Hubert Burda Media/DLD Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro, right, in conversation at the DLD Munich conference

Yahoo’s problem: It’s a king of the portal age of the Web, in a time where we’re shifting away from reliance on the portal as we know it. And the big question for those long involved with Yahoo is just how it plans to deal with that major shift.

We haven’t heard many specifics from Yahoo, under the new Marissa Mayer regime, to date. But at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany, on Monday, newly dubbed COO Henrique De Castro gave the tiniest bit of insight into his vision of the portal to come.

“The desktop portal needs to transform itself,” De Castro said. “The personalization is not there, the tech is not there, and generalist portals are losing traffic.”

He wouldn’t talk specifics about Yahoo, unfortunately, citing that he’s only been in the job for two months. (Weak, I know.) But it’s obvious that Yahoo — along with other titans of the portal age like MSN and AOL — is undergoing this “waning portal power” problem.

All this dodging of specifics is frustrating for the the big media ad companies involved with Yahoo, who all want to know just how Yahoo plans to turn around its legacy content destination site — which, though still a powerhouse, is losing steam — into something competitive with today’s market.

It’s especially relevant considering some of Yahoo’s most recent stats; according to private ComScore data obtained by Kara Swisher, Yahoo’s Homepage, Mail and Search products all saw significant year-on-year declines in the remaining months of 2012.

“The winners,” according to De Castro, “are the ones who will aggregate premium quality content at scale, and distribute it in a personalized way.”

Okay then. Translation? None from Henrique, but here’s what I’m imagining. Yahoo’s homepage does a decent enough job of combining aggregated content from outside Web sites, and mixing it with Yahoo-produced media. I’d imagine the next iterations of Yahoo’s main properties do a far better job of personalization — through individual user profile upgrades, incorporation of more social content into users’ media diet and the like.

Update 3 pm CET: As my pal Jason Del Rey reminded me on Twitter, Yahoo has been working on getting personalization right since before the Mayer era at Yahoo — specifically through efforts under VP of Search and Personalization Mike Kerns, who leads the charge with Yahoo’s Social Bar.

Though De Castro admits, in a general, non-Yahoo-specific way, that the technology for key personalization isn’t there yet for these portal sites. Perhaps that’s where Marissa Mayer’s appetite for outside acquisitions comes into play?

And before a company can even think of tackling mobile — which, mind you, is one of Yahoo’s massive weaknesses that yields relatively no monetized fruit compared to the rest of the company’s properties — you first need to nail down personalization, he said. It’s table stakes.

“Once you do that, and the content is personalized and relevant, then you can do the same for different platforms,” De Castro said. “It’s not so much desktop verus mobile, it’s what is the future of the portal on the web?”

What is it indeed, Henrique? We’ll wait for you and Marissa to tell us more come next earnings call — or hopefully sooner than that.

Joi Ito/Flickr Newly dubbed Twitter COO Ali Rowghani

Rowghani, who has been with the company since 2010, came to Twitter to act as chief financial officer after leaving the same role he held at Walt Disney Company’s Pixar animation studios. He was at Pixar for more than nine years, serving as CFO for half that time.

Update 7 pm PT: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo just confirmed the news via tweet: “Congratulations to @rowghani on his new role as COO and to @mgupta on his new role as CFO.”

Rowghani has often been noted as the quiet, behind-the-scenes body man to Twitter CEO Costolo, taking on far more operational responsibilities than that of typical CFOs. Rowghani has had his hand in many important areas of the business, including contributing ideas around Twitter’s Promoted Suite of ad products, a key component of the company’s monetization efforts.

So effectively, Rowghani as COO is less of a new role than it is a solidification of his current efforts — a title change, as it were.

Newly dubbed Twitter CFO Mike Gupta

Twitter did not immediately respond for a request for comment.

The shuffle also comes on the heels of a major departure for Twitter, as VP of Growth Othman Laraki announced his departure from the company via tweet on Wednesday evening. Laraki was responsible for growing Twitter’s user base over the past year, which the company seems to have achieved; on Wednesday, Twitter announced it had reached the 200 million active user mark. He did not name his next landing point, though I assume he’ll be taking some time off, as he and his wife just had their first child.

The changes in the top ranks have been some time coming, as Twitter has spent the past year reorganizing the company into different teams, headed by high-profile tech hires stolen from other big companies around Silicon Valley (Google perhaps being the prime poaching target).

