Rosenthal had focused on mobile business development in recent years, overseeing Facebook’s relationships with some 300 mobile operators around the world. She is not departing for a specific opportunity, though she said it was likely she’ll end up involved in another start-up.

Rosenthal had joined the company in February 2006, making her one of its earliest remaining employees. She’s the latest of many early Facebookers, including the three Facebook co-founders other than Mark Zuckerberg, to depart over the years.

“I’ve started to feel the pull of some new ideas,” said Rosenthal, adding that she felt Facebook had “unlocked real opportunities at the convergence of mobile and social” that she wants to explore.

By way of explanation for her own and other early-Facebooker departures, Rosenthal contended it’s just that Facebookers tend to be entrepreneurial, and recognize opportunities to extend the social Web in new directions outside of Facebook’s core mission. “It’s very alluring to try a specific idea in an industry you’re passionate about,” she said.

But for now, Rosenthal wants to take some time off. The only specific future plan she would share is to ditch her smartphone for a feature phone for a while in order to “extract myself a little from technology.”

Rosenthal has her MBA from Stanford and previously worked at General Atlantic Partners and Zazzle. She said her replacement has not yet been found, but that Facebook is hiring internationally to have biz dev folks overseeing carrier relationships on a local basis from offices in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

Other significant recent Facebook departures have included ad sales head Mike Murphy, engineering director Aditya Agarwal and PR head Brandee Barker.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

It’s not all departures!

Yahoo is hiring former News Corp. and Disney online exec Mickie Rosen (pictured here) to run its Audience unit, which includes the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s powerful content sites, sources said.

Starting next week, Rosen will report to Americas head Ross Levinsohn, who has worked with her before, at both News Corp. and Fuse Capital.

Her new title is SVP of the Yahoo Media Network, which is apparently a rebranding of Audience.

Previous to this job, Rosen was CEO of Tecca, a price-checking service Fuse created in partnership with Best Buy.

It’s likely she will remain based in the Los Angeles area, where Yahoo has a large office in Santa Monica, Calif.

The move is Levinsohn’s first management rejiggering since he took over last year, and there is likely to be more to come.

Rosen, who has also worked at the Fandango online movie ticketing site, will replace interim audience head Raymond Stern, who will be–as before–running partnerships and business development, as well as Yahoo’s listings business.

Rosen’s new job had actually been that of former Audience head David Ko, as well as former Media VP Jimmy Pitaro.

Ko left Yahoo and is now heading mobile games at Zynga, while Pitaro is a top digital exec at Disney.

More to come from Levinsohn, but here is Rosen’s bio from the Fuse Web site:

Mickie has over 20 years of operating, strategy and investing experience. For the past dozen years, she has been at the intersection of media and technology, in both large companies such as News Corporation and The Walt Disney Company and in small, early stage start-ups.

Prior to joining the firm, she was the head of entertainment for Fox Interactive Media where she was responsible for properties such as AmericanIdol.com, Rotten Tomatoes and the entertainment channels of MySpace. Mickie also led content acquisition across the Company, and was a lead in envisioning, structuring and negotiating Hulu, the premier video joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Universal.

Prior to Fox Interactive Media, Mickie was the head of product development, marketing and public relations for Fandango, where she helped lead the company from an early-stage start-up to profitability as it became a leader in its space (acquired by Comcast). Mickie was also a senior executive with an e-learning start-up, an Idealab! consumer robotics company and Disney’s Corporate Alliances group, where she negotiated deals and managed Disney’s top global partners such as Coca-Cola, American Express and AT&T.

Mickie built the foundation of her career with McKinsey & Company, where she spent seven years consulting with senior management on strategy, operational and organizational issues across a number of industries, including media and technology.
Mickie has an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a B.A. in Economics from UC San Diego, and is based in Los Angeles.

Charles Songhurst (pictured here), one of Microsoft’s top corporate strategy and M&A execs, is departing the company, according to several sources.

Sources said he was leaving for a new opportunity, and he is not the only big business-development-related departure recently.

Another exec leaving is Senior Director of Corporate Strategy and Acquisitions Fritz Lanman, who TechCrunch reported late yesterday was moving to create a new social start-up called 5Star.

The departure of Songhurst is perplexing, as sources said he has been a favorite of CEO Steve Ballmer.

He also was a key exec in crafting Microsoft’s search and online advertising deal with Yahoo, which was a long and convoluted journey to say the least for the software giant.

But since then, Microsoft has done relatively little in the way of significant acquisitions or big partnership deals, which perhaps might be part of the reason for Songhurst’s departure.

Microsoft declined comment after a BoomTown query.

While the news has been be out there for a month, Miramax officially confirmed this morning that former News Corp. exec Mike Lang was named CEO of the Hollywood movie company.

