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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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Monday, April 13, 2009

Bartz of 100 Days: Tough Talk to Microsoft Talks

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Here’s an interesting irony–Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz will have her 99th day in office on the very one that the Internet giant will announce its first-quarter earnings: April 21, 2009 at 2 p.m. PST.

Technically, it will mean that she has been running Yahoo for 100 days, a time when most administrations get their first evaluation.

Thus, if it’s good enough for President Obama, it’s good enough for Bartz!

While most expect the results for the quarter to be weak, due to the econalypse, the overall verdict from BoomTown’s needling of Yahoos to give me info on their new leader recently: Love, love, love Bartz’s innate decisiveness, and wanting more of the same.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Ellis Gets Sales Promotion at AOL’s Platform-A

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More moving of the chairs at AOL’s Platform-A.

The Time Warner online unit will announce today that Mark Ellis has been promoted to EVP of sales at the advertising division.

He will lead Platform-A’s digital ad sales, sources said, including premium efforts at AOL’s MediaGlow content unit and for its third-party ad network.

It is all part of extensive management reorganization being done by Platform-A President Greg Coleman, as new CEO and Chairman Tim Armstrong started yesterday in his new job of reviving AOL.

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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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Monday, March 2, 2009

Yahoo Tries to Bake Up Some Sales Excitement in the Desert

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I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name/It felt good to be out of the rain/In the desert you can remember your name/’cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.

Actually, for Yahoo, which is holding its big annual meeting of the company’s advertising sales staff in Indian Wells, Calif., maybe just a little pain since BoomTown is only a scant few miles away, as the crow flies, attending the Demo09 conference in Palm Desert.

The Yahoofest will include an appearance by its energetic new CEO, Carol Bartz.

Don’t worry, Yahoo PR, I will not crash the proceedings or be bribing the bartenders to get more leaks. But you Yahoos should still be careful with the wine in the hot tub anyway–as Carol says, loose lips sink ships!

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

One Last Yahoo Reorg Missive: Bartz Tells Employees What She Already Said. Again.

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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.

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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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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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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

More on Yahoo Reorg in Process: Ari and Hilary Rule, but Who Is Joel Jones?

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“It’s being changed every minute,” joked one Yahoo source about the reorg now in process at Yahoo, which is being shepherded by new CEO Carol Bartz.

Actually, it’s kind of true, as execs at the troubled Web company are being moved around the board like chess pieces, while others players are added.

According to numerous sources, mostly in Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif. HQ, things are still in flux and not completely settled as yet.

But one thing is clear: Layers are being collapsed quickly, as fewer people are in charge of more, with all roads leading to Bartz.

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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

How It Feels to Be Fired Carol Bartz-Style: “Amazing”

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A few weeks ago, BoomTown got a rather compelling email from Marion Vermazen, who once worked at Sun Microsystems with new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz–and where Bartz actually fired Vermazen.

Her take on the experience?

“Amazing,” said Vermazen, given how Bartz handled it herself–driving 30 minutes to Vermazen’s office–in a very straightforward way.

In other words, a kinder, classier Donald Trump “Apprentice” style, but without the cameras and bad hair.

It’s instructive now, given that Bartz is likely to have to give several big Yahoo execs the heave-ho in the days ahead as she unveils her new management structure soon.

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Monday, February 23, 2009

The Yahoo Management Structure: Who Is In and Who Is Out?

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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.

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Sunday, February 22, 2009

Yahoo Media Unit to Get a Reorg Too!

Besides the more massive management reorganization that new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz could announce this week, as BoomTown reported on Friday, the Internet company’s powerful media arm might also see a drastic shift in management structure even sooner.

According to several sources inside the company, U.S. Audience SVP Jeff Dossett has been working on the changes for a while, part of an overall change in how Yahoo makes and delivers content.

Under a plan being considered, the media unit will be split into three parts: vertical programming, network programming and search monetization.

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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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Carol Bartz Friday Memos: Chick Flicks, the Need for Speed and WOW! (Also, Here Comes the Reorg!)

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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.

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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Bartz Holds First Exec Offsite, as the Yahoos Turn (and Twist in the Wind)!

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.

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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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