Earlier in the summer, Twitter snapped up Google sales guy Richard Alfonsi to become VP of global online sales, wrangling in most of the small and medium sized businesses that make of the long tail of Twitter’s ad business. Michael Sippey left SAY Media in January to head up Twitter’s VP of consumer product role, while Chris Fry and Adam Messinger were poached from Salesforce and Oracle, respectively, now holding VP of engineering posts.

Former VP of Growth Othman Laraki

Another potential pitfall is Twitter’s ability to hold on to key talent, as top figures like Laraki may prefer to leave the company after only a handful of years, opting instead to pursue the entrepreneurial route and build a new start-up. (Facebook, too, has this challenge to deal with.)

But it’s also another series of hires on Twitter’s long road in preparation for an IPO — which could potentially come in the next two years — solidifying key executive positions and building out the different divisions of the company under them.

This represents the second promotion for the executive since joining in April, so clearly, after what was essentially a very long job interview, Groupon is confident that the third time will be the charm.

Prior to his C-level appointment, Raman was the SVP of Global Sales and Operations. In his new role, he’ll continue reporting to CEO Andrew Mason and oversee, well, the company’s global sales and operations. (Basically, it’s just a title change, since that’s what what he was doing anyway.)

“In a very short time, Kal has had a significant impact on increasing the number and quality of local businesses using the Groupon platform to the benefit of Groupon customers around the world,” Mason said. “We are already seeing progress in Europe and Kal will be instrumental in leading our company as we deploy tools and technologies that will help us continue to grow both Groupon and the categories in which we operate.”

In an interview about his initial appointment, Raman was direct about what Groupon needed: Experience. He laughed off the characterization that he was adult supervision for the Chicago company, which is what many critics believed it needed at the time. Over his lengthy career, the 43-year-old has held roles at Amazon and was the CEO at Drugstore.com. But since he joined Groupon, things have gotten dicier for the daily deals company, which is seeing its core business erode in favor of a lower-margin e-commerce business. Groupon stock today closed at $2.73 a share, just off its all-time low of $2.60 a share.

Raman won’t be looking to duplicate the performance of Groupon’s past COOs. In April 2011, Groupon hired Google’s VP of Global Sales Margo Georgiadis to be COO, but she decided to return to Google after just a few months on the job. A pattern that was repeated after Georgiadis replaced Rob Solomon, who was only in his job for one year.

Yahoo said today in a regulatory filing that it had hired one of Google’s top sales execs, Henrique De Castro, as its COO.

Earlier today, I had reported that CEO Marissa Mayer had been close to nabbing the advertising exec, who has most recently been Google’s president of partners business solutions.

De Castro is getting a pile of money for taking the job, including a $600,000 yearly base salary and an annual bonus that could double that figure. In addition, the Silicon Valley Internet giant will give him $36 million in stock grants, including a one-time retention equity award of $18 million and $18 million in the form of performance-based stock options.

He is also getting $1 million in “make-whole” cash for forgoing compensation from Google and $20 million in stock to replace his shares at the search giant that will vest over four years.

That is a very big check, although Mayer garnered an even bigger one when she joined the company in July.

Yahoo’s regulatory statement on the De Castro hiring is embedded below in its entirety, so you can read about his new riches for yourself (unless Yahoo’s persnickety legal head tries to block it).

Said a Google spokesperson about the departure: “We’re grateful to Henrique for all of his contributions at Google and wish him all the best in his new role at Yahoo!”

Both Mayer and also former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson have made previous overtures to nab De Castro, who has held a number of high-level jobs for Google across the globe, including at DoubleClick, in display ads and with major partners.

While he had previously rebuffed those efforts, this time De Castro bit.

There were signs he might this past week, after De Castro canceled a major offsite for his employees, and several attendees who know him well said he was not present at the company’s first night of its annual Zeitgeist event for advertising and publishing clients. The suave De Castro is usually a more noticeable fixture at such gatherings.

This is Mayer’s first big hire at Yahoo, having added only lower-level or less well-known execs to her stable of talent since she was appointed.

She touted the hire in a tweet, although the news was long out the door, while also noting on Twitter it was her first full day at the office since having her first baby two weeks ago.