What will be interesting about that for digital content players will be to see exactly what the man who was deeply involved in deals to buy the Myspace social networking site and also create the Hulu premium video service will do with Miramax’s rich trove of more than 700 award-winning films, including “Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction,” in its movie library.

Lang left his post as EVP of business development and strategy at Fox Entertainment, including its film studio, broadcast network, sports and cable channel, earlier this year.

BoomTown spoke to him last night about his new job, which came after he advised the group that finally won Miramax–Filmyard Holdings.

“We are trying to take this company to the next level by exploring not only our traditional options, but our digital ones,” he said.

Miramax will not be aggressive in making new movies, but in taking advantage of the sequel rights it has to a number of hits, as well as the existing movies, which include four of the last 15 Best Picture Oscar winners.

“Our strategy is still emerging, but we want to exploit our assets in a variety of ways,” said Lang, who noted that could include everything from subscription deals with online video services, such as Netflix and Amazon, to digital content lockers in the cloud.

“We want people to be able to access our content across multiple medias,” he said. “We’ll take any payment, of course, but we also have to be smart about how we do these things.”

Lang, who has always had a foot in both worlds, said he thinks that digital media could develop similarly to the way traditional media has.

“There is no reason to think that digital will not emulate older media, with different windows in which subscribers watch content,” he said.

But, said Lang, he also thinks there is still life in physical media, such as Blu-ray players.

Since the deal just closed with former Miramax owner Disney, there are no employees yet for the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company.

But once he staffs up, Langs said he hopes to present a different picture of Hollywood to the digerati than the more typical wary hostility.

“Our goal really is we want to send a signal that we are a different company,” said Lang. “Not only about digital, but in being an innovative company.”

Here is the official press release about Lang:

MICHAEL LANG NAMED MIRAMAX CEO

SANTA MONICA, CA–December 8, 2010–Miramax today announced that Michael Lang has been appointed chief executive officer, effective immediately. Lang will be based at the new Miramax headquarters in Santa Monica and will oversee the renowned Miramax film library, which was acquired by Filmyard Holdings on December 3, 2010.

“I have known and worked closely with Mike for almost 20 years and have always respected his talents,” said Richard Nanula, chairman of Miramax and a principal at Colony Capital. “We are confident that he is the right person to lead Miramax in its next phase of growth.”

“I have always admired the Miramax library, which includes many respected titles and award-winning films,” said Lang. “Based on the quality of these assets, I believe bringing new life to this library–by working with traditional and new partners–will be an exciting and unprecedented story of growth and innovation. I am honored by this opportunity, and I look forward to working with my partners as we build a new kind of media company.”

Lang, 45, most recently served as a consultant to Filmyard in its acquisition of Miramax. Prior to that, he was EVP, Business Development and Strategy at Fox Entertainment, responsible for strategic initiatives across News Corp.’s entertainment assets, including Fox’s film studio, broadcast network, sports and cable channels. Lang played key roles in the acquisition of MySpace and the formation of the MySpace Music joint venture, and he led the creation of Hulu, with major broadcast partners. In addition, Lang was involved in Fox’s mobile, digital and video game initiatives. He joined Fox in 2004.

Prior to Fox, Lang served as a consultant on media-related investments. In the late ’90s, he was a founding executive of Z.com. Lang began his career at The Walt Disney Company in Strategic Planning. Lang earned his MBA with high distinction at Harvard Business School and he holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Claremont McKenna College.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

It is always nice when an intern makes good, and that is entirely the case with Drake Martinet (pictured here), who joins All Things Digital–as of yesterday, in fact.

We could not be happier. Plus, we knew he was our kind of geek after he agreed to spend the night in a tent next to Robert Scoble, to cover last year’s Apple iPad release.

That was when Drake was an ATD intern, until he headed to the New York Times this past summer to work on social media efforts in the newsroom.

And that’s one of the many things he will be working on here, making ATD more Facebook-worthy, Twittified and YouTubed within an inch of our lives.

Drake will also be working on upgrading our multimedia efforts–which is to say, figuring out a more sophisticated strategy for us than BoomTown’s Flip video camera assaults, helping mesh up business development efforts with our editorial integrity, analyzing our analytics and even making sure our new interns are up to snuff.

And, for his next trick, he will also be doing posts on interesting early start-ups and emerging ideas, much in the same way he did a bang-up job with a feature called “Almost Famous” when he was an intern.

Whew! Then again, he is young!

Still, Drake has done a lot so far.

After receiving his masters degree from Stanford University’s graduate program in journalism this year, and spending time in the school’s design program (the d.school), Drake moved to Brooklyn to work for the Times.

In addition to his weekly start-up column for ATD, his written, photographic and video work has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle and numerous Web sites and blogs.

A native of San Diego, Drake first moved to Northern California to attend the University of California at Davis. He has lived in the greater Bay Area for the last eight years, excepting short stays in Louisiana, Washington D.C., New York and Chile.

