Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: YHOO

Marissa Mayer’s Minnesota Connections

July 19, 2012 / / 0 Comments

MarissaMayerUnless you were totally off the grid in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area for the past few days, you surely know by now that Yahoo! has named former Google exec Marissa Mayer as its new CEO.
 
But what you may not know is that two of our fellow MInnesota techies have ties to her, going back years — they're both friends of mine, and both have been startup clients of my consulting business.

One is Lief Larson (right), founder of Workface Inc., a venture-backed firm doing cool LiefLarson things to humanize business on the web.
 The other is Joe Sriver, who in 2008 founded the highly successful mobile app development firm DoApp Inc. (where, in addition to serving as an advisor, I was interim VP of marketing for a time). 

Lief went all through school with Marissa in Wausau, Wisconsin, where both of them showed an early interest in programming. He gave me this reaction to the news: 

"Yahoo! is ripe for reinvention, and I think Marissa is just the woman for the job. The one piece of news that came as a bit of a surprise is that she's pregnant and will be taking maternity leave in October, just three months after taking the helm.  I look forward to seeing what the next several months will hold for Yahoo!"

Joe's connection to Marissa came later — he was hired by her in 2001 as Google employee #198. (She was Google employee #20, its first female engineer.)  Joe was Google's first UI designer and worked for Marissa for some years, directly involved in such early products as AdSense and AdWords.  Here's what Joe had to say when I asked for his reaction to Marissa's new role: 

JoeSriver

"I was surprised by the announcement, as it sounds many others were. A pleasant surprise, that is. I feel she's the best person in the Valley to bring Yahoo back — the best pick Yahoo could make. She has a great technical background, superb at driving products, and has a great marketing sense. She's not an outsider, she knows the space well…exactly what Yahoo needs at the top. She will create a buzz around Yahoo. The analysts will be watching her moves closely, but she's prepared."

Of course, the tech community is almost universally supportive of this decision by the Yahoo! board — why wouldn't they like the choice of a technology exec to lead the turnaround?  Anything but an exec from the screwed-up media industry, huh?

I'm with Lief and Joe — I think Marissa is bound to bring some mojo back to $YHOO!

 

Blogging Less, Twittering More…Plus YHOO & GOOG Are Up to Something

April 17, 2008 / / 0 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed, my blog posts here are fewer and farther between these days, just because I’m so damn busy. (I’ll tell you why soon.) But thank god somebody invented microblogging(!), because it sure is easier and faster. I’m sure many of you have seen the accompanying cartoon strip. Twittertwittertwitter_2

But it’s true — Twitter has definitely allowed me, with my crazy schedule, to keep putting forth some of my observations and perspectives on the world around me. I’m grateful for that.

Latest case in point: I Twittered earlier today about how Yahoo’s already reporting positive results from its test with Google to outsource search to the latter. Well, it’s not really the company directly reporting that — rather, it’s the proverbial "people familiar with the matter," according to the WSJ. (But that would most likely be Yahoo or Google employees who asked the reporter not to identify them.)  A Citigroup Global Markets analyst even said this deal could increase Yahoo’s cash flow a whopping $1 billion per year.

Some would say this latest "leak" is all about Yahoo trying to get a better price per share from Microsoft. I don’t agree. Google has more to do than help Yahoo shareholders get another buck or two. I think Yahoo very seriously wants to avoid the Microsoft deal and is working overtime to find a better alternative.  And Google obviously has the incentive to help them do that. I don’t think the latest Yahoo move is just posturing at all. As the Journal says, the only other tie-up that seems to be possible right now is a deal with Time Warner’s AOL, wherein the latter would become a 20% owner of Yahoo. However, the matter of who will win Yahoo seems far from over to me yet. I like to think that News Corp. hasn’t really played its ultimate hand, for example. And, of course, being that they now own the WSJ, I don’t find it surprising that the writer of today’s article didn’t quote anyone on that possibility.

Yahoo Eats Blue Lithium

September 4, 2007 / / 0 Comments

The advertising M&A game just keeps going and going…. MarketWatch reported earlier this evening that Yahoo will buy ad network BlueLithium for $300 million in cash. Yahooeatsbluelithium Blue Lithium, as I reported in my blog post How the Top Ad Networks Rank on August 18, is currently the fifth largest ad network. A few minutes ago, this Red Herring article went up, noting that Blue Lithium was founded in January 2004 and was backed by Walden Venture Capital and 3i. The article went on to state:

BlueLithium is also known for its behavioral targeting, which has become the must-have for online marketers. Behavioral targeting allows marketers to target users based on the sites they’ve visited, as well as demographic and geographic characteristics. Yahoo recently launched SmartAds, a nascent effort in this area.

YHOO was up 5.46% today, closing at 23.97. In after hours trading, it was up another 0.63% to 24.12 as of about 8:00 pm Eastern.

© 2024 Graeme Thickins on Tech

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