AllThingsD » AOL

AOL Has Mulled Launching "Bling Thing," a New Subscription Commerce Business

Jason Del Rey — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:15:22 +0000

Is there room for another subscription commerce business among the Birchboxes and Dollar Shave Clubs of the world? AOL apparently has been weighing that very question.

The New York Internet giant, which has seen much change under CEO Tim Armstrong, has been working for at least several months on a new subscription commerce business that it is calling “Bling Thing,” according to two sources familiar with the plans, as well as a trademark application AOL has filed.

Whether AOL will bring this idea to the public seems to still be an open question inside the company, though. One source close to AOL said the idea has been shelved indefinitely as the company looks to focus on fewer brands within its content and product portfolio, rather than adding to it.

But a look at a trademark application for Bling Thing hints at what AOL has been working on: A business that would offer “subscriptions to receive boxes filled with assorted items in the fields of consumer products and consumer services.”

It’s not clear what exactly those products and services would be. Beauty products such as what Birchbox offers, for example, or something altogether different?

What is clear is that the move would at least partly be intended to give AOL another business line outside of advertising to help it diversify away from the shrinking Internet service business, which, as Peter Kafka wrote earlier this month, still accounts for all of the company’s profits.

It is also not certain what AOL is going for with the name, other than that Armstrong seems to have a thing for 1990s hip-hop references, if a postponed AOL TV commercial he helped create is any indication.

Name aside, it’s possible that Bling Thing could pan out to be a nice incentive for advertisers: Advertise with us, AOL’s pitch could go, and get your product or service preferred placement in our subscription packages.

That’s assuming that AOL could get people to sign up for the service. One way to do this would be to market the business to current AOL subscribers.

There had been some talk about Jon Brod possibly running the business, according to one source, but he will be taking over AOL Ventures following his recent resignation as CEO of AOL’s local content network Patch.

An AOL spokesman declined to comment.

AOL's Patch Gets New CEO, as Just Under Three Percent of Staff Is Laid Off in Consolidation (Memo)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:46:46 +0000

Changes at AOL’s local content site, Patch: CEO Jon Brod will step down and is being replaced by COO and President Steve Kalin, according to an internal memo the New York Internet company sent to the division’s employees today.

As part of the move, Brod will be going back to run AOL Ventures, in a job where he began at the company.

In addition, sources said a little less than three percent of the 1,400-employee Patch staff will be laid off. The memo notes that downsizing, without giving the numbers, which includes consolidation of several parts of Patch by streamlining its regional structure from 20 to nine teams.

According to the memo, the layoffs are to “make Patch profitable in 2013 and a commitment to continue to improve our business model.”

AOL confirmed the contents of the memo, saying in a statement, “Patch is streamlining its regional editorial structure across the country by moving from 20 to nine teams. We are implementing this team approach based on the success of our field tests earlier this year. The team approach allows for flexibility based on the unique needs of each community and the strengths of our editors. We are not reducing our number of sites or our coverage area as a result of this change. Making these important changes came with the difficult decision to eliminate some positions. We recognize these changes are painful for individuals and for our organization — and we are committed to handling the people impacted with care and sensitivity.”

Patch is growing, according to comScore. In April, traffic was up 26 percent since last year to 13 million unique monthly visitors, who are consuming about 1.3 million pieces of content that are now being served up per month.

Still, Patch has attracted a level of investor pressure and criticism, even as AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has stuck strongly with the hyperlocal content effort and invested heavily in growing out a network of sites across the country aimed at neighborhood news and events.

But Armstrong signaled changes when he was queried about Patch during AOL’s recent quarterly call: “What you’re going to see as we approach Q4 is us trying to get to the finish line of profitability, and we will use all means possible to get there.”

Apparently, Armstrong means what he says and says what he means.

Here’s the memo:

Patchers,

Since the day Jon, Warren, and I founded Patch, we have had one mission in mind — improve the lives of people in local communities by 25 percent. Patch has become an important brand in the hundreds of towns we serve, and it is a staple of our communities. With the average Patch just over two years old, we are well on the way toward our goal of improving peoples’ lives and building a sustainable business in the process.

Over the past year, Patch has made an enormous impact in our communities. The coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, the lifeline that Patch provided residents during the Sandy Hook school shootings and Superstorm Sandy, and the exclusive Sanford-Colbert Busch debate in South Carolina stand out as powerful examples. The new Patch platform that is rolling out now will only increase Patch’s ability to instantly improve communities.

As we have made a commitment to improve our Patch towns and communities, we made a similar commitment to make Patch profitable in 2013 and a commitment to continue to improve our business model. Just as we have rolled out new products and services to Patch, we are announcing today the rollout of the recently tested town structures, which will help us serve communities in a more local way and move Patch meaningfully toward profitability.

The changes have two main goals:

1. Improve and increase our hyper-local programming and deepen our user engagement through the Patch 2.0 platform; and
2. Implement a structure that unlocks the path to profitability.

To accomplish these goals we are taking the following steps, effective immediately:

We are combining the East, Central and West editorial zones to create a simpler structure that will enable faster decision-making and a more coordinated editorial effort across Patch. Anthony Duignan-Cabrera has been promoted to VP, Editorial Director, overseeing day-to-day editorial field operations, and will continue to report into Rachel in her role as Chief Content Officer.

We are streamlining our regional editorial structure across the country by moving from 20 to nine teams. We are not reducing our number of sites or our coverage area as a result of this change.

We are promoting Katie O’Connor to Director of Editorial Operations and Content Strategy. In this role, she will work with our editorial teams to help create new content and programming.

We are implementing a “team approach” for our sites, based on the success of our field tests earlier this year. This approach allows for flexibility based on the unique needs of each community and the strengths of editors.

Jon and I have decided to elevate Steve Kalin to the CEO position at Patch. Steve has done a fantastic job since he began at Patch in December as President and COO. Jon and I hired Steve with the thought that his extensive background in scaled, local platforms would eventually allow him to run Patch on a day-to-day basis.

Jon has led Patch since it was just an idea and helped scale it into one of the most significant brands in local communities in the U.S. Under his guidance, Patch has gained tens of millions of users and more than ten thousand advertisers; and it has covered millions of local stories. Going forward, Jon will return to AOL Ventures full-time and lead our push into several areas we have identified as significant future growth opportunities for AOL.

The changes we are making at Patch, however, come with the difficult decision to eliminate some positions. These employees have contributed greatly to Patch’s business with passion and dedication. We sincerely thank them for all they have done to make Patch what it is today. Their impact will always be felt here. We wish all affected employees continued success. They are truly Patchers for life.

This is an important time for Patch. We have many great opportunities in front of us, and we continue to make decisions to ensure Patch’s success. AOL’s Board of Directors and I remain firmly supportive of Patch and our mission. Together we are building a company for the long term, one that can grow and thrive — now and far into the future.

We will be having team calls today and a Patch All-Company call this afternoon at 6pm ET, to discuss these changes in more detail. I encourage you to join these calls. Keep an eye out for invitations to follow.

I want to thank you for your continued commitment to Patch and to serving your communities, and for staying focused on our goals. Patch is one of the fastest growing sites and brands on the Internet. We have the right plan, we have a great team, and I’m confident we can win together.