When not working on a story or doing a little Web development, Drake can be found at his workbench building all manner of things physical and electronic, like the solar-powered Timbuk2 backpack that accompanies him almost everywhere.

He also loves to twist through the Peninsula hills on his classic Triumph motorcycle. (And, now that he is our employee again, perhaps we’ll make him do it with Scoble in tow.)

Drake joins a spate of recent hires at ATD, including: Liz Gannes on social (now appearing here in her new blog, NetworkEffect); Tricia Duryee on e-commerce; Ina Fried on mobile; and, last but not least, Arik Hesseldahl on enterprise.

And, as usual, much more to come….

“Some people leave, some get promoted and some good people arrive.”

Yes, indeedy, and this afternoon, it was David Katz’s turn to say goodbye. He was Yahoo’s VP for Mobile, North America. (He is pictured here, and you can read his bio here.)

The move, said sources, is part of a reorganization in the wake of the departure of David Ko, SVP Audience of Mobile and Local, North America.

He was replaced by Raymond Stern, who also heads business development.

If it seems a little confusing, it is because it is.

But there are all kinds of management rejiggering discussions going on after the additional departures of U.S. head Hilary Schneider and Media VP Jimmy Pitaro.

Mobile is an important arena for Yahoo, as Bartz also stressed in the call today.

Let’s hope Dave lands somewhere good, as he seems so nice from this recent video from the CTIA conference just two weeks ago, posted by Yahoo:

Finally, a funny from Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, confirming what BoomTown reported yesterday about the departures of three top execs in an email memo to the company’s employees worldwide.

It just went out and began: “Carol from the foxhole here.”

Actually, she’s in Georgia. In the memo, Bartz said she expects to announce the new head of the Americas region for Yahoo (YHOO) to replace outgoing chief Hilary Schneider before the end of the year.

The company also released a similar statement, which is below, adding that Raymond Stern, Yahoo SVP of North America partnerships and business development, will take over for another outgoing exec, Audience head David Ko.

(Yahoo VP of Media Jimmy Pitaro was the third in the sweep of execs.)

And you can see Yahoo’s just-filed 8-K here on Schneider, because a departure of such a top exec requires regulatory notification. It is also embedded below.

(By the way, they are not rumors if they are true. Don’t drop-kick me to f***ing Mars for saying so, Carol!)

Here’s the full memo from the All Things Digital Bartz-fortified bunker, just in case, signing out:

Yahoos,

Carol from the foxhole here. No, actually I’m in Atlanta to give a speech later tonight, and doing some client meetings.

But I’m sure you’ve seen the rumors about Hilary Schneider, David Ko, and Jimmy Pitaro leaving. Yes, they’re leaving, but each for different reasons that suit their life–and Hilary will send a separate note to her team with more about the Americas org. later today.

After nearly four years with Yahoo!, Hilary has decided to move on to the next phase in her career. Hilary has played a major role at Yahoo! in driving our strategies for content, online advertising and more. I want to thank her for her contributions over the years, and wish her the best as she moves on.

We expect to announce the new head of the Americas region before the end of the year. There is a lot of interest in joining our team for such a key position and, in the meantime, Hilary will stay on to help with the transition.

Now, you all know we’ve been intensely focused on improving our operations and top line growth. And we’ve seen good progress. But there’s a lot more to do, and as we transition to a new leader for the Americas we’re taking this opportunity to double down on these efforts. Hilary’s successor will clearly be maniacally focused on growing our top line in the region.

So everyone stay calm–we have a good plan in place. In fact, I’m more fired up than ever and can roll with the punches. Yahoo! is a great place.

Carol

And here is the official statement from Yahoo:

Yahoo! today announced the departures of Hilary Schneider, Yahoo!’s EVP Americas Region; David Ko, SVP Audience, Mobile and Local, North America; and Jimmy Pitaro, Vice President of Media. Yahoo! continues to be committed to delivering the best digital experiences to consumers, leadership to advertisers and amazing scale and reach to partners.

Hilary Schneider has played a major role at Yahoo! in driving the company’s strategies for content, online advertising and more. David Ko and Jimmy Pitaro have both made countless contributions to Yahoo! and have helped transform the company’s mobile and content strategies in a constantly evolving business environment. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

Raymond Stern will assume responsibility for David Ko’s teams and duties. The company is seeking a new head of the Americas region and expects to make that announcement before the end of the year. Schneider will stay on to help with the transition.

And here is the 8-K:

Current Report on Form 8-K.html –

Here’s today’s Silicon Valley roundelay:

Rob Macdonald (pictured here), head of traditional media and publisher partnerships at Google (GOOG), just joined online publishing and document-sharing start-up Scribd as SVP of business development.

He will be based in New York, where Scribd is opening an office too.