My first full day back in the office, and I’m excited to kick it off by announcing my new COO, Henrique de Castro: businesswire.com/news/home/2012…

— marissamayer (@marissamayer) October 15, 2012

The hiring does create a potential issue in the sales arena, especially with current head of revenue Michael Barrett. De Castro and Barrett worked together at Google and multiple sources said the pair did not get along there.

It might not matter. While Barrett has publicly said he planned to stay at Yahoo under Mayer — he was hired by interim CEO Ross Levinson this summer before she arrived — many sources said he does not want to be at the company for the long term.

De Castro has a lot of work to do for the big payout he is getting and it will be a big challenge for him to turn around the troubled organization.

Along with declining growth, search market share, engagement and more, Yahoo also has had a management turnover issue of epic proportions.

De Castro will presumably be in charge of making it all better at Yahoo when he arrives sometime before the beginning of the year and is likely to focus on operations while Mayer zeroes in on products.

One area of trouble: While she has lavished attention on cultural issues and on the company’s tech troops, sources said most of the advertising and media leadership at Yahoo have had little interaction with Mayer since she arrived this summer.

Advertising, of course, is Yahoo’s biggest money maker.

The Portugal-born De Castro has a lot of experience here and is decidedly more of a charmer than Mayer.

More importantly, he is a very high-profile hire, as well as a colorful one. He speaks a menu of languages, dresses with a lot of style and is a worldwide traveler. I know him a little bit and find him to be smooth and confident, even if a little cagey.

Before Google, De Castro worked at Dell and also McKinsey.

All this makes him a perfect choice for Mayer, who is also a former Googler, since she has been considering purchasing a range of companies in the advertising tech space. The most likely candidate of late is PubMatic, which has been in early talks with Yahoo about being acquired.

The Silicon Valley start-up would be a solid add to Yahoo’s ad platform offerings, especially if it wants to stay competitive with Google. PubMatic helps publishers effectively manage their display ad inventory, and competes with Google’s AdMeld.

(Ironically, Barrett ran that start-up, which he sold to Google for $400 million about a year ago.)

Here is the De Castro hiring document from Yahoo:

YHOO-20121015-8K-20121015

And here is the official press release from Yahoo:

Henrique de Castro Named Chief Operating Officer of Yahoo!

October 15, 2012

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) announced today that Henrique de Castro has been hired as chief operating officer (COO). Reporting directly to Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, de Castro will be responsible for strategic and operational management of Yahoo!’s sales, operations, media and business development worldwide.

“Henrique is an incredibly accomplished and rigorous business leader, and I’m personally excited to have him join Yahoo!’s strong leadership team,” said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!. “His operational experience in Internet advertising and his proven success in structuring and scaling global organizations make him the perfect fit for Yahoo! as we propel the business to its next phase of growth.”

“The combination of Yahoo!’s unique properties with high quality content, its renewed focus on outstanding user experience and its massive reach bring tremendous value to users, advertisers and partners,” said de Castro. “This is a pivotal point in Yahoo!’s history, and I believe strongly in the opportunity ahead. I can’t wait to join Marissa and the team and get started.”

De Castro brings more than 20 years experience leading operations, strategy, partner management and revenue generation for some of the world’s leading brands. Most recently, he was vice president of Google’s worldwide Partner Business Solutions group, where he was responsible for advertising platforms and services for Google’s publisher and commerce partners. Prior to that, he led Google’s media, mobile and platforms organization, where he helped to grow the business significantly. Prior to Google, de Castro spent two years at Dell Corporation, where he managed sales and business development operations across Western Europe. He has consulted for McKinsey & Company, where he advised numerous clients across many different industries. His career also includes senior positions in private equity and advertising businesses.

De Castro will join the company on or before January 22, 2013, or as soon as he has satisfied his obligations to his current employer.

And, as usually happens when a new CEO comes to a company, there has been a lot of upheaval among the senior management ranks at AMD. The latest is CFO Thomas Seifert, who resigned in order to pursue other interests.

Sources familiar with the situation say that Seifert, 48, is interested in finding a job where he has a shot at being CEO. He served briefly as acting CEO at AMD after the surprise resignation of then-CEO Dirk Meyer 19 months ago. Read was named CEO after a search that dragged on for seven months.