Keep going — TA

AOL's Earnings Are Light, but Revenue and Ad Sales Are on Track

Peter Kafka — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:27:07 +0000

This looks like a pretty good performance from AOL: Tim Armstrong’s Internet company came in a couple pennies light on earnings in its Q1, but hit its revenue marks.

As important: Its underlying numbers look pretty good.

AOL earned 32 cents a share on revenue of $538 million; the Street was looking for 34 cents and $534 million.

We’ll see what investors make of that, but I assume they’ll be heartened by the fact that AOL ad sales are up 9 percent across the board, and that domestic display ads, a bugaboo for Armstrong in the past, are up 6 percent.

(Update: AOL points out that Firstcall had its earnings pegged at 32 cents, which would mean its numbers were in line; I’ve also seen estimates that pegged earnings above 35 cents. There’s a whole lot less science to this than people like to let on. In any case, the Street doesn’t like something about this quarter, and has pushed AOL shares down 10 percent this morning.)

Here’s AOL’s description of that jump: “Domestic display revenue growth reflects an increase in AOL Properties impressions sold, including video and mobile inventory, and improved reserved pricing related to the sales of video and other premium formats.”

AOL still — still! — makes all of its profits from its subscription business, which is both mind-boggling and not news. That unit threw off $146 million in operating income last quarter. The company’s “brand” business — that is, its ad business — lost $4.9 million.

That’s better than the $16.8 million it lost a year ago. AOL said it would have been better, but that it has been plowing money into Patch, its controversial local play, as well as “editorial and engineering staff at our core brands and in our sales force domestically and internationally.”

A Year Later, What Google Drive Means for Startups

Joseph Walla — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:30:45 +0000

Startup image copyright white_board

A year ago, we were a launch partner when Google unveiled Drive. Much has been made of what this means for Google or the cloud storage wars, but there’s been an even bigger impact for startups targeting prosumers and SMB: The opportunity for profound growth using platforms like Drive as a catalyst.

In the early days of software, you had limited distribution opportunities. You might sell your software in boxes, distribute millions of free CDs, spend heavily on advertising or do a deal with a larger partner for distribution. With the introduction of the SAAS model, the hard costs were eliminated, but the advertising spend or sales team were still a must. Recently, the growth and openness of cloud storage platforms like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Evernote and Skydrive have changed the distribution model for some startups significantly.

At HelloFax and HelloSign, we’ve seen a lot of growth from our platform partners. We don’t release our internal numbers, but there are some public numbers we can talk about. Since Drive launched last year, HelloFax has had over 270,000 installs with Google Drive. HelloSign, which launched in August, has had over 50,000. Our new integration, HelloSign for Gmail, which launched in January, has had almost 30,000. That’s 350,000 installs worth of Google integrations. And we didn’t spend a single cent to acquire them.

The fundamental necessity for each startup is growth. Growth changes your company from irrelevant to relevant. Paul Graham wrote an essay, “Startups = Growth,” that every founder should read.

Building on platforms is one of your greatest opportunities for growth. Historically, a lot of companies have leveraged platforms to become great companies. Not all startups have platforms that are a good fit, but if you can find the right one, it can be a game-changer. The thesis for integrating is simple. Platforms provide an audience, you provide value. The better the value, the more potential for growth.

Here are four examples worth thinking about:

Airbnb grew on Craigslist. Airbnb added significant value to the renting experience on Craigslist. Because short-term rentals are only one of the many classifieds on the site, Craigslist provided a generic experience. Airbnb improved it with pictures, maps, ratings and more.
Google grew on AOL and Yahoo. Google was a great company. However, Yahoo and AOL were the big Internet hubs at the time and were capable of sending massive amounts of traffic. Since the platforms didn’t see value in search, they were happy to send that traffic to Google.
PayPal grew on eBay. EBay was one of the few places on the Internet with a high concentration of purchases. EBay didn’t provide payments in the early days, which made it difficult for sellers to collect money. PayPal provided that experience.
Dropbox and Box see significant growth on mobile. IOS devices don’t have a file system. Dropbox and Box didn’t have to be better than the current file system, they just had to be better than no file system.

The alternative to growing via a distribution platform is to go after the growth channels that everyone is pursuing. For many startups, search engine marketing, pay per click marketing, media buys and a large sales team can produce results, but it’s difficult to produce explosive growth with these methods. They’re helpful, but often incremental. You’ll absolutely want to pursue all marketing channels in the future, but for a small team, they can be capital intensive and often favor the incumbent.

Platforms also give preferential treatment to products with a good user experience. It’s a great equalizer. Instead of paying to rank higher in search, platforms are often built to be meritocratic. Better reviews will give you a higher ranking and exposure. We worked hard to add as much value as possible and invested a lot in the user flows and experience. Instead of hitting paywalls and a dozen required fields before signing up, we built in a simple onboarding experience. Startups that understand this ecosystem, and build for it, can have an advantage against less product-focused incumbents.

If you’re a SaaS company, follow in the footsteps of these great companies that were built on platforms. There are opportunities for companies that can add value to the cloud storage ecosystem. If you work hard to create value, the ecosystem will provide the audience.

Joseph Walla is co-founder and CEO of HelloSign and HelloFax. You can follow him at @josephwalla.

AOL's Venture Founder Mike Brown Leaves to Open His Own Fund

Peter Kafka — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:02:02 +0000

Mike Brown Jr., who co-founded AOL’s venture arm three years ago, has left to start his own investment company, Bowery Capital.

Brown’s new fund has raised $33 million, and says it will concentrate on business-to-business startups. At AOL, Brown helped place the company in a wide range of investments, so he’ll be a bit more focused here. Brown is bringing AOL vets Nic Poulos and Keegan Forte along with him.

Dan Primack at Fortune has most of Brown’s story and pitch. The only thing that’s not in there is the fact that Brown has been itching to do this for at least a year, and has gone back and forth with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong about whether or not he would be doing it with AOL’s participation.

(Update: Brown says AOL has invested in his new fund; he’ll also help manage the AOL investments he made over the last three years.)

(Update 2: Here’s comment from AOL Ventures President Jon Brod: “AOL Ventures, which Mike and I started in 2010, has a high performing portfolio of 27 tech start-ups and remains an important part of AOL. We wish Mike well in his new position and are pleased he will continue to help manage the AOL Ventures fund.”)

The question for Armstrong is whether it makes sense for the company to have a venture arm at all, since the work it does doesn’t seem core to AOL’s mission, and having AOL as a corporate backer seems to be a double-edged sword for a venture fund: Sometimes AOL’s brand helps open doors to pitch meetings, other times it has seemed like an encumbrance.

YouTube's Ad Pitch, Take Two -- Buy Our Stars, Not Hollywood's

Peter Kafka — Thu, 02 May 2013 10:00:58 +0000

Last year, YouTube gathered advertisers for a splashy event in New York, in hopes of getting marketers to move their dollars from TV to the world’s biggest video site.

Last night, YouTube tried the same thing, but changed its pitch. Instead of trying to convince ad buyers that YouTube’s stuff is as good as what’s on TV, YouTube is now arguing that the stuff people watch on YouTube is better than TV — because they’re watching it on YouTube.