Over at AOL (AOL), former Yahoo (YHOO) exec Brad Garlinghouse has snagged longtime Apple veteran Alan Eyzaguirre (pictured here) as the new VP of AOL Mail.

Eyzaguirre, who was most recently director of software product marketing in Europe at Apple, will be based in Mountain View, Calif.

But Google is not without seat at this job switcheroo–it has hired Venkat Panchapakesan (pictured here), a high-ranking former Yahoo tech exec and a longtime company veteran who left the Internet giant last year to be an entrepreneur-in-residence at Greylock Partners.

At Yahoo, Panchapakesan was last EVP of the Audience Technology Group and at Google will be VP of Enterprise Engineering, according to his new LinkedIn status.

Well-known tech entrepreneurs and twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi (pictured here, right to left) are leaving MySpace, in a high-profile departure for the struggling social networking company.

Internal memos were sent around to staff this afternoon about the executive change, said sources, which you can see below.

“Hey everybody, it’s been super tough staying quiet about this news at the request of our execs,” said Hadi Partovi, in an internal memo obtained by BoomTown. “I know some of you are very surprised about this, and I want to apologize for not having had the option to brief you personally in advance.”

Hadi was SVP of Technology at the News Corp. (NWS) unit, while Ali was SVP of Business Development. Hadi will leave MySpace entirely, while Ali will have a special adviser role, said the memo from MySpace Co-President Michael Jones.

In a blog post in March titled, “MySpace Musical Chairs: Will the Partovis Stay or Will They Go Now?,” I wrote:

“In all likelihood, said sources, the Partovis will remain at MySpace for the next several months, although they are likely to move eventually to more senior advisory or special-project roles there in order to pursue longtime outside investing and entrepreneurial interests.”

Now that has come to pass.

The fate of the well-known tech wunderkinds has been one of the more interesting guessing games of late at MySpace.

MySpace managers have been keenly interested in avoiding the appearance that the company is in the grip of a talent drain, especially related to such well-known innovators.

The Partovis arrived in the midst of turbulent change at MySpace last August, just after its original CEO and co-founder, Chris DeWolfe, was suddenly tossed out and replaced by CEO Owen Van Natta, as well as COO Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn.

As part of its new strategy to become an entertainment hub, the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace bought the Partovis’ social music start-up, iLike, in a deal engineered by Van Natta.

After it closed, Hadi was mostly working in MySpace’s Seattle office, and Ali was mostly based in San Francisco.

(See this funny welcome video Ali Partovi did at the time.)

But Van Natta suddenly got the boot in January after clashing with News Corp. digital chief Jon Miller, as well as Hirschhorn and Jones, sending MySpace into yet another storm.

Hirschhorn and Jones were then named co-presidents.

While several sources said the Partovis are not unhappy with the pair or with the new MySpace mediacentric strategy, the brothers sold their company with the idea of working with Van Natta.

“That firing reset things,” said one source close to the situation in March.

Nonetheless, there was some progress with iLike, including integration of MySpace Music with Google (GOOG) and a MySpace Events offering.

In addition, the pair have wide-ranging interests outside the company, including an active investment portfolio in such start-ups as Facebook, Dropbox, Opower, BlueKai and Flixster.

They have already scored big with investments in Tellme, which was sold to Microsoft (MSFT); Zappos, which was acquired by Amazon (AMZN); and IronPort, now owned by Cisco (CSCO).

And though iLike was not the success they had hoped for, their entrepreneurial record is strong. Ali Partovi sold LinkExchange to Microsoft, and Hadi Partovi, who also worked at Microsoft, co-founded Tellme.

Now, it seems, the Partovis are moving on to the next challenge.

Here are the internal memos from Hadi Partovi to iLike staff and from MySpace’s Jones:

From: Hadi Partovi
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 5:15 PM
Subject: Fwd: Organizational Update (re Ali + Hadi)
To: staff
Cc: Ali Partovi

Hey everybody, it’s been super tough staying quiet about this news at the request of our execs. I know some of you are very surprised about this, and I want to apologize for not having had the option to brief you personally in advance.

I also want to call out looking backwards that we’ve all done a heck of a lot in just the last 6 months to help improve the MySpace business and to integrate iLike technology. Just a short list is below.

- iLike integrated MySpace Music into Google search (iLike provided the team, technology, and Google deal)
- iLike team+technology helped implement MySpace Events, launched with multi-million-dollar sponsorship commitments
- all iLike.com traffic has been merged into MySpace’s overall Comscore metrics
- iLike’s products have been featured in a TV ad by Apple, and will be in an upcoming TV ad by another major tech company
- iLike’s promotional engine has been used multiple times in coordination with MSM to promote new albums or new artists
- MSM videos have been integrated into iLike.com and iLike on Facebook
- iLike’s artist-stats are integrated into the MySpace artist dashboard
- iLike.com drives search engine traffic to MySpace artist pages
- iLike team implemented the imeem traffic redirection and data backend of imeem playlist integration
- iLike team provided backend metadata + recommendation engine for MySpace music search and song-similarities

Most importantly, thanks to our work, MySpace is the #1 provider of music on Facebook, music on Google, and Concerts on iPhone. Regardless of any challenges that MySpace needs to overcome, that is a great legacy that I know we’re all proud of.