As I said, some upheaval is natural. But the departures from AMD are starting to pile up — the confirmed exits, counting Meyer and Seifert, are now 26 by my count, and I’m sure I’m missing some. Among them is a name not yet reported but confirmed by AllThingsD: Chris Cloran, VP in charge of AMD’s Client business — “client,” in this case, refers to PCs for both businesses and consumers — who left the company late last week, though his status on LinkedIn is not yet updated to reflect that fact.

Some of the people were fired, caught up in a reduction in force which Read ordered late last year. But most left on their own power, bound for jobs at places like Samsung, Synaptics and Calxeda.

Now, it’s not as if there haven’t been any key hires at AMD. Just last month, the company brought on Jim Keller, the former head chip designer at Apple. And last year it hired its CIO away from Hewlett-Packard. And there have been new hires in the graphics business. It also named Jack Harding, the chairman of eSilicon, as a director on its board. So there are some new people offsetting some of the departures, but the number of recent departures listed all together — all of them having taken place since Meyer was pushed out last year — is pretty stunning.

It’s worth nothing that AMD shares fell by more than 7 percent, or 30 cents, on the news of the CFO’s resignation. It’s been a rough ride for AMD shareholders over the course of the last year. Before Meyer’s ouster, the shares were trading above $9. On Monday they closed at $4.01, down 56 percent. The stock only fell further — another 7.5 percent — in after-hours trading, as markets reacted to word of Seifert’s departure.

Meyer’s 2011 ouster is said to have been precipitated by an argument with the board of directors over the direction of the company. Chairman Bruce Claflin, a former 3Com CEO, is said to have quarreled with Meyer over the need to invest heavily in chips for mobile devices, like tablets. Meyer is said to have resisted, arguing that AMD needed another year of improved stability before investing in any significant new product directions. Claflin disagreed, and pushed for a more aggressive stance in light of advances by Nvidia into mobile PCs and tablets.

Update: As of noon ET, AMD shares have fallen on the New York Stock Exchange by 32 cents, or nearly 8 percent, to $3.69.

Here’s what I’m sure is only a partial list, gathered from various news stories, LinkedIn profiles and chats with people familiar with AMD’s operations:

Bob Rivet, Executive VP and COO
Nigel Dessau, Chief Marketing Officer
Marty Seyer, Senior VP of Corporate Strategy
Patrick Moorhead, Corporate VP, Strategy
Patrick Patla, VP and General Manager, Opteron unit
Jim Mergard, VP and Chief Engineer
David Wang, Corporate VP Products Group
Ben Williams, Corporate VP and General Manager of Asia Pacific
Dave Kroll, VP for Global Communications
Jon Volkmann, Corporate VP and Marketing Fellow
Jeff VerHeul, Corporate VP of Platform Solutions Engineering
Bob Feldstein, VP of Strategic Development
Chris Cloran, General Manager, Processor Division
Andy Tseng, Corporate VP and General Manager, Taiwan
Frank Lee, Senior VP for Greater China
Anand Mandapati, Senior Director of Engineering
Carrell Killebrew, Director of Products Group
Eric Demers, Graphics CTO
Godfrey Cheng, Director of Client Technologies
Rick Bergman, General Manager, Products Group,
Gamal Refai-Ahmed, Senior Architect, ATI
John Bruno, System Architect, Office of the Chief Engineer
Paul Teich, Senior Fellow Corporate Strategy for Servers
John Fruehe, Director of Server Product Marketing
Emilio Ghilardi, Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer

According to several sources, Yahoo is now on the hunt for a COO — with special emphasis on someone with turnaround experience — presumably to be a worker-bee No. 2 to product-guru CEO Marissa Mayer.

Several Silicon Valley execs and others outside of tech have been contacted by Spencer Stuart, the executive talent firm that is working on a number of other exec searches for Yahoo.

It is not clear if Mayer is on board this plan for a COO and other sources said she has different ideas for the management organization at Yahoo, including an elaborate general manager system that is similar to that at Google. Mayer, who come to Yahoo from the search giant, has put a lot of practices from her former employer in place, from free food to weekly all-hands meetings to more stringent hiring.

In any case, those candidates contacted recently have been told that the company is looking for a top exec with a focus on restructuring and also finance. Presumably, in this scenario, Mayer will focus on product and innovation — her strengths — while the COO would perhaps be responsible for making the trains run on time on the business side of Yahoo. A plethora of employees who have met with her have stressed her intense interest in products, which is mirrored by much less attention to more mundane business issues.