Gone from last year: YouTube’s efforts to push its “funded channels” program, where it handed out hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to get to more “professional content” on the site. Also missing: Testimonials from traditional actors, directors, producers, etc.

Instead, YouTube kept hammering on its huge audience — a billion viewers a month — and played up the stars that are mostly famous to that audience.

Actress/VJ/producer Felicia Day got a long monologue where she explained that she turned to YouTube after hitting a wall in Hollywood. Following a clip where she was reduced to tears on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” dancing violinist Lindsey Stirling explained that YouTubers embraced her after Piers Morgan gave her the cold shoulder.

And hip-hop sensation of the moment Macklemore, who doesn’t have a record label but has a big YouTube presence and the second and third-biggest song in America right now, finished the show with a mini concert.

A handful of people who made their mark off of YouTube made their way onstage, as well, but only in a YouTube context: Producer Brian Robbins, who just sold his AwesomenessTV YouTube channel to DreamWorks, came on to talk about how his teenage sons don’t watch TV; DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg followed him to talk about how great Brian Robbins is.

And the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg, who is now signed up with YouTube network Maker Studios, showed up to slouch through a couple of songs, backed by a group of YouTubers.

If you were a skeptic, or a YouTube competitor, you might argue that YouTube had stopped trying to promote “real” stars on its site, because it spent the last year doing that, and many of those projects have underwhelmed.

You might also note that, unlike other Web video sellers, YouTube spent very little time trying to convince advertisers that it was willing to sell them video ads the way many advertisers want to buy them — that is, the way they buy TV ads.

A lot of people who make videos for YouTube think that’s a real problem that will prevent the site from ever achieving the TV-like ad rates it wants to command. And some of them are hoping/planning to take their stuff elsewhere, where they think they can make more money.

The flip sides of those arguments: Every other Web video site pitching at this week’s “newfront” sales events are making a big deal of the TV and movie stars they’ve signed on — Yahoo has Ed Helms! AOL has Sarah Jessica Parker! Hulu has Seth Meyers! — so YouTube’s approach will help set them apart.

And while lots of people would like YouTube to approach sales the way old-media buyers like to approach sales, that’s not very Googley. The pitch might alter again next year, but I’d be surprised if YouTube made a fundamental switch in the way it sells its eyeballs.

I’m guessing that at some point YouTube will have nice-looking video available from last night’s event. Because they’re a video company and all that. Meantime, you can get a flavor via some user-generated footage — via YouTube, of course.

Here, via BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, is Lindsey Stirling:

And here, via Storyful’s David Clinch, is some Macklemore and a cast of dozens:

(Image courtesy of Felicia Day/Instagram)

No Room at the Top: HuffPo Publisher Janet Balis to Leave Job in May

Kara Swisher — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 01:25:18 +0000

According to a memo AllThingsD.com has obtained, Huffington Post Media Group Publisher Janet Balis will depart her job in the online content unit of AOL on May 3.

The memo went to staff last week, apparently, but it is not clear from it if she is staying at AOL or going elsewhere.

But, according to the memo, the recent hiring of Jimmy Maymann as CEO of the HuffPo division meant there was little room at the top for Balis.

“As HuffPost was being structured to become a stand-alone entity within AOL, and we brought in Jimmy Maymann as our CEO, it became increasingly clear that there were overlapping functions between his role and Janet Balis’ as Publisher,” read the memo.

A longtime AOL exec, Balis became publisher there almost a year ago. She also has worked at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Time Inc. and Newsweek.

In an interview with Adotas earlier this week, Balis showed no signs she was not there to stay:

“In terms of where we are headed as a brand at the Huffington Post, first and foremost, a big focus continues to be our expansion globally. We are now fortunate to be in France, Spain U.K., Italy, and Canada. We’re going to be continuing that expansion very aggressively in the coming months and it’s been a tremendously successful strategy.”

Though Balis’s move seems different, AOL has seen a lot of executive turmoil of late, including the departure of top ad exec Ned Brody.

Here’s the whole memo from HuffPo Chairwoman, President, and Editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington:

As HuffPost was being structured to become a stand-alone entity within AOL, and we brought in Jimmy Maymann as our CEO, it became increasingly clear that there were overlapping functions between his role and Janet Balis’ as Publisher. As a passionate and articulate advocate for our brand, Janet has done an incredible job developing HuffPost’s approach to the marketplace for consumers and advertisers. Now that she has achieved many key milestones in her role — including recruiting a very talented sales and marketing team, helping HuffPost Live launch with blue chip charter sponsors, and advancing our branded platform technology around causes and content — she will be leaving her role at the beginning of May. We look forward to working with her in the future.

Kara and Walt Talk Mobile, Gates-Jobs Interview and How They Met -- Blame AOL -- On "Charlie Rose" Show (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:24:18 +0000

Last week, while in New York for our D: Dive Into Mobile conference, Walt Mossberg and I went on the “Charlie Rose” show to talk about the fast-growing mobile arena and where it is headed next.

But Rose also asked about our memorable joint interview with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs in 2007 at D5 and we told him what happened between the two icons in the greenroom before their onstage appearance. He also asked Walt and me how we met, which I did not realize was being recorded — after all, who would care but us! — although it turned out to be a pretty good story (and a great partnership, too).

Here is a link to the video on the “Charlie Rose” site and it is also embedded below:

[ See post to watch video ]

Go Far West, Young Startup: SoftBank Capital and Yahoo Japan in $20M Fund to Bring U.S. Entrepreneurs There

Kara Swisher — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:00:58 +0000

SoftBank Capital and Yahoo Japan said they had created an unusual $20 million fund to help U.S. startups break into the Japanese market, while also upping a presence in the U.S.

The partnership between Japan’s largest Internet company — which is also a joint venture with Yahoo — and the venture arm of the giant SoftBank Corp. will invest in companies from early-stage funding to later-stage expansion and focus on mobile applications, social media, e-commerce, online advertising, gaming and cloud computing.

The new funds for that are being put into SoftBank Capital’s $100 million Technology Fund ’10. As part of the deal, Toshiaki Chiku will become head of U.S. operations in Manhattan. SoftBank Capital also recently announced a $250 million PrinceVille Fund, aimed at growth-stage startups in Asia.

Among the firm’s recent exits: Bluefin Labs went to Twitter, Buddy Media to Salesforce.com, Huffington Post to AOL, Hyperpublic to Groupon and OMGPOP to Zynga.

Now, it will be focusing even more on helping U.S. startups in Asia.

“Japan can be challenging for many U.S. companies, and given our scale and affiliation with SoftBank Corp., we’re in a great position to help them grow and succeed,” said Chiku in a statement.

SoftBank Capital and Yahoo Japan used performance display advertising company Criteo as an example of a successful investment, in which it also helped the company enter the Asian market (although, technically, Criteo is HQed in France).

Yahoo Names AOL Exec as New Policy Head

Arik Hesseldahl — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 18:42:02 +0000

Yahoo has named Tekedra Mawakana as the new director of its global public policy and strategy team. She’ll be working global governmental affairs and will head up policy initiatives with industry and government agencies. Mawakana had worked at AOL since 2001 as senior VP of public policy and deputy general counsel.