I’m personally very sad that I won’t be working with any of you–the amazing team we built at iLike is perhaps our greatest accomplishment.

I’ll send an email to the Seattle folks to organize a proper going-away celebration :)

hadi

From: Mike Jones
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 4:52 PM
Subject: Organizational Update
To: XXX
Cc: Jason Hirschhorn

Hi everyone,

Effective on Friday, MySpace SVP of Technology Hadi Partovi is leaving to pursue other opportunities. In addition to continuing his work as an advisor and angel investor to various startups, he will be following his passion for education by working directly with technology focused non-profits. Hadi leaves as a valued friend to the company, and we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

Ali Partovi will be stepping down as SVP of Business Development, but will continue working with MySpace as a strategic advisor working on special projects. He will also be taking time to invest in and advise startups.

Hadi and Ali were instrumental in integrating iLike’s best in class technology into the MySpace brand. Last week’s successful Events launch was a direct result of that collaboration. Other noteworthy product integrations include last year’s Google Music Search integration and the Local Concerts App, which is currently the most downloaded concerts app for the iPhone and was featured in one of Apple’s latest iPhone TV spots.

Please join us in thanking Ali and Hadi for their contributions to MySpace.

-Jason & Mike

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

It’s familiar territory for her in more than one way, since she once helped Google (GOOG) manage the same geography.

Shields has had a busy couple of years: Two years ago, she arranged the sale Bebo to AOL (AOL) for $850 million. A year after that, she took off, and ended up in a content start-up backed by Elisabeth Murdoch’s Shine Group.

It’s unclear what happened to that now less-than-shiny project.

Blake Chandlee, who had been running the EMEA group at Facebook, is getting moved out of that job and will now run sales in emerging markets: Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

This is the second high-profile hire–and of a former Googler–by the social networking site recently. Last week, Facebook hired top-ranking Google ad exec David Fischer as VP of Advertising and Global Operations.

With Fischer and former Googler COO Sheryl Sandberg, who has been eyeing Shields as a possible Facebook recruit since she left AOL, it seems an Ex-Googleplex is forming at Facebook’s new HQ in Palo Alto, Calif.

Some of the many former Googlers include Elliot Schrage, VP of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy; Grady Burnett, head of online and inside sales; Don Faul, director of global online operations; and Ethan Beard, director of the Facebook Developer Network.

While there have surely been a lot of departures of talent at MySpace over the last year, including two major shifts in top management, one of the more interesting guessing games of late concerning the social networking company has been over the fate of well-known tech wunderkinds Hadi and Ali Partovi.

According to many sources inside and outside the company, that’s just the discussion the pair of serial entrepreneurs has been having with its newest leaders, as well as with News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller.

(News Corp. owns MySpace, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

In all likelihood, said sources, the Partovis will remain at MySpace for the next several months, although they are likely to move eventually to more senior advisory or special-project roles there in order to pursue longtime outside investing and entrepreneurial interests.

“They’re definitely staying for now,” said one source. “But it’s the ‘how’ is what’s being worked out.”

There are many shifting scenarios as the sides hash it out, said sources, but MySpace execs are keenly interested in avoiding the appearance that the company is in the grip of a talent drain, especially with such high-profile innovators.

Still, in an interview with BoomTown at MySpace’s Beverly Hills, Calif., HQ earlier this week (you can see part of that chat in the video below), Co-President Jason Hirschhorn said that there are likely to be a lot more departures at the company, as well as arrivals.

“It’s normal in a situation like this,” said Hirschhorn, quite correctly, given the wringer MySpace has gone through over the last year.

The Partovis arrived in the midst of turbulent change at MySpace, after its original CEO and co-founder, Chris DeWolfe, was suddenly tossed out and replaced by CEO Owen Van Natta, as well as COO Michael Jones and Chief Product Officer Hirschhorn.

As part of its new strategy to become an entertainment hub, MySpace bought the Partovis’ struggling social music start-up, iLike, last summer in a deal engineered by Van Natta.

After it closed, Hadi (pictured left) became an SVP of technology, mostly working in MySpace’s Seattle office, and Ali (pictured right) became its SVP of business development, mostly based in San Francisco.

But Van Natta suddenly got the boot in January, after clashing with Miller, as well as Hirschhorn and Jones, sending MySpace into yet another storm.

Hirschhorn and Jones were then named co-presidents.

While several sources said the Partovis are not unhappy with the pair or with the new MySpace media-centric strategy, the brothers sold the company with the idea of working with Van Natta.

