Taylor Barada (pictured here), Yahoo’s recently appointed head of M&A, is joining Zynga in an unspecified role.

Barada replaced Andrew Siegel, who left Yahoo in December to join Condé Nast.

Yahoo staff was told of the move yesterday.

According to his bio at the Silicon Valley Internet giant:

“Taylor works with the Americas and Global Product orgs at Yahoo! leading strategic analysis/execution of acquisitions, divestitures, investments and other strategic relationships. Recent transactions include the sale of Zimbra to VMware and the acquisition of Citizen Sports. Prior to Yahoo! he worked as an investor, consultant, and operator at Rosewood Capital, Bain & Company, and Peregrine Systems. Taylor started his career as a professional soccer player and was a three time National Champion at the University of Virginia while completing his B.A. in History and Foreign Affairs.”

Barada’s departure to the San Francisco online gaming phenom–which was apparently able to extend him a more lucrative offer–will will put a crimp in Yahoo’s already slow-moving merger and acquisition strategies.

Yahoo declined to comment and I have emailed Zynga and have not yet heard back.

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.)

Even for a story in which everyone involved insists there was no funny business going on, that’s a perfectly natural reaction and I get the prurient interest.

Thus, the resignation of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) head Mark Hurd and the private settlement of sexual harassment claims with consultant Jodie Fisher have morphed into a juicy summer potboiler, complete with claims and counterclaims, and even a cheesy demo reel (see below).

And also the odd appearance of Gloria Allred, lawyer to seemingly every celebrity mistress in California. Fisher said in a statement (also see below) she was no such thing, and was “saddened” by Hurd’s ouster.

Seems like crocodile tears to me, but today, when the markets open, we’ll see if any of it matters to investors or if they have moved on to trying to determine the next moves for the tech giant and its leadership.

Let’s hope Wall Street is less interested in gory details and more in business performance.

Still, already, the judgment on the Hurd debacle has hurt HP shareholders badly, shaving 9.7 percent off its shares, which closed down $4.50 at $41.85.

Encouragingly, the stock was up 1.8 percent in after-hours trading. But continued swirl around the company–especially about the large exit compensation package Hurd grabbed on his way out–could keep the stock in the doldrums for a while.

That’s too bad, since HP just put itself in the limelight with the acquisition of Palm and indications that it fully intended to compete in the fast-moving smartphone and tablet market with the webOS software platform.

Now, instead of turning up the public effort this year on making its consumer offerings more like Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG), the company is likely to be occupied answering questions that are not exactly on point.

As in: Who knew what and when and how was it expensed?

That means a very important message that HP needs to be getting out in the months ahead is not likely to break through for a while.

And that is why it is critical that HP’s board–which seems to have acted unusually swiftly and decisively with regard to Hurd’s missteps–move even faster to install a credible CEO at HP, especially one who can get everyone off the current meme and back onto the challenges facing the business.

In fact, much as Hurd did when he replaced Carly Fiorina in 2005 and quickly began to clean up her obvious mess. Except for a few bumps, the stock rebounded in his tenure, which was marked by stability and, well, dullness.

No longer.

In a statement Hurd made as he stepped down late last week, he said:

“I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP.”

Apparently not. Now shareholders are about to find out the price of his failure.

Until then, here’s Fisher’s demo reel video and statement, as well as the classic “Nudge, Nudge” skit from Monty Python:

Jodie Fisher statement on ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd –

“We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information. Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community limitations that we tell you about.”

–Facebook Privacy Policy, 2006

“When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting….The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.”…Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.”

– Facebook Privacy Policy, 2010

Perfect.

Facebook has enlisted a former senior Bush administration regulator to defend its privacy practices in Washington. Tim Muris, an attorney at law firm O’Melveny & Myers who served as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission from 2001 to 2004, is advising the company, whose privacy disclosures and fast and loose handling of user data are increasingly drawing scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Indeed, on May 5, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the FTC alleging that Facebook has engaged in unfair and deceptive trade practices in violation of consumer protection law.

“[The site] continues to manipulate the privacy settings of users and its own privacy policy so that it can take personal information provided by users and make it widely available for commercial purposes,” the Washington-based advocacy group said. “The company has done this repeatedly and users are becoming increasingly frustrated and angry.”

Clearly, the Facebook privacy backlash, which has been building for years now, has begun in earnest.