An Amazonian Challenge: Jason Del Rey Joins All Things Digital, Covering Online Commerce

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:06:36 +0000

We are thrilled to welcome Jason Del Rey to the staff of AllThingsD, where the accomplished reporter will be covering e-commerce.

That includes such critical companies as Amazon, Groupon, eBay and the fast-growing online payments business, as well the escalation of the Internet of Things and the continued mashup of the offline and online worlds.

Del Rey is perfectly suited to the task, having been a business journalist since 2007, when he joined Inc. magazine in order to write about startups and fast-growing small businesses across all industries.

He was most recently a reporter at Advertising Age, where he covered older digital media companies such as Yahoo and AOL, and upstarts such as BuzzFeed and Gawker Media.

Del Rey has also worked as the executive editor of Open Forum, a Web publication for small business owners and entrepreneurs. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

The entire AllThingsD staff is thrilled to welcome Jason, who will be starting in two weeks.

Confirmed: AOL Says Sales Head Has Resigned to "Pursue Other Opportunities" (Internal Memo)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:02:22 +0000

As I reported yesterday, AOL’s advertising sales head Ned Brody has resigned.

He headed AOL Networks — which used to be called Advertising.com — selling premium display, video and mobile network ads for the Web portal. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has stepped in to take over the role for now.

The New York company has confirmed the departure “to pursue other opportunities.” Multiple sources told me yesterday that that opportunity was an offer from Yahoo to take over as head of its key America sales unit. That appointment is not official as yet, but the Silicon Valley Internet giant has apparently dangled Brody a lucrative pay package that includes not working for a year to deal with a non-compete agreement he has with AOL.

While non-competes are hard to enforce in California, where Yahoo has its HQ, Brody lives in Washington, D.C., and works in both New York and Maryland, where they are not quite as easy to slip out of. It’s not clear whether the New York-based AOL will take any legal action if Brody accepted a job at Yahoo, but the company has informed Yahoo of the potential issue.

In simplest terms, it’s a basic talent raid, which Yahoo is doing because it needs a strong sales leader in its most important, revenue-generating market. Former Americas head Ross Levinsohn, who also served as interim CEO, left the company after Marissa Mayer was selected as top exec at Yahoo; the well-regarded revenue chief Michael Barrett left the company after Mayer picked Henrique De Castro as COO.

Since then, De Castro has been Yahoo’s face to Madison Avenue, as he has searched for someone to fly the purple flag with marketers and also lead Yahoo’s sales troops. Having an internal leader is key because De Castro dramatically changed the sales structure at the company since he arrived, causing some confusion internally.

AOL has also had some internal management turmoil over time, most recently with the stepping down of COO Artie Minson.

More to come, obvi, but here’s the memo from Armstrong on the Brody departure:

AOLers —

With growth comes change and I wanted to share some news with you today.

First, Ned Brody has resigned to pursue other opportunities and I have stepped in as acting head of AOL Networks. I am just coming off an incredible few days at ad:tech San Francisco where in addition to the keynote, I spent time with the AOL Networks team and in client meetings. We truly have a stellar group of strong operators within AOL Networks, an extremely strong product organization and a strategy that is really paying off in the marketplace. Now with the launch of MARKETPLACE, we can offer solutions across the entire digital advertising ecosystem. The strategy will remain the same and we will continue to look for ways to quicken the pace of its execution.

Change is natural for large organizations like AOL and we are no strangers to change. It has made us stronger and has led us to the significantly improved operating performance we have reported in recent quarters. We have strong leaders, strong teams, and a strong plan.

As many of you know, we’ve been conducting a search for a head of communications. I’m pleased to announce that we have hired Peter Land as Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications. Peter, who officially joins us April 22, will develop and oversee our global external and internal corporate communications strategies and work with each of the brands to drive their respective communications efforts. He’ll be a member of the executive team and report into me.

Peter joins AOL from PepsiCo, where he served in a number of senior leadership roles — most recently overseeing global media strategy, financial communications and issues management. He joined PepsiCo in 2009 to oversee communications for the PepsiCo America Beverages division and manage the company’s corporate digital strategy.

Peter brings more than 25 years of senior level communications experience working for several of the world’s leading media companies and brands. He has an ability to navigate the dynamic media and digital environments, develop and manage teams worldwide and work strategically and effectively in both the consumer marketing and corporate reputation arenas, and he will be a critically important member of our leadership team.

I have spent a lot of time with Peter already, and he’s excited to join the team. His experience will align well with our brand company mission. He comes with world-class brand experience, and he has managed multi-faceted, multi-stakeholder efforts on a global stage, which will become more and more important to AOL as we continue to grow.

Before joining PepsiCo, Peter was a global managing director of Edelman. Earlier in his career, he was Director of Marketing Communications for the NBA and worked for Kraft Foods in London as Director of European Promotions, among other roles.

Let’s thank Ned for his contributions and welcome Peter to the team.

– TA

AOL Hires New Comms Head From Pepsi

Kara Swisher — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:00:33 +0000

AOL has hired top PepsiCo PR exec Peter Land as its latest head of communications, the company said.

Land, who has been the No. 2 corporate communications exec at the beverage giant, will be leading internal and external messaging at AOL, but will not be in charge of marketing at the New York-based Internet portal. Previous to PepsiCo, he was marketing head for the Breeders’ Cup.

In an interview yesterday, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said that Land was the right candidate for the job, since the company has been focusing on its media properties as brands. That’s apparently in Land’s wheelhouse, coming from such a consumer marketing behemoth.

“We now have multiple messages for multiple brands, and are also needing to communicate about lifestyle, too,” said Armstrong. “As we are changing into a growth company, it is important that we have someone who can really talk both inside and outside about our portfolio of really strong brands.”

Armstrong did note that “it is not lost on me” that there has been a lot of churn in the PR organization at AOL, which has seen four different leaders in several years. But he said that Land has landed at a company ready for more substantive communications.

Land underscored that, noting, “I love where AOL is in its life cycle.”

In addition, he said that the company’s “world-class brands” needed to get more attention going forward.

He might have his hands full with more than that, though. AOL is now engaged in a bit of a tussle with rival Yahoo over its ad sales head Ned Brody, who has departed AOL and has reportedly been offered a similar job at the Silicon Valley giant.

Yahoo Attempts to Poach AOL Ad Chief Brody to Lead U.S. Sales, Setting Up Possible Legal Battle

Kara Swisher — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:38:06 +0000

In an unusual hiring for a top advertising role, Yahoo has made an offer to AOL’s top sales exec Ned Brody to take over as head of its North American sales, according to sources close to the situation.

Brody has already resigned from AOL, said sources, where he headed AOL Networks — which used to be called Advertising.com. It hawks premium display, video and mobile network ads for the Web portal.

It is not clear if he has officially taken the job at Yahoo, but it seems likely given the terms, which includes a lucrative salary. More interestingly, sources said that because Brody has a 12-month, non-compete agreement with AOL that the Silicon Valley Internet giant — as part of the deal it is close to striking with him — has offered to pay him to not work in that period.

Sources close to both companies said AOL has already informed Yahoo that it might face a legal challenge to hiring Brody, because of the way it might attempt to subvert the 12-month non-compete. Because of the big Yahoo offer, AOL did not make a counter-offer to keep him.