“That firing reset things,” said one source close to the situation.

In addition, the pair have wide-ranging interests outside the company, including an active investment portfolio in such start-ups as Facebook, Dropbox, Opower, BlueKai and Flixster.

They have also already scored big with investments in Tellme, which was sold to Microsoft (MSFT); Zappos, which was acquired by Amazon (AMZN); and IronPort, now owned by Cisco (CSCO).

And though iLike was not the success they had hoped for, their entrepreneurial record is strong. Ali Partovi sold LinkExchange to Microsoft, and Hadi Partovi, who also worked at Microsoft, co-founded Tellme.

That said, with talent-retention packages in place for both Partovis, and good will between them and the new leaders, the sides are trying to come up with a workable arrangement.

MySpace declined to comment, but The Clash sure will (as well as Jones and Hirschhorn, below):

[T-shirt photo courtesy of Zazzle.com]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100311/myspace-musical-chairs-will-the-partovis-stay-or-will-they-go-now/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20091216/yahoo-hires-stern-for-senior-partnership-and-biz-dev-post/ http://allthingsd.com/20091216/yahoo-hires-stern-for-senior-partnership-and-biz-dev-post/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:19:37 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22037

Yahoo appears to have made a significant new hire, installing Raymond Stern (pictured here) as SVP of North America partnerships and business development.

Stern has had stints as CEO at Presto Services and SVP of strategy and CMO at Intuit (INTU).

Stern alerted the world to the new job after updating his status on LinkedIn.

Stern’s role at Yahoo (YHOO) seems to be slightly broader than the person he is replacing, Jim Schinella, who was SVP for corporate partnerships.

Schinella, who is about to leave Yahoo, focused on major partners, such as big telecom firms like Verizon (VZ).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091216/yahoo-hires-stern-for-senior-partnership-and-biz-dev-post/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20090920/yahoo-corporate-partnership-svp-schinella-departing/ http://allthingsd.com/20090920/yahoo-corporate-partnership-svp-schinella-departing/#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:51:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=18643

Another high-ranking Yahoo exec is leaving–this time, Jim Schinella, the company’s SVP for corporate partnerships.

Sources said that Schinella (pictured here) announced the move internally recently, telling staff he would stay on until the end of the year.

Located in New York, he has been focused on big Yahoo (YHOO) partners such as big telecom firms like Verizon (VZ).

Schinella joined Yahoo in 2003 and left in 2005, after becoming its global VP of business development.

He returned in 2007, as Yahoo said at the time, to focus on “proactively identifying strategic partnership opportunities that align with Yahoo!’s brand and leverage the company’s broad product offerings.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090920/yahoo-corporate-partnership-svp-schinella-departing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090630/here-comes-the-video-shakeout-joost-scales-down-ceo-mike-volpi-steps-out/ http://allthingsd.com/20090630/here-comes-the-video-shakeout-joost-scales-down-ceo-mike-volpi-steps-out/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:49:51 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=8803 Here’s the beginning of the inevitable online video shakeout: Joost, the once-hyped video service that was supposed to rival Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, is restructuring to focus on “white label” services, i.e., a back end for other video players.

The service is laying off the majority of its employees, and CEO Mike Volpi (pictured right) is out, replaced by Matt Zelesko, who had been SVP of engineering. The Joost.com portal site will stay open, but best to think of it as an ad for the company’s hosting and distribution services, which it will try to sell to cable companies and the like.

A Joost spokesperson declined to say how deep the layoffs will be; but I’m told that the company, which had more than 100 employees last fall, will be down to a couple dozen after the cuts are done. In a post on Joost’s Web site, Volpi said the company “will say goodbye to many of our colleagues and friends.”

This isn’t a shock: Joost’s fate has been the subject of whisper and rumors for the last year or more. The service made an initial splash in 2007 by raising $45 million from the founders of Skype and an array of high-profile investors and media companies, including Sequoia Capital and Viacom (VIA), and was initially supposed to deliver copyrighted content via a peer-to-peer distribution system and a player that users downloaded to their desktops.

But YouTube, and later Hulu, conditioned users to watch video via their browsers, and Joost’s software never caught on. By last fall, the company had retooled and began offering video via the browser like everyone else, but it has never been able to generate a significant audience. In November, a month after the company launched its Web browser, it said it was attracting 2.1 million unique users world-wide, a fraction of YouTube’s audience, and well behind rivals like Hulu, MetaCafe, Veoh and DailyMotion.

Here’s the service’s unique visitor count, per Comscore (SCOR); Joost’s unique viewer count, which is the more relevant metric for video sites, is considerably smaller (click to enlarge):

Joost has been a frequent candidate for buyout rumors, and the company hasn’t gone out of its way to deny them. The supposed buyers would be cable companies like Comcast (CMCSA) Time Warner Cable (TWC) or telcos like AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ), which would presumably use Joost’s technical team to help build out their own Web video plays.