What better time, then, to seek the help of someone like Muris, who created the popular U.S. Do Not Call Registry and just last week received the Miles W. Kirkpatrick Award “for his significant and lasting contributions to the FTC, antitrust law, and the cause of consumer protection.”

Reached for comment, Facebook said Muris is not an official employee. “There have been some reports that Tim Muris has joined Facebook,” the company told me. “Muris has not joined Facebook.”

But he is serving as a consultant, something sources close to the company have told me, though Facebook declined to comment on.

BoomTown runs into venture capitalists all the time in Silicon Valley and elsewhere and usually tries to run the other way.

Not so last week, when I enjoyed a lovely lunch and chat with Accel Partners’ Kevin Efrusy.

Perhaps that’s because Efrusy, who joined the Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm in 2003 (the outfit now best known as Facebook’s VC), has actually been an entrepreneur rather than just an entrepreneurial pundit like too many of his ilk.

He launched Corio, a software-as-a-service start-up that went public, and was CEO of IronPlanet, an online e-commerce marketplace for heavy equipment.

(There was also a stint at consultant Bain & Company, which I am willing to overlook.)

A Stanford University multi-grad with a master’s in electrical engineering, Efrusy is actually named on the Accel Web site as the “source” of the firm’s investment in Facebook.

And he has led Accel’s funding of both consumer and enterprise start-ups, such as social group-buying site Groupon and SpringSource, the cloud-computing unit acquired by VMware (VMW) for $420 million recently.

Here’s the video interview I did with Efrusy about the investment market in both these areas, as well as the overall mood in VC land:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100322/accel-partners-kevin-efrusy/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090624/exclusive-yahoo-working-on-major-brand-overhaul-please-no-more-yodeling/ http://allthingsd.com/20090624/exclusive-yahoo-working-on-major-brand-overhaul-please-no-more-yodeling/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:39:50 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14908

In the past, Yahoo has used killer lasers and giant afros and has even tried a dog rising from the dead to brand itself.

Also, of course, there was the yodeler.

That was in 2003, in a clever television commercial that featured Yahoo’s famous sound, as rendered by yodeling champ Taylor Marie Ware (by the way, if you click on the exclamation point on Yahoo’s homepage, it still emits an annoying male yodel).

Now, in what many sources at the company said is a major push, Yahoo (YHOO) is working on a massive plan to overhaul its brand in order to repair a damaged public image and focus consumers on what defines Yahoo.

The effort is being spearheaded by newly installed Chief Marketing Officer Elisa Steele.

To take on the task, she has hired both well-known brand consulting firm Landor Associates and an outside consultant named Penny Baldwin, who was a former top exec at brand and ad giant Young & Rubicam.

Yahoo had formerly been using Ogilvy & Mather and Siegel+Gale to work on strategic branding issues. Ogilvy is still working with Yahoo, sources said, but it is unclear if Siegel+Gale remains in the mix.

The new branding of Yahoo, said several people close to the situation, might be built around the latest relaunch of its main homepage design.

The important front-page redo had been delayed by CEO Carol Bartz when she took over in January and is now slated for the fall.

Many themes have been considered to depict Yahoo in the future, many along the lines of Yahoo still being a key hub destination for Internet users.

Those possible directions were discussed at a recent off-site meeting of Yahoo’s top execs, led by Steele, who ran through the tangled history of Yahoo’s marketing efforts and showed off some rough ideas for the future.

One motto considered, among several: Yahoo as “your home on the Web.”

Whether it is going to be a sweet home or not is unclear, and does depend on exactly how much Yahoo is prepared to spend on this rebranding effort.

Microsoft (MSFT), for example, is in the midst of a $100 million marketing campaign around the recent relaunch of its Bing search service.

And Google (GOOG) has a brand that hardly needs any introduction–and on which it has spent very little marketing money–in that its name has become the verb that means “search” on the Web for most consumers.

Yahoo’s branding campaign will certainly have to be a big deal, given that it is one of the top Internet sites in the world and has massive name recognition.

And Bartz has been vocal about the importance of touting Yahoo as a well-known brand, even as she has said a lot internally and externally that she detests purple.

(That has long been Yahoo’s main color and also mantra, as in “bleed purple.”)

In an onstage interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in late May, I asked Bartz about the image of Yahoo being broken and how she would change that perception and revive its innovative spirit.

