new Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz–whom some Yahoos have dubbed “Hurricane Carol”–could be ready to announce a major reorganization of its management structure as early as next week, most likely on Wednesday.
While that shift could be pushed out a week or two or rolled out in pieces, Yahoo execs are nervously awaiting the moves by Bartz to put a new regime in place in order to more easily power through a massive reset of the troubled company.
While many top execs are very much in the dark about what Bartz will do, most expect her to severely roll back a variety of previous reorganizations in favor of a more accountable C-level-style set-up, with execs like a COO, CTO and a new, more powerful CMO (who will also head PR), all reporting to her.
How much does BoomTown love the Friday weekly memos that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz sends out to the troops?
Very, very much since they are so full of significant news–a slowdown of Yahoo’s homepage redesign and a major limiting of the global rollout of its new advertising platform, APT, to name a few.
But they also have a weird but compelling kind of energy that nearly jumps off the page, giving clear insight into how Bartz thinks and operates.
Like the Energizer Bunny, I would say.
So, here are two memos Bartz sent out to Yahoo staff: one from today and one from last week on Feb. 13, both of which discuss just how busy she is keeping herself.
Late last night, Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat posted an update on the ongoing redesign of the Internet giant’s homepage, a massive undertaking given that 300 million people visit it each month.
Bhat, who is SVP of Yahoo’s Front Doors, Communities and Network Services, said the company was completing the first phase of its “bucket testing” and collecting feedback, but that, “Bottom line is we’re getting closer to the final design, but we’re not quite there yet.”
Indeed not, according to several sources at Yahoo, who said that the massive underhaul of the homepage has been a much more complex, much dicier effort and was taking a lot longer than expected to launch.
And, more importantly, new CEO Carol Bartz is also giving it the once-over.
Today, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has convened a two-day offsite of its managers, to bring them all together to talk about the company.
Aside from a colorful all-hands meeting she has held with the whole company, the gathering is Bartz’s first major one of its top execs, sources said, and is being held on Yahoo’s campus in Sunnyvale.
Sources said they believe Bartz has prepared an organizational structure that she will unveil soon, but has not told Yahoo’s senior staff what will be shifted, what will be consolidated and what will perhaps be cut.
My favorite anecdote collected so far about new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is the one in which she called together two separate groups of execs who were direct reports of former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker.
Bartz, several sources recounted, went around the table and asked them one by one what they actually did, making various outspoken comments along the way about management.
Stories like this about Bartz’s take-charge style have been ricocheting through Yahoo as she navigates the troubled company to come up with a plan to revive it.
But of all the various things many employees I have talked to hope she does first is dump the “matrix” organizational structure that many at Yahoo have grown to despise.
Dear Mark Cuban:
Apparently, Steve Wozniak, the ever-wackier-as-the-years-go-by co-founder of Apple, is taking up your geek banner on “Dancing With the Stars” and is a contestant on the eighth outing for the popular celebrity hoofing show on ABC.
He is among 13 “stars” who will start up their samba-and-tango death match on March 9.
Can Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang be far behind?
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.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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