But some of the cable guys and telcos insist that they’re fine with the people they have. And if they do want to buy a video player, they have plenty of options: Just about all of Joost’s peers have been on the block, formally or informally, for the past few months.

JOOST TO PROVIDE WHITE LABEL ONLINE VIDEO PLATFORM

NEW YORK AND LONDON – June 30, 2009 – Joost, the online video startup, announced today that, along with Joost.com, it will focus on providing white label online video platforms for media companies, including cable and satellite providers, broadcasters and video aggregators. This technology and service offering will support content owners’ efforts to build comprehensive branded environments online.

Media companies around the world are embracing internet-based video portals as a key path to distribute their premium video, but building a world-class video portal is increasingly difficult and expensive. Joost will focus on this issue and provide the market with a cost-effective, end-to-end solution for media companies to publish video under their own brands.

As a part of this new direction, Joost will reorganize and restructure its business. A core team in New York and London will work on providing these solutions, as well as operating and supporting Joost.com and its associated video applications. Joost also will wind down operations in its Leiden development center.

Matt Zelesko, currently SVP of Engineering at Joost, will take over as CEO while continuing to lead the engineering organization. Stacey Seltzer, currently SVP of international business development and content acquisition at Joost, will run the business operations. Mike Volpi has stepped down as CEO of Joost but will remain actively involved as Chairman of the Board.

Joost plans to make its white label video platform commercially available to media companies around the world. This offering will provide a solution for companies looking to build a branded experience for their content on their own site as well as other sites and platforms in their distribution networks.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090630/here-comes-the-video-shakeout-joost-scales-down-ceo-mike-volpi-steps-out/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090416/google-still-shaking-up-sales-force-nikesh-arora-replaces-omid-kordestani/ http://allthingsd.com/20090416/google-still-shaking-up-sales-force-nikesh-arora-replaces-omid-kordestani/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:31:17 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=6395 Here’s the other shoe that hadn’t dropped following Tim Armstrong’s move from Google to run Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL: Omid Kordestani, who was the official head of Google sales, has been moved aside in favor of Nikesh Arora (pictured).

After Armstrong, who was Google’s best-known sales exec but not its highest-ranking, left, Arora was supposed to be a candidate for his job. But that post, or a version of it, went to company veteran Dennis Woodside.

Here’s the text of the announcement, buried at the bottom of Google’s earnings report:

“After ten years of building and managing our global sales and partnership operations, Omid Kordestani has decided to hand over the reins to Nikesh Arora, currently President of International Operations, and take on a new role as Senior Advisor, Office of the CEO and Founders. Continued growth is essential to our future success and no one is better placed to advise on new revenue opportunities than Omid, the business founder of Google. In his new role as President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development, Nikesh Arora will have responsibility for all Google’s revenue and customer operations, as well as marketing and partnerships. He has a proven track record at Google, having spent the last four and a half years building our European operations into a substantial business.”

Google (GOOG) points out that Kordestani’s new position will be a full-time job and will report directly to CEO Eric Schmidt. And during the company’s earnings call, Schmidt took pains to both praise Kordestani, who was on the call, and repeatedly refer questions to him.

Still, the move is bound to bring up the question: Is Kordestani being blamed in any way for the sales slowdown at Google? During the call, Schmidt argued (quite sensibly) that sales were down because the economy was down. But Google also just let go of 200 of sales people, after Kordestani explained that “When companies grow that quickly it’s almost impossible to get everything right–and we certainly didn’t.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090416/google-still-shaking-up-sales-force-nikesh-arora-replaces-omid-kordestani/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081211/cbs-interactivecnet-re-org-the-complete-memo/ http://allthingsd.com/20081211/cbs-interactivecnet-re-org-the-complete-memo/#comments Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:37:02 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=2024

CBS paid $1.8 billion for CNET last summer, and today it is dealing with the consequences: A re-org and layoffs.

CBS execs won’t release specifics on the firings and won’t say how many people were let go altogether. So news will be coming out in piecemeal fashion for some time.

The best that I can tell, though, the cuts came throughout the company’s interactive group, from its London-based last.fm radio service through CBS (CBS) headquarters in New York to CNET’s homebase in San Francisco.

Based on the fact that CBS Interactive boss Quincy Smith flew to the west coast to quarterback the re-org this morning–and the fact that CNET was much, much bigger than the CBS Interactive group–I’m assuming that more CNET employees were let go than anyone else.

Quincy, if I’m wrong, please let me know. And CBS Interactive/CNET employees can reach me directly at peter@allthingsd.com.