“The best way to change the perception is to do a good job and then talk about it,” she answered at D7. “We just have to get our story out there; we have to continue to appeal to the people that come to us, and frankly, at some point people get sick of having us as the underdog and say, ‘Thank God, Yahoo’s back.’”

Well, that could depend on how well its upcoming branding campaign works or not, which must also be based on the product and business strategy Bartz settles on in her rejiggering of Yahoo.

Tomorrow morning, Bartz will preside, along with Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock, at its annual meeting in Silicon Valley, although it is doubtful she will unveil any grand plan then for marketing or other major company strategies.

So, until the branding plans are unveiled, here are some of the more memorable Yahoo advertising efforts.

Yodel:

Lazarus the Dog:

Killer Laser:

Afro-tastic:

Odd Advice-giving Canadian Yahoo Creature:

[Belly Yodel photo courtesy of Yodel Anecdotal on Flickr]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090624/exclusive-yahoo-working-on-major-brand-overhaul-please-no-more-yodeling/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20090506/dailycandy-ceo-pete-sheinbaum-steps-down/ http://allthingsd.com/20090506/dailycandy-ceo-pete-sheinbaum-steps-down/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 10:44:33 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=6991 DailyCandy CEO Pete Sheinbaum is leaving the company, less than a year after Comcast bought the fashion and shopping newsletter from Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group Ventures for $125 million. His last day is Friday.

Sheinbaum, who started working for the company as a consultant in 2000 and took the top job in 2005, says he doesn’t have a new job lined up yet, though I’m told he has options. “I let them know after nine years it was time to look for the next thing,” he says via email.

I’m told that Comcast (CMCSA) is still pleased with the acquisition, which may have been the last Web 2.0 deal to close before last fall’s crash.

Here’s word from Comcast: “We wish Pete well, thank him for his work in growing Daily Candy. Catherine Levene, Chief Operating Officer and [founder] Dany Levy will continue to lead operations. For Comcast Interactive Media, IM, Daily Candy is overseen by Chuck Davis who is EVP at CIM and also runs Fandango. The transition under CIM has gone well and the company continues to grow–DC has added DailyCandy Video and DailyCandy Weddings.”

Here’s an interview with Sam Schwartz, the Comcast executive who engineered that deal and who says he’s still interested in other Web M&A:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090506/dailycandy-ceo-pete-sheinbaum-steps-down/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081215/the-168-hour-work-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20081215/the-168-hour-work-week/#comments Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:34:46 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=9637 If the line between your work and home life hasn’t yet been blurred by near-ubiquitous Internet connectivity, just you wait. Because by 2020 it’s likely to have been erased entirely. That’s the word from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, whose recent “Future of the Internet III” study suggests that the dawn of the mobile phone as a “primary” Internet connection will essentially obliterate the boundaries between work and home. Fifty-six percent of the Pew survey’s respondents agreed that by 2020 the formalized delineation of social, personal, and work time will have disappeared. “The 9-to-5 approach will disappear completely, with few exceptions,” ICANN Board member Roberto Gaetano told Pew. “The current separation between ‘work time’ and ‘free time’ is a byproduct of the industrial revolution, and is bound to disappear with it.”

So 12 years from now our work lives will be our lives entire?

That’s an unsettling thought. But if we’re always connected, always on the grid, then what’s to stop it from coming to pass? What’s to stop “the expansion of the work to encompass all time and all space,” as Nick Carr described it in his comments to Pew researchers. A reassertion of the same boundaries we’re seeing erased, I imagine. Otherwise we may have this to look forward to…

Said Benjamin Ben-Baruch, senior market intelligence consultant and applied sociologist for Aquent: “In 2020…a myth will develop that outside of formally scheduled activities, work and play can be seamlessly integrated in most of these workers’ lives. Employers will attempt to convince us that this is a net positive for people because we will be able to blend personal/professional duties…. However the reality will be quite different. Because we can be surveilled whenever we are ‘connected’ and especially because we can be surveilled whenever we are connected using our employer-provided devices, we can and will be controlled. Our employers will gain even more control over work-time discipline and over our lives and will be able to force even more productive working hours from us. Our lives will in fact be increasingly controlled by those who provide us with the devices that will have become increasingly necessary for us in both our work and personal lives as well as those who own and control the networks and network sites that we use and visit. Some companies will try to distinguish themselves as companies that do not actually use their power to watch and control us–but most companies will do the ‘fiscally responsible’ thing of using available technology to assert control.”

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