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Friday, April 24, 2009

Yahoo Hires Adobe Vet Lamkin to Run Communications and Communities Unit as Dietzen Moves to Strategy Post

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More musical chairs at Yahoo, which BoomTown predicted recently, as top execs at the company move in and out of jobs, and new ones from the outside move in.

Perhaps the most important change to occur is the replacement this week of SVP Scott Dietzen–who had been in charge of all communications and communities products at Yahoo–by former Adobe Systems exec Bryan Lamkin, several sources said.

And there’s even more…

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Zimbra Founder Satish Dharmaraj to Depart Yahoo

Satish Dharmaraj–the founder of open-source email start-up Zimbra, which has been at the heart of significant new changes to Yahoo’s key communications services–will be leaving the company.

Yahoo paid $350 million for Zimbra in the fall of 2007.

And even though he had stepped back from leadership in the communications arena at Yahoo, the departure of an innovative entrepreneur like Dharmaraj–although typical when big companies buy start-ups–is never a good thing, given that it’s more important than ever to keep innovative leaders at Yahoo.

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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Yahoo’s Scott Dietzen Speaks About Its New Online Calendar (Which Is About a Decade Late!)

In its ongoing renovation of its offerings–last month it began rolling out a new homepage–Yahoo is unveiling a new online calendar, with a passel of new bells and whistles, to a small group of users worldwide.

Overall, it is a good-looking, simple and clean design–which will eventually be extended to all of Yahoo’s 8.1 million calendar users worldwide.

And, incredibly, although Yahoo’s is the top online calendar in the world, it has been 10 years since the Internet giant updated it.

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Friday, September 12, 2008

Yahoo Execs “Open” Up to BoomTown Video in a Blabfest!

Yesterday, Yahoo trotted out a range of top execs who were unusually loquacious at its “open house,” where the company made a valiant effort to explain an aggressive strategy to open up its platform and products.

So here are video interviews I did with a range of Yahoo’s top execs, including Audience Product Division EVP Ash Patel, Yahoo Media Group head Scott Moore, social media guru Marc Davis, Yahoo! Mail kingpin Scott Dietzen,, Connected Life EVP Marco Boerries and PR minion Brad Williams.

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Friday, June 27, 2008

A Garlinghouse Memorial: BoomTown Decodes the Infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto”

Now that he’s officially–well, Yahoo has not said so, but it is so–leaving the company this later summer, what say we blame Brad Garlinghouse for all the woes of Yahoo!

After all, Garlinghouse’s infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto” was the key Ur-moment that one could point to as the one in which the curtains were pulled back at the troubled Internet company to reveal, well, a very sticky mess.

The 2006 internal document, penned by the Yahoo senior vice president, essentially unfairly impugned delicious peanut butter by using it as a metaphor for Yahoo spreading its resources too thinly.

So, as a memorial to the Garlinghouse era, BoomTown decodes the manifesto.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

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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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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