These kinds of fights over ad sales execs have happened before. Microsoft mulled a legal challenge of Facebook’s hiring of Carolyn Everson, for example, a tense battle that was later settled.

The attractive terms offered to Brody underscore the difficulty that Yahoo has had in filling the slot, which has been open since former U.S. head Ross Levinsohn left the company a year ago. Top ad duties have been shared by Mark Ellis, VP of North American sales and global partnerships (as well as a former AOLer) and Peter Foster, who is VP of solutions development and MMD sales.

It is not clear if either has been considered for the position (or, more to the point, if they want it). The job, as described in the talent search document I had previously obtained, will report to COO Henrique De Castro and will be as SVP of its Americas unit.

As I wrote of the key job:

Since U.S. ads keep the lights on for now, a top sales exec is crucial. The Americas job was most recently held by Ross Levinsohn, who lost his bid to be CEO to Mayer. And well-regarded ad head Michael Barrett left after De Castro arrived (let’s say bygones and leave it at that).

While De Castro has talked to a number of high-profile Internet execs, none have bitten as yet, for a search that is being conducted by Spencer Stuart.

As described in the memo I obtained, which you can read below in its entirety, the job will require some big shoes to fill. “S/he will be expected to be the ‘voice’ of the Americas region, serving as bridge between the region and the corporate teams,” according to the job description. “Additionally he/she will be a thought leader within the company and a well-respected industry leader as Yahoo!’s primary externally facing advertising and media executive.”

Many have been pinged for the job by Spencer Stuart’s Jim Citrin, who has been conducting the search, including former Yahoo sales exec Rich Riley and former Google sales exec Penry Price.

It’s an important role, since U.S. ads make up a huge part of Yahoo’s revenue. And as Ad Age’s Jason Del Rey recently (and correctly) reported, the disinterest on the part of CEO Marissa Mayer to ad agencies and marketers in favor of focusing on product innovation issues (also important) has taken its toll.

“I think that [Mayer's] disengagement from the sales side is an issue, as it implies that the top of the org is only so interested in the only source of revenue,” said one top ad exec to me today.

De Castro has tried to fill the gap, although he has had less strong ties in the ad community, too. That means Yahoo might not have a year to wait for Brody, who has also served as AOL’s Chief Revenue Officer, COO of media and advertising and as EVP of paid services. He also started a commerce company called ARPU.com (now SnappCloud) and was CFO of early search company Looksmart.

On his About.me page today, Brody seems pretty happy with AOL, with a note under the title, “Living the Dream”: “Right now, I am extremely happily employed as the CEO of AOL Networks. I get to see the global turnaround of an historic property from the front line.”

(To be fair, if he subs in Yahoo for AOL, it will probably read just the same.)

I have tried to contact Brody and am awaiting comment from AOL about his status. Yahoo declined comment.

HuffPost Live Thrives on Tape

Peter Kafka — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:28:44 +0000

Late last summer, Huffington Post launched a streaming video news service, backed by 100 employees, lots of cash and a heap of hype.

So how’s it going?

Pretty good, says HuffPost Live boss Roy Sekoff. Especially if you choose to look at HuffPost Live as a video clip generator: Sekoff says his service is set to serve up 48 million streams this month, up from 17 million in November.

The vast majority of those views don’t come from people who are watching HuffPost Live itself, but are finding embedded videos on AOL and HuffPo pages, like this story about Sasha and Malia Obama’s spring break plans.

If you’re looking at HuffPost Live as a standalone news “channel” a la CNN or Fox News, it has a much more modest reach: A bit more than 2 million viewers a month, and a live audience that wouldn’t register by TV standards. Sekoff says its concurrent viewership tops out around 40,000 people.

But those patterns are standard for the Web right now. Just about everyone who does live video, including AllThingsD’s corporate cousins at The Wall Street Journal, gets almost all of its viewership after the fact, on demand.

It’s possible that all of that changes if and when we get True Convergence Of All Devices All The Time. But it also may be that in the brave new world, truly “live” video is less important to most people, because there’s very little out there that everyone needs to see at the same time; dudes dropping out of spaceships on YouTube are the exception that proves the rule.

My hunch is that in most cases, actual live viewing will be a relatively niche activity, for people who really, really care about a particular topic, band, political issue, etc. And if the rest of us catch up later, that works fine, too.

Speaking of on-demand video, here’s Sekoff, along with a cameo from one of my digits:

[ See post to watch video ]

Conde Nast Owner Advance Hands Sporting News Over to U.K. Video Company

Peter Kafka — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:16:40 +0000

The Sporting News used to be one of America’s oldest print publications, but last year it moved to a digital-only format. And now it’s owned by a British Web video company.

Sporting News owner Advance Publications — the same folks that own Conde Nast — has folded the title into a joint venture with Perform, a London-based digital video distributor. The idea is to create a bigger U.S. presence for Perform, which already distributes sports highlights clips to some U.S. newspapers and other publications.

Perform will own 65 percent of the joint venture, and has the right to buy out Advance’s stake for $65 million. Perform will kick in $1.2 million, and Advance, via its American City Business Journals unit, will chip in $4.2 million.

ComScore says SportingNews.com, which also acts as AOL’s sports hub, generated 6.7 million U.S. uniques in February, a number that has stayed fairly constant for the last year.

Facebook's New Ad Plan Is the Web's Old Plan

Peter Kafka — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:14:57 +0000

A year ago, in the run-up to its IPO, Facebook told the ad world that it had a new plan: “Sponsored stories” — ads that looked like “real” content, that would show up on users’ screens based on the way they and their friends behaved on Facebook.

New new plan: Facebook will let advertisers buy ads on the social network the way they buy ads all over the Web — tracking users’ travels outside of Facebook, and showing them ads based on their browsing history.

Facebook took a step toward this last summer, when it rolled out its Facebook Exchange, which allowed marketers to serve “retargeted” ads on the right-hand side of users’ pages. Today they’re making a small but important change, by letting advertisers serve the same kind of ads directly in users’ main “News Feeds” — Facebook’s primo real estate.

Unless they’re really paying attention, the average user won’t notice the difference between a retargeted ad in their News Feed and Facebook’s (not very) old-fashioned “sponsored story” ads. The formats look the same, and just like the old ones, you can see if your friends “Liked” or commented on a retargeted ad.

The main difference is that if you click on the ad, you’ll be sent outside of Facebook to an advertiser’s site, instead of inside to a Facebook page. (You’ll also, in theory, be able to opt out from seeing that kind of ad if you notice a small “ad choices” logo” and follow a series of steps.)

The real change is all happening behind the scenes: Instead of telling an advertiser that they’re likely to find someone receptive to their message based on their Facebook behavior, Facebook is telling an advertiser they can guarantee delivery of their message to someone who has visited certain websites.

That’s a big shift in the way Facebook has treated advertising. Before last year, the site didn’t allow any retargeting at all; both internally and externally, the concept was treated with disdain.

And that made some sense: If you’re going to sell ads on Facebook the way they’re sold all over the Web, then what makes Facebook different than Yahoo, AOL or any other big site with a ton of impressions?