In the meantime, here’s the new structure of Smith’s group, via an internal memo that comes from him and Neil Ashe, his CNET counterpart:

Team,

As we come to the end of 2008, we have a lot to be proud of. CBS Interactive is the best online content network for information and entertainment. Our properties are expanding, advertisers are capitalizing on our properties and their scale, and we are positioned well to continue to grow. As we prepare for 2009 and beyond, we’d like to update you on this progress, announce some organizational changes and comment on the broader market environment and how it impacts CBS Interactive.

Progress

CBS Interactive is the 8th largest Internet network in the world. Our combined traffic is up nearly 30% since we closed the merger this summer. CNET, CBSSports.com, BNET, GameSpot, TV.com, CBS.com, last.fm, and CHOW have each had record traffic within the past three months. Our commitment to our users is paying off.

Advertisers have noticed. We have recently signed and announced deals across several of our properties with Microsoft, AT&T, Intel, Bertolli, EA, and GM. In these challenging economic times, marketers are consolidating their efforts with their best partners. Our properties, our audiences, our ideas and our insights will continue to differentiate us in the marketplace.

Finally, we have contributed to and benefited from the TV and Radio divisions of CBS. We’ve done nearly 1,500 purpose-driven promotions to our properties on Broadcast TV, Radio and local TV Stations; CHOW and GameSpot content is running on the CBS Outernet; and CNET ran a major consumer campaign in markets like New York and San Francisco through CBS Outdoor. CBS Interactive is also a key partner to CBS Television Network for major broadcast events. In just the last week, we featured complementary content for events including The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, the Grammy Nominations and the SEC Championship.

Moving forward, we have a lot to look forward to. Events like CES, The Grammys, and March Madness on Demand are all just around the corner. Each represent huge cross-platform opportunities where CBS Interactive will again help complete the experience with coverage on air, online, and on mobile for our audiences.

Organizational Promotions and Changes

As we enter 2009, we are making some changes to our organizational structure to capitalize on audience and advertiser overlaps. We are also making some changes to key functions so that we can realize the benefits of our position in the marketplace. These changes mark another significant milestone in our integration, as we fine-tune our organization to best take advantage of the power of our entire network.

Sports, Games and Music

We are combining our Sports, Games and Music properties into a single group led by Steve Snyder. Steve has tremendous product and leadership experience and an enthusiasm for each of these categories. In addition, Tom Jones will be moving over from CNET to head-up the sales efforts for this group. Within the group, our talented senior leaders including Jason Kint, Rich Calacci, Jaci Hays, Kevin Menard, Felix Miller, Doug Schmidt and others will report to Steve and to Tom.

Entertainment & Lifestyle

We are also moving our Lifestyle properties, CHOW and UrbanBaby, to the Entertainment group (TV.com, CBS.com, The CBS Audience Network and TheInsider.com) to capitalize on the similarities in audience and advertisers. This group will continue to be led by Anthony Soohoo with sales led by Ken Lagana. We’re excited to see the innovation that will come from this group in 2009.

Technology & News

Under the continued leadership of Joe Gillespie, our Technology & News division will bring CBSNews.com and CNET News.com into a single CBS Interactive News Group. Each site will maintain its own brand identity, while benefiting from shared resources in design, product and engineering to deliver deeper and more comprehensive coverage of major stories and events. Led by Mark Larkin, with Dan Farber as Editor-in-Chief, CBS News.com and CNET News.com will also have the opportunity to share content and collaborate on stories for the benefit of their unique audiences.

CBS Interactive Marketing

We are bringing together our key marketing functions into a new group called CBS Interactive Marketing led by Mickey Wilson. The group brings together expertise from across the organization so that we can capitalize on our biggest opportunities, and elevate the company to be a strategic marketing partner whose products, consumer insights, and ad innovations are critical to our clients’ long-term success. They will establish the company as the standard for premium content online, and define and evolve brand strategies to capture the biggest opportunities for audience and revenue growth through market planning, insights and execution.

CBS Interactive Business Development

We are also bringing together all of our business development activities. This group will be led by Mike Marquez. Mike and his team will be responsible for the development of all new partnerships, investments, and acquisitions. They will be charged with taking advantage of knowledge sharing across the whole company to ensure that we are the strategic partner of choice for the industry.

Market Conditions

As you know the general economic environment continues to be a challenge. We have always been very aggressive about managing our costs, and that requirement is even more critical now than it has ever been. We believe this new, more efficient organizational structure will produce better results for CBS Interactive, and also result in lower operating costs. It is always very difficult to make these kinds of reductions, but they come after a thorough review of how we are organized and how we operate, and what best serves our many users, advertisers and employees.

CBS Interactive is a special place because of you, and we thank each of you for what you have done, are doing, and will do to exceed the expectations of the tens of millions of people who come to our properties every day.

Today, we sit in a great position. People seek out our brands because we provide them with the information and entertainment they want and need, and marketers seek us out because of the powerful audiences we attract. We are positioned to grow in 2009 and beyond.

Best,
-q, NA

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