Perhaps the highest profile COO hire of a similar sort has been Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, who was brought in at a dicey time for the social networking site to work on the business while co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg focused on its product.

Such an exec could be a good idea, since — despite the wide latitude Mayer has been given to make changes — Yahoo can not afford much damage to its current operations as Wall Street investors wait for her strategy to reinvigorate the company.

In fact, a recent filing in which Yahoo said Mayer was rethinking its promise to return a $4 billion-plus cash windfall from the sales of assets in China to shareholders caused the stock to drop quickly, largely due to a decided lack of information about what she planned to do with the money.

It will be interesting to see who would be intrigued by the mammoth job of helping fix Yahoo, since most think the process will inevitably include major layoffs.

Spencer Stuart’s Jim Citrin worked on the troubled tech giant’s recent CEO search, which ended up in the hiring of the high-profile Google exec. Mayer’s hiring was a public relations coup for Yahoo’s board, especially its large shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point.

Mayer herself has also been reaching out to her extensive circle of colleagues at Google and elsewhere in tech to come help her turn around Yahoo. Most recently, she has been trying to hire a former Googler Katie Jacobs Stanton, who once worked with Mayer and now runs international efforts for Twitter.

At the same time, several top execs have left Yahoo since Mayer arrived as she conducts a house cleaning and puts her own team into place. That has included its former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn and HR head David Windley. More such departures are expected.

Mayer has also kept execs, including making interim general counsel Ron Bell the permanent one last week. She has also relied heavily on Yahoo co-founder David Filo.

But her new hires have mostly been lower-level ones, made up of staff who had been close to her at Google.

I would ask for comment from Yahoo, but one of those Mayer newbies at Yahoo — Anne Espiritu, who appears to be a ghost — is still sitting on a number of my and other reporter’s requests to comment on various issues that have been completely unanswered. I have now decided to move onto the other two — Patricia Moll Kriese and Andrew Schulte — to see if they disappear too.

“Sheryl has been my partner in running Facebook and has been central to our growth and success over the years,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement. “Her understanding of our mission and long-term opportunity, and her experience both at Facebook and on public company boards makes her a natural fit for our board.”

Sandberg is the first woman to be appointed to the now eight-member board, joining CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with financial backers Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and Peter Thiel of Founders Fund, among others.

In addition to Facebook, Sandberg also sits on the boards of four other companies, including the Walt Disney Company and Women for Women International.

The appointment comes shortly after the end of Facebook’s eight-year trek toward becoming a public company, with much of that heavy lifting tasked to Sandberg upon her initial hiring. She was hired away from Google in 2008, where she served as the company’s vice president of global online sales and operations and is credited for building out the immensely profitable AdWords system, upon which Google’s massive digital advertising empire was built. Sandberg was charged with turning Facebook — then a fast-growing social start-up with lofty ambitions though little monetization strategy — into a viable, profitable business.

Which, arguably, Sandberg seems to have done. Of the $1.058 billion in revenues Facebook had in Q1, advertising — Sandberg’s specialty — made up $872 million of the total. So after what many would consider a successful tenure at the company thus far, it’s an arguably well justified appointment.

The question now, it seems, is an obvious one: What took so long?

Both are important hires for RIM, which has been without a CMO since 2011, and without a COO since Thorsten Heins became the company’s new CEO in January. They join the company at a difficult juncture, as it scrambles to launch its new BlackBerry 10 OS this fall, and again go head to head with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, operating systems that have bled RIM of market share with hardware that resonates with consumers and far more well-established application ecosystems.

Cook’s operational acumen has driven Apple’s expansion since he first joined it. As Chairman Steve Jobs once told Businessweek, “I couldn’t find anyone internally or elsewhere that knew as much as I did — so I did that job for nine months before I found someone I saw eye to eye with, and that was Tim Cook. After Tim came on board, we basically reinvented the logistics of the PC business.”

Given the importance and increasing complexity of Apple’s long-term strategic supply chain investments, can Apple manage without a COO for long?

In other words, does Tim Cook need his own Tim Cook?

“There will be a point in time where there will be a need for a successor to Tim Cook,” Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu says. “Obviously, that point isn’t now but could be in a few years.”