But advertisers — at least certain kinds of advertisers, particularly those with “direct response” pitches — love retargeting, and they’ve gone gaga for the ones Facebook started selling last year. Presumably they’ll be just as excited about these ads, which will be much more visible. And if Facebook can figure out how to serve them up on phones (much trickier, for technical reasons), they’ll be into that, too.

The question is what this means for Facebook in the long run.

The site says it isn’t backtracking or moving away from its “sponsored stories” ads in any fashion, and that this lets it have the best of both worlds: You can buy ads on Facebook the Facebook way, or the way everyone else does it.

Wall Street might well conclude that this is a good idea, too, since it should add a whole new revenue stream for the site. Or it might conclude that Facebook is less enthusiastic about a worldview it was promoting just a year ago.

Time to find out.

Here's a Marissa Mayer M&A Candidate You Haven't Heard Of

Peter Kafka — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:22:15 +0000

Add this one to the “maybe Marissa Mayer will buy this” pile: Video distributor Grab Media.

The company is on the block, and lots of folks think it is talking to Yahoo about a sale.

Five-year-old Grab Media makes its money by taking video from professional content makers like Reuters, NBC Universal and Hearst, and getting it embedded on thousands of other small sites. It’s very similar to 5Min, which AOL purchased in 2010, and has done very well with since then.

Grab has been able to grow into a decent-sized business. ComScore has it in 11th place in its U.S. “video content” rankings, with 29.9 million unique viewers. That puts it just behind Turner Digital and ahead of Amazon. Google/YouTube, of course, is way ahead of everyone, with 150 million uniques.

Grab CEO Alvin Bowles confirmed that his company has hired investment bank Mesa Global to look for potential buyers, but wouldn’t comment beyond that.

AOL video executive Greg Prosl laid out the case for a Yahoo deal earlier this week on his personal site, and I’m told that Yahoo has indeed talked to Grab about a deal; industry executives I’ve talked to think the company would sell for less than $50 million.

Grab, whose backers include SoftBank Capital, has gone through several incarnations. In 2011, it sold off an earlier version of itself, a unit that focused on video transcoding. Last year, Grab raised $5 million via a combination of internal financing and venture debt, according to a person familiar with the company.

Why The Time Inc. Spinoff Could Work! (Spoiler: Requires Miracle.)

Peter Kafka — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 04:07:31 +0000

Good news, remaining Time Inc. employees! You don’t have to go work for a company based in Des Moines.*

As far as the bad news … we’ll get to that. But let’s stay upbeat for a minute, and I’ll try to generate more optimism for you.

Start with some charts, via Google Finance.

Here’s what happened to AOL stock after the company split off from Time Warner, just like you’re set to do:

And here’s what happened to Time Warner Cable shares when that company did the same thing:

And for good measure, let’s mash them together:

So, on the whole, not too terrible. Two companies that Jeff Bewkes didn’t want weighing down his cable and movie business, and they’ve done okay once he cut them loose. AOL shares are up 62 percent since the split.** Time Warner Cable is down 21 percent, but shareholders have gotten another $6.41 per share in dividends, so things are a bit better than they look here.

Let’s continue to stay upbeat, and channel the talking points you’re likely to hear in months leading up to the split:

Hey, just because this is Plan B for Jeff Bewkes doesn’t mean he doesn’t want this to succeed. Time Warner, after all, will end up owning a chunk of the spun-off company, so it has a vested interest in this thing working.
And, seriously, this could be good for Time Inc.! After all, in the last few years the thing has just been in stasis/shrinking mode, and no one cared. Now they’ll have to care, and maybe the newco will go do some serious re-orging and perhaps some investing, too. After all, it’s good enough for News Corp.!

And all of that is potentially true. Or at least truthy. Or something.

Alas:

Jeff Bewkes doesn’t care about Time Inc., and investors don’t either — they’ve wanted him to dump it forever. If they haven’t priced the spinoff into the share price already, they will do so immediately, and then that will be that.
It’s hard to imagine any scenario where Time Inc. is able to navigate the print-to-digital shift effectively. But it certainly won’t get its best odds as a public company made to answer to the Street’s quarterly demands. And even if, say, a deep-pocketed and semi-benevolent benefactor materialized to buy the thing, Bewkes wouldn’t sell, because of the tax hit that would generate (the spinoff will be tax-free for shareholders).
For better and worse, the News Corp. spin (which is set to include this website) is going to be steered by Rupert Murdoch, a man with a lot of money invested in the company’s perfomance, and even more ego tied up in it. Time Inc. will be run by … someone, and they’ll get a nice paycheck and some options for their effort, but no one expects them to work a miracle here.
And that’s what Time Inc,. stripped of Time Warner’s corporate shield, will need to turn around. It has the classic analog/digital channel conflict, where the latter is the only way out, but the former generates all the cash. And that’s hard enough to deal with at the most nimble and most flexible companies. This one, shoved out of the nest and into the market without any kind of cushion, seems set up to fail. I hope I’m wrong.

*Des Moines is nice enough, by the way. But the Meredith/Time Inc. culture clash stories you heard were very true.
** True, AOL has fired a lot of people since it went its own way. But that’s going to happen at Time Inc., no matter what. And, yes, the stock’s rise has a lot to do with a $1 billion patent sale, but let’s stay positive!

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/mikeledray)

Hey, AOL Content Makers! Meet Your New Boss, Susan Lyne -- And Start Thinking About Video, Right Now.

Peter Kafka — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:05:26 +0000

If you work at AOL, and you make or sell content, and you don’t work for Arianna Huffington, you’ve got a new boss today.

But perhaps you’re like TechCrunch editor Alexia Tsotsis, and you’re wondering what Susan Lyne, AOL’s new Brand Group CEO, looks and sounds like. Happy to oblige, via a brief video interview below.

If you’re in a hurry and/or don’t want to watch six-minute shakycam clips:

Beyond the broad ideas she announced in her staff email last week (customers are important, so is mobile, content is a big deal, etc.), Lyne says she doesn’t have an action plan ready to spring on AOL. So if there’s yet another reorg coming, it could take a while.
Lyne’s resume includes stints running Gilt and Martha Stewart, but what’s probably most important for AOL is her TV career, which peaked when she ran entertainment for ABC. That doesn’t mean that she’s going to turn every AOL site into a TV show, but it does mean she thinks there’s a lot more each site can do when it comes to “programming” in general, and video in particular.
But what about Mike Shields’s smart critique in AdWeek, where he notes that, despite lots of past pronouncements, AOL hasn’t done a lot to create its own signature video programming?* ”If we were doing everything really well already, then I wouldn’t be here.”
And speaking of TechCrunch, how are things going with her cranky employees, anyway? Just swell, says Lyne, who says she’s emailed with Tsotsis, and plans to meet her in person, too. Soon! But she’s not going to stop using the word “brand,” which is good, since it’s on her business card. “What brand means is there are a set of assumptions and expectations people bring to view, whenever they come visit you. And that’s definitely what TechCrunch has. And by the way, [Tsotsis] did exactly what people expected of her [last week] when she came after me.”

Translation: If you’re trying to get fired by acting out, Alexia, a cheeky post won’t cut it. Up the ante!

[ See post to watch video ]

*AOL’s overall video business, however, has ramped up very nicely, due to the company’s acquisition of video distributor/syndicator 5Min in 2010.

