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Thursday, July 2, 2009

Yahoo Product Head and CTO Ari Balogh Speaks!

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In BoomTown’s bold quest to annoyingly stick a Flip digital video camera in the face of every Yahoo senior exec, this week I worked the last nerve of its CTO and EVP of Products, Aristotle “Ari” Balogh.

Actually, the 45-year-old Balogh is a very calm and pleasant man, especially considering the huge responsibility that has been foisted on him by CEO Carol Bartz to rejigger how Yahoo makes its products and services and deploy its technology in a more efficient, centralized and, most of all, innovative manner.

To explain all this, Balogh sat down with me twice–he is clearly a glutton for punishment–to talk about where Yahoo stood as it sought to dig itself out of its long slump and reemerge as the potent Internet force it once was.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One: Yahoo Management and Staff Set on Shuffle Again

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Yes, more layoffs are indeed coming to Yahoo, sources confirmed to BoomTown, but perhaps even more than have been reported.

But that’s not all, as even more top-level managers are either leaving or being moved around the ever-changing organizational structure at Yahoo.

That includes a longtime top sales operations exec, Dan Foehner, who is about to start at Facebook next week, as well as others contemplating leaving, on their way out or being reshuffled.

In other words, business as usual at the tumultuous company, whose nickname should be “Reorg.”

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Thursday, March 26, 2009

More Reorging for AOL’s Ad Unit, Platform-A: The Latest Memo

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The undoing of previous management of AOL continues at the Time Warner online unit with even more reorganization of its Platform-A advertising unit.

Sources said the changes are part of a simplifying of the division, one of three at AOL (the others are communications and content).

Platform-A head Greg Coleman penned a memo about the changes, which went out to staff this morning and is below in its entirety.

Headline: Execs moving in and out of musical chairs and fewer cooks in the kitchen, or “more people on the street selling.”

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

New Yahoo Management Structure: The Entire Memo

Along with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s external email earlier today, the company also outlined the new management structure in another memo.

It’s pretty much what BoomTown has been reporting all week. Top-down simplification, which is another word for: Carol rules over Yahoo.

CTO Ari Balogh gets a lot of stuff as new head of products, and so does U.S. head Hilary Schneider, including mobile, as EVP of North American Region. Bot report to Bartz.

Here’s the entire memo of Yahoo’s new organization.

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Liveblogging the Facebook Our-ToS-Is-Your-ToS Press Conference

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BoomTown is impatiently cooling heels waiting for a press conference to begin about “new steps Facebook is taking to improve user understanding and ownership of the Facebook terms of service and, more generally, the policies of the Facebook service.”

The Yahoo reorg finally announced this morning is positively thrilling in comparison! It’s like being at the Constitutional Convention, except for geeks.

But we’re liveblogging it anyway!

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Bartz Blogs Reorg!: The Entire Memo to Yahoo Employees

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz declared reorg today on the company’s corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal.
Here is her entire memo:
Getting our house in order
Posted February 26th, 2009 at 9:16 am by Carol Bartz, CEO
A month and a half in the saddle and today I have the perfect excuse to get blogging.
I’ve been on a whirlwind tour for [...]

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Friday, February 20, 2009

“Hurricane Carol” Bartz Could Announce a Major Yahoo Management Reorg Next Week

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.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Here’s the Official Yahoo Reorg Release! (Like BoomTown Said!)

Here is the official Yahoo release about its much-anticipated reorganization. It is almost exactly what BoomTown reported previously (Dear Yahoo PR, please send me my usual fee!), except for more details on the specifics of its tech reorg. And, I tried desperately to ignore the annoying “starting point” phrase, while Yahoo did not, of course!

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More on Yahoo’s Reorg: Dietzen Is Garlinghouse Replacement

As BoomTown reported last night, the Yahoo reorganization will be unveiled later this morning, with the slate of execs that this column outlined last week in its gory–oops, I mean, glorious–detail.

Sources said a more substantial public announcement has been pushed by Yahoo’s board–apparently, an internal email to employees was considered too–to show Yahoo’s new team and that the company still has a strong bench, despite a lot of exec departures of late.

Some more news: Yahoo will name Scott Dietzen to take over the job of SVP Brad Garlinghouse, running all communications and community properties and products under Patel.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Yahoo Reorg Will Be Announced Thursday

As expected, Yahoo will announce its reorg tomorrow morning, along the same lines as BoomTown outlined in detail last week.

The only issue that arose was over the appointment of Ash Patel to head the new Global Products group. His appointment was greeted with internal dissent, but Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was said to have insisted that Patel remain on as planned.

Last week, I outlined the sweeping internal changes at Yahoo, which will again dramatically change the structure of management.

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Get Ready for the Yahoo Reorg: Whither Yang?

“Where’s Jerry here? He is like a ghost,” said a Yahoo exec to me last week.

The exec was referring to the plans for a major overhaul of the management structure of the troubled Internet company–the dreaded and inevitable reorg that BoomTown wrote about in detail last week that is expected to be announced this week.

Many execs have told BoomTown that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has been strangely absent from the communications around the reorg, which has been driven largely by President Sue Decker.

Well, ghosts aren’t real, but fear and uncertainty clearly are at Yahoo these days.

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About Kara

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 »

Ethics Statement

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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