The most likely candidate for the job: Jeff Williams, who was promoted to senior VP of operations last summer. An Apple veteran, Williams has worked closely with Cook for over a decade and overseen some of the company’s major supply chain deals. It was Williams, for example, who orchestrated Apple’s massive flash memory purchase in 2005, one that effectively cornered the market for NAND flash and left rivals scrambling for supply. He’s also credited with leading worldwide operations for the iPhone since the device first launched.

So if someone is to succeed Cook as COO, Williams would appear to be the guy.

“My take is Apple does need a COO, and effectively has one with Jeff Williams,” says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “He has been VP of operations since 2004, and was promoted to Senior VP a year ago. Whether or not Jeff gets the COO title is hard to say.”

Indeed. The COO is traditionally viewed as CEO in waiting. Is Williams CEO material? That’s impossible to say at this point and it’s premature to speculate. But it’s worth noting if only because it might mean that Apple will keep the COO slot open until Williams is properly groomed for it, or the company finds a candidate it feels is more worthy.

“COOs serve two roles — to broaden a potential CEO successor and/or to divide up the administrative responsibilities in an organization,” says Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie. “It is too early for the former, and Tim Cook will have to decide if the latter is necessary. Many big companies do not have COOs, and I suspect that Apple will not appoint a new COO in the near term.”

Apple spokesperson Katie Cotton stopped short of denying further organization changes down the road, but she did insist the transition will be smooth.

“Apple is not going to change,” Cotton told AllThingsD. “Apple is a company and culture unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.”

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The company said its chief operating officer, Don Morrison, is taking a medical leave and is expected to return later this year. Mr. Morrison, who joined RIM in 2000, oversees the company’s domestic and international operations.

The Canadian company also said Larry Conlee, a former RIM chief operating officer, has returned as a special adviser.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Margo Georgiadis (pictured here), VP of Global Sales Operations at Google, will be COO of Groupon, Google confirmed.

She is currently located in Chicago, where the social buying site is headquartered.

A Google spokesman confirmed the move by Georgiadis, while Groupon–which specifically denied a query about her appointment that BoomTown made Tuesday–dithered.

In a statement, her boss, SVP and Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora said:

“I’m grateful for all that Margo has done for our team over the past two years. We will miss her, but we’re also very excited that she’s joining a terrific company and a great partner for Google.”

Besides COO, I will officially bestow the title of “Chief Cat Wrangler” on Georgiadis, for the massive organizational job ahead for her at the notoriously chaotic start-up. (As evidenced by Google being the company confirming a major Groupon hire.)

Still, Groupon’s growth had been stunning. It now has thousands of employees and has already washed out one COO, former Yahoo exec Rob Solomon, whose departure was reported here.

It has also turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google, raised a badillion dollars in venture funding from tech’s top investors and also is prepping an IPO valuing the company at upwards of $15 billion.

Phew!

Georgiadis must bring calm to this perfect storm.

Because of her solid resume (see below) and quiet demeanor, I had included her in a list of candidates several weeks ago and had queried the social buying company about her specifically this week.

In fact, when I asked for a comment if Georgiadis was hired on Tuesday, a Groupon spokeswoman said: “This would be news to me. Nothing to announce yet.”

At the time, Google had the class to simply say “no comment.”

(Lesson learned!)

Crain’s Chicago Business’ John Pletz first posted on Georgiadis’ hiring earlier today.

In any case, Georgiadis is just the kind of candidate that Groupon has been looking for–a competent and experienced sales and operations exec who would not overshadow its quirky CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason.

As I wrote two weeks ago:

Lastly, and perhaps most important, the Groupon COO candidate is going to have to accept that the role will not be a CEO-in-waiting, either before or after its inevitable IPO in the next year.

While I have received several tips that co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason might not stay its principal exec, extensive checking with sources inside and outside the company indicate that such a move is highly unlikely.

“Andrew is beloved to the board, by investors and, most of all, by employees,” said one source. “He’s not going anywhere.”

Indeed, Mason has a close working relationship with co-founder Brad Keywell, as well as Groupon co-founder and Chairman Eric Lefkofsky.

In fact, despite other business interests, Lefkofsky has been very involved in all key decisions with Mason.

That job, presumably, would fall to the new COO, which Groupon should be hiring sooner rather than later.

“Groupon needs a world-class COO, who can manage hyper-growth, but also who knows that a No. 2 stays in the background while doing it,” said another source. “That’s a tall order.”