What Could Apple Buy With Its $137 Billion? About 18 Homes Each for Every Yahoo to Not Work At, and More!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 03:34:28 +0000

Last week, the fight between Apple and pugnacious hedge fund investor David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital went all flat when he withdrew a lawsuit after the company yanked a proxy proposal that would have allowed shareholders to vote on eliminating preferred stock from the company charter.

But the real issue at the core of the fight — the massive mountain of $137 billion in a cash hoard that Apple holds and that Einhorn wants it to distribute in some fashion to shareholders — still remains.

It’s not clear what Apple will do now, especially since a lot of it is overseas. But execs have indicated that they are evaluating what to do to best serve nervous investors, who have bidded the stock down 40 percent since the fall. While it’s not clear what that will be, it’s also pretty likely Apple will do something.

Until the company decides, though, I have some good ideas for CEO Tim Cook to consider:

* Apple could purchase 1,567,506 Tesla Model S Performance vehicles with 85 kWh battery and a carbon fiber spoiler at $87,400 each, which would effectively allow CEO Elon Musk to buy the New York Times (a bargain at $1.42 billion!) and use it as his own personal blog.

* It could buy 17.9 houses for each Yahoo employee located near its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ, so they could be super-close to work, per CEO Marissa Mayer’s wishes. That breaks down to 206,015 overall homes for 11,500 workers, at a median sales price of $665,000 for the area.

* Apple could acquire a big chunk of the Internet all at once, including Groupon ($3.36 billion), Yahoo ($25.95 billion), Facebook ($61.7 billion), Twitter ($10 billion), LinkedIn ($18.32 billion), Yelp ($1.47 billion), AOL ($2.81 billion), Pandora ($2.09 billion), Zynga ($2.69 billion), OpenTable ($1.32 billion) and, finally, Pinterest ($2.5 billion). Phew.

* It could pay Andrew Mason’s $378.36 severance after getting jacked as CEO of Groupon 364,013,179 times over.

* Apple could pay for 97,857 parties for Yammer’s David Sacks’s 40th birthday (at $1.4 million each). Snoop Dogg included.

* It could foot the bill for the budget cuts to save the U.S. government $85 billion this year, so Americans could stop having to say “sequester.”

* Apple could buy $329 16 gigabyte Wi-Fi iPad minis for 416,413,374 people — everyone in the U.S. (315,429,318), plus France and Spain.

* Or it could just give the 7,069,909,686 people on the planet $19.38 each, and call it a day.

* Apple could use $1 bills to carpet an area of 560 square miles, which would more than cover Silicon Valley.

* Finally — and I think this would be a nice gesture to make up for calling his efforts a “silly sideshow” — Apple could give Einhorn 15.56 times the value of his $8.8 billion fund.

Or, of course, not.

Exclusive: AOL Poised to Hire Susan Lyne to Run All Content Brands, Except HuffPo

Kara Swisher — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:17:56 +0000

Sources said AOL is set to hire well-known media and Internet exec Susan Lyne to be CEO of its content brands unit at the New York-based Web company, except for the Huffington Post Media Group headed by Arianna Huffington.

Lyne has most recently been chairman of the Gilt Groupe and was CEO previous to that. She will retain her board role at the online retailer, but is likely to give up her director role at AOL. She is set to be on its executive operating committee going forward.

Lyne has had a long and varied career in media and is a high-profile hire. Beside Gilt, she also ran Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and was a top television network exec at ABC.

At AOL, she will have purview over a range of properties, including TechCrunch, Engadget and StyleList.

In related news, Bloomberg reported earlier that COO Artie Minson was departing AOL, but there are no immediate plans for him to leave. But that could change, since CEO Tim Armstrong has been moving to decentralize the company and his role could shift accordingly.

An AOL spokesperson declined to comment.

Survey Says: Despite Yahoo Ban, Most Tech Companies Support Work-From-Home for Employees

Kara Swisher — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:29:42 +0000

Last week, a fierce debate erupted over a range of social networks and in the media about a story we posted on Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s new decree that employees at the Silicon Valley Internet company would no longer be able to work from home.

In a sometimes awkwardly worded internal memo I posted from Yahoo HR head Jackie Reses, the company rolled out the new rule — pushed through by Mayer — which requires that Yahoo employees who work remotely relocate to company facilities by June 1.

“Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” read the memo to employees. “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

The goal of Mayer to cure what ails Yahoo: Reviving a moribund and enervated workforce that has struggled to innovate and excel over many years. One of the many problems has been the liberal use of work-from-home policies that have been woefully mismanaged to create a culture that is simply not energized.

But, unless I am reading the memo wrong, the ban is not just limited to those who have arrangements to work from home full time — which number in the hundreds — but also employees who take one or two days a week at home.

Top sources told me that Mayer has been particularly irked about Yahoo parking lots that are slow to fill in the morning and quick to empty by 5 pm — which is atypical at other tech companies such as Google. (Mayer was a longtime exec at the search giant.)

At first, she tried to change culture in ways that rained down tasty perks on employees — such as free food and smartphones. Mayer has also been practical, instituting please-be-here Friday afternoon FYI weekly meetings and stricter performance reviews.

But she is now inevitably doling out more unpleasant medicine to the troops, starting with the banning of work from home, which has caused a big ruckus both internally and externally.

Some inside the company are clearly appalled, especially since it might more severely impact working mothers.

“When a working mother is standing behind this, you know we are a long way from a culture that will honor the thankless sacrifices that women too often make,” read one email I got from an internal source, referring to the recent birth of Mayer’s baby.

Many others at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ pointed to the nursery Mayer had built — for which she paid personally — next to her office as a perk others at Yahoo do not get.

“I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set em up in the cube next door?” joked a husband of another employee who will be losing her work-from-home privileges.

Yahoo employees, as far as I can see from its company careers page, offers the typical Dependent Day Care Flexible Spending Account, where staff can pay “dependent care expenses, such as day care or after-school care, with pre-tax dollars.”

While it is fair to raise the issue of how employees will cope given the sudden change in HR policy, others also think that limiting work at home is a good idea because it galvanizes culture and creates a spirit of collaboration that has been missing at Yahoo for far too long.

“Marissa is doing what good leaders do,” wrote one person on Twitter. “Making sure her Yahoo team is communicating & working TOGETHER.”

That is actually a sentiment expressed by Google CFO Patrick Pichette at a recent talk in Australia, when asked about telecommuting at Google:

“The surprising question we get is: ‘How many people telecommute at Google?’ And our answer is: ‘As few as possible’ … There is something magical about sharing meals. There is something magical about spending the time together, about noodling on ideas, about asking at the computer ‘What do you think of this?’ These are [the] magical moments that we think at Google are immensely important in the development of your company, of your own personal development and [of] building much stronger communities.”

That said, officially, many Googlers are allowed and even encouraged to work at home. The company told me when asked about work-from-home policies: “We do not have a formal policy and leave Googlers to use good judgment.”

It is the same for Facebook, which confirmed a “policy to provide flexibility as work permits.” In fact, one exec at the social network giant noted to me that its entire camera app was built from an engineer’s garage, with the group staying away from the office as long as they wanted to build it from home.