Groupon has looked at a number of top execs, most specificially at former DoubleClick and Google exec David Rosenblatt. Sources said the high-profile exec did not want to play second fiddle to Mason or move to Chicago.

That’s moot now. Here is Georgiadis’ bio at the Silicon Valley search giant, which shows why Groupon picked her:

Georgiadis is responsible for driving Google’s sales operations and strategies across regions, channels and products as well as leading the sales technology teams which enable the successful commercialization of Google’s products (e.g., AdWords, AdSense, display and mobile ads) with advertisers and publishers.

She also leads the company’s local and commerce businesses, working to extend services like Checkout, Google Places and commerce search to small and large businesses alike.

Before joining Google, Margo was a principal in Synetro Capital LLC, a private investment firm based in Chicago. She also spent five years as the executive vice president of card products and chief marketing officer of Discover Financial Services where she led a radical turnaround of business performance and revitalized its rewards leadership with award-winning new products, customer experience and marketing. Prior to Discover, Margo was a partner at McKinsey and Company for 15 years in London and Chicago. She was a leader in the firm’s marketing and retail practices, and also co-founded and led the customer acquisition and management and retail marketing practices.

She has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Of all the many job openings in tech, perhaps the most interesting to watch will be who Groupon selects as its next COO.

The search has been on for a while for the critical hire for the Chicago-based social buying company, well before the recent announcement that it was parting ways with President and COO Rob Solomon.

Among those approached, said sources close to Groupon: Former Doubleclick and Google exec David Rosenblatt.

He’s not taking the job for a variety of reasons, sources said, but
finding someone to step up for the job will be tough, since it is likely to be one that will require a wide range of talents.

That includes: epic cat-wrangling of thousands of employees in far-flung locations; deep marketing and advertising prowess; high-level technology, product, mobile and e-commerce chops; and international experience.

The last is perhaps the most critical of all, since global growth–especially in Europe and Asia–is increasingly becoming Groupon’s main revenue driver, and the COO will have to pull together a crack team across the world.

That will become even more important after Groupon’s top international managers–Germany’s entrepreneurial Samwer brothers–move out of active management by the end of this year.

While company sources said this has been long planned, the Samwers (pictured here) have been fully involved in Groupon’s fast trajectory in Europe and elsewhere, since it bought their Citydeal discounting clone last May.

Thus, sources said, Groupon is looking at a range of candidates with experience abroad, as well as talent in scaling businesses quickly and to huge size.

And that means looking to companies such as Google and Amazon for an exec, where there are quite a few choices.

While BoomTown could not confirm whether Groupon has spoken to any of them, possible COO types are obvious.

At Amazon, some qualified execs include: Sebastian J. Gunningham, SVP of Seller Services; Diego Piacentini, SVP of International Retail; H. Brian Valentine, SVP of Ecommerce Platform; and Jeffrey A. Wilke, SVP of North America Retail.

At Google, there are tons of good candidates that Facebook has not yet raided, including: Stephanie Tilenius, VP of eCommerce; Henrique de Castro, VP of Media and Global Platforms; Dennis Woodside, VP of Americas Operations; and Margo Georgiadis, VP of Global Sales Operations (plus a Chicagoan!).

Other names being raised include Hulu’s Jason Kilar (unlikely, but I’d like it), various Microsoft execs and a spate of others.

(I say, let’s bring in Zynga’s Owen Van Natta, who was once COO of Facebook, since he’s missing a big pile of Groupon stock to add to his enviable collection of hot Web 2.0 company shares.)

While there are probably qualified execs outside the tech industry at retail and media outfits, sources said it is likely Groupon will select within the digital ranks.

Lastly, and perhaps most important, the Groupon COO candidate is going to have to accept that the role will not be a CEO-in-waiting, either before or after its inevitable IPO in the next year.

While I have received several tips that Co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason (pictured here) might not stay its principal exec, extensive checking with sources inside and outside the company indicate that such a move is highly unlikely.

“Andrew is beloved to the board, by investors and, most of all, by employees,” said one source. “He’s not going anywhere.”

Indeed, Mason has a close working relationship with Co-founder Brad Keywell, as well as Groupon Co-founder and Chairman Eric Lefkofsky.

In fact, despite other business interests, Lefkofsky has been very involved in all key decisions with Mason.