Business networking site LinkedIn also said it had “no formal policy at present,” but noted that many employees work from home full-time and part-time as the situation warrants and in consultation with managers.

It goes on and on like that throughout the tech scene, part of an ethos of letting tech talent make its own rules — from what they wear to when and where they work — that is deeply ingrained in the culture.

A Hewlett-Packard spokesperson said of the tech giant: “We do not ban [work from home] and many HP people do it … it is not at all an issue at HP and hasn’t been for years. Some folks have a regular schedule, while others can do it from time to time with the okay of their supervisors.”

An AOL spokesperson said the company doesn’t ban work from home.

A Netflix spokesperson referenced a well-known premium video company’s job deck, which stressed a “freedom and responsibility culture” and notes, “We don’t measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office. We do care about accomplishing great work.”

Twitter had a different twist, but still supports working from home. Said a spokesperson: “We believe there are significant tangible and intangible benefits when employees are working under the same roof. We also recognize that every so often it’s important to be able to work remotely, and we allow for that flexibility.”

A Cisco spokesperson said the networking company also allows it, but it has to be approved by a direct manager: “It is certainly utilized by those employees who earn it. And, of course, with our collaborative suite of technologies like Webex (with video) and telepresence it is the next best thing to being there in person.”

A Microsoft spokesman said that the software company “offers flexible work schedules for all employees.”

Perhaps one of the best companies for a long time in the telecommuting space has been IBM. From its corporate Web page, also touting the environmental benefits:

“IBM was one of the first global companies to pioneer programs to reduce employee commuting. It has sustained these programs for nearly two decades. Two key aspects are its (a) work-at-home program and (b) mobile employees program. Today, more than 128,000 (29 percent) of employees globally participate in one of these programs. In 2011, in just the U.S. alone, IBM’s work-at-home program conserved approximately 6.4 million gallons of fuel and avoided more than 50,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.”

Startups are much the same.

Said an Airbnb spokesperson of the online housing rentals site: “It’s a flexible policy and managers determine what’s appropriate on a case-by-case basis.”

At location startup Foursquare, a spokesperson said, “Our policy is to allow for ‘flexible work hours’ — and that applies to both the hours you work, and where you work from. While we don’t have any dedicated remote employees, our folks do work from home on occasion and we’re fine with that.”

Private social networking company Path is much the same, according to a spokesperson: “Path has a work-from-home policy. The manager and employee work out the details together.”

The only company I queried that did not respond immediately is Apple, which has been known for a long time to have much tighter rules with its employees. I will update when I hear from the company.

I also have emails in to Amazon, which is already known for flexible working policies.

But, overall, Mayer is forging new ground with her work-from-home ban. Whether that is enough to turbocharge the Yahoo culture is anybody’s guess.

We Are All Huffington Post Now

Peter Kafka — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:18:44 +0000

Two years ago, the Huffington Post published a story called “What Time Does the Super Bowl Start?” which generated lots of clicks from regular Web-surfers, and eye-rolling from people like me.

The post was both effective — it showed up high on Google searches, which is the reason Huffpo created it — and symbolic of Huffpo’s traffic strategy — which was either craven or clear-minded, depending on your perspective.

Now that kind of Google-baiting is old hat. Even for august newspapers with 41 Pulitzers. Here’s what the same query for today’s Oscars looks like today:

Say this for the Los Angeles Times piece — it delivers the goods, for both humans and Google’s robots. Here’s the keyword-filled top:

The 85th Academy Award nominees and winners have been chosen, the red carpet has been rolled out and the gilded Oscar statues have been polished. But what time is the show again?

The 2013 Oscars ceremony honoring the films of 2012 is set to take place Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. The pre-show broadcast will begin on ABC with red carpet arrivals at 4 p.m. PST (7 p.m. EST) and will be hosted by Lara Spencer, Jess Cagle, Kristin Chenoweth and Kelly Rowland.

The awards show will start at 5:30 p.m. PST (8:30 p.m. EST) and is scheduled to last three hours. It will be hosted by “Family Guy” and “Ted” star Seth MacFarlane and televised live in more than 225 countries.

And Google is presumably extra pleased that the story’s author, reporter/Web producer Nardine Saad, is a diligent Google+ contributor who has posted more than 30 LAT links so far this month.*

What’s that? You still find this sort of thing disheartening, even if it gives readers what they want and delivers some clicks to a newspaper that can use them? Well, you’re not alone. Here’s a gut reaction from New York Times editor Patrick LaForge:

Sad. RT @harrisj: LA Times starts the SEO battle for tomorrow bit.ly/15Fnmh4

— Patrick LaForge, NYT (@palafo) February 24, 2013

But you’re probably going to be in an ever-shrinking minority, says Raju Narisetti, who heads up The Wall Street Journal digital network (the Dow Jones digital umbrella which includes this Web site).

A (good) lasting lesson @huffingtonpost taught big newsrooms MT @harrisj: @latimes starts SEO battle for tomorrow twitter.com/harrisj/status…”

— Raju Narisetti (@rajunarisetti) February 24, 2013

And yes, even people like yours truly try to engage Google (and Facebook, and Twitter, and anyone that will increase the number of eyeballs on my stuff). AllThingsD’s publishing system, for instance, allows us to create “SEO heds” — headlines created with Google’s automatons in mind.

And if you know how to find the one I’ve created for this post, you’ll be able to figure out what time to watch the Oscars tonight. Enjoy!

* Conventional wisdom among Google-watchers is that even if no one reads anything you post on Google+, the search engine will reward active users with Google juice in search results. So get posting!

Does the iPad Merit Its Own Email App? Meet Birdseye.

Liz Gannes — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 19:47:22 +0000

The medium of email might be old, boring and flawed — but recently it has been getting a lot more attention, with inbox management apps like Mailbox and Sparrow (acquired by Google) and novel refreshes like AOL’s visual sorting redesign, Alto.

Another interesting approach is Birdseye, which calls itself the first email client built from the ground up for tablets.

The Birdseye iPad app for Gmail accounts was quietly launched by a New York development shop called DE-DE last week.

“If email sucks, email on an iPad is even worse,” DE-DE CEO Hashem Bajwa told me. “Most email clients have just adapted how email works on a desktop to the tablet, even though our interaction with tablets is different and our needs in terms of email is different.”

Birdseye plays on three advantages of the iPad: 1) it’s visual, 2) you can manipulate it with touch and 3) it’s big enough to fit more than one thing on the screen.

Within Birdseye, emails are displayed as large horizontal tiles. Rather than stacks of subject lines, messages are nicely formatted and displayed in full. Attached images are shown at the top, newsletters are stripped of their subject and sender header so the maximum content is shown.

That means you can see only about three emails within a screen — so it’s not a great way to assess your inbox at a glance. But Birdseye is built to encourage users to deal with their email quickly and immediately.

It’s all very hands-on. So for instance, if Birdseye detects a calendar invite, you can tap to accept and add to your calendar. If Birdseye detects bulk mail, you’re given the option to unsubscribe. If it’s an alert about new Twitter followers, you can tap to follow back.

Birdseye is still in its early days, said Bajwa, but he said some future ideas are Apple TV and AirPlay support. Plus, he wants to add many more inbox actions — to that end, developers are already welcome to play with Birdseye’s code on GitHub.