That job, presumably, would fall to the new COO, which Groupon should be hiring sooner rather than later.

“Groupon needs a world-class COO, who can manage hyper-growth, but also who knows that a No. 2 stays in the background while doing it,” said another source. “That’s a tall order.”

As we await the decision of which uneasy head gets the COO crown at Groupon, here is the opening from the Swisher boys fave Animal Planet cable television show, “Must Love Cats,” to get you in the mood:

Sources close to Groupon, the social buying site, said its president and COO, former Yahoo exec Rob Solomon (pictured here), is stepping down from his job.

It’s not clear what the reasons for Solomon’s departure are, but the move seems to be sudden. It is also unusual given the fast-track trajectory of Groupon, which is currently considering an IPO at gigantic badillion-dollar valuations.

Nonetheless, CEO Andrew Mason just sent out a short email to staff about the move. BoomTown had sent him a query earlier today inquiring about the possibility of Solomon’s leaving.

In the email, sources said, Mason said Solomon was moving back to “‘God’s Country’ in Woodside, CA” from Chicago, where Groupon is headquartered.

Mason praised Solomon for his work in the lightning growth of the start-up and noted “he will remain a friend and advisor to the company into perpetuity.”

Apparently, though, from a faraway seat in God’s Country in Silicon Valley.

More to come, obvi…

As it gets ramped up for a wider launch, Asana, the high-profile workplace collaboration start-up founded by top former Facebook execs, has hired former SolarWinds product strategy exec Kenny Van Zant in a “COO-type of role.”

Van Zant, who will be Asana’s first business-side hire, has also worked at a variety of tech companies, including Cisco.

Co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein remain at the top of the leadership at the productivity software company, which–perhaps in keeping with its yoga-style name–does not have official titles.

But Van Zant will essentially fulfill the COO role, focusing on bringing Asana to the enterprise market in a socially-fueled, “bottom-up” approach.

“We now have a great product and are ready for our next phase of bringing it to the market,” said Moskovitz, in an interview this afternoon with BoomTown. “While Justin and I continue to work on product and engineering, Kenny will be the driver of that launch.”

Specifically, in a blog post today, Moskovitz wrote:

“Kenny will be leading functions outside of product and engineering, and serve as a key driver for Asana’s marketing and corporate strategy.”

Asana, which is aimed at helping people work on projects together in groups, is now in private beta.

It tackles the often unexciting, but very large and problematic, workplace collaboration and communications software market.

In Sanskrit, “asana” means “sitting down” and refers to strong but relaxed postures in yoga, which presumably means the product will help frustrated workers achieve a digital form of nirvana.

The San Francisco-based start-up, which has raised $9 million in venture funding from Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, now has 15 employees.

Asana had previously garnered just over $1 million in an angel round, which included a spate of Silicon Valley bigwigs.

Still, it has not, thankfully, received the intense hype of other innovative start-ups from former Facebookers–hello, Quora!

That said, many who are using Asana think it will make a huge splash as it is rolled out and attempts to bring consumer-style tools to the workplace.

There are, of course, a range of companies doing this in different ways–from Jive to Yammer to LinkedIn and to a variety of cloud-based enterprise efforts by Google and Microsoft.

In an interview, Van Zant said the time was ripe for big changes in the way enterprise-aimed products were bought and sold.

“I will be focused on selling our enterprise software product from the bottom up, rather than targeting the CIO,” said Van Zant. “It is clear the world of enterprise is being impacted by consumer behavior.”

While he does not start until Monday, Van Zant speculated that Asana’s free product offering will remain, with a premium version to come.

Benchmark’s Matt Cohler, who made the Asana investment for the firm and is on its board, said the time is right for such businesses aimed at enterprise transformation.

“Kenny wrote the book on this at SolarWinds,” he said. “The consumerization of the enterprise isn’t going to happen–it already has.”

Here is a demo video Asana put out in February of an open house, as well as the blog post from Asana on the Van Zant hire:

Asana Open House from Jerry Phillips on Vimeo.

Justin and I are excited to welcome Kenny Van Zant as the newest member of the Asana team. Kenny will be leading functions outside of product and engineering, and serve as a key driver for Asana’s marketing and corporate strategy.

Until now we’ve focused primarily on developing the Asana product into the best of class solution for task management and project execution. Encouraged by positive feedback from the early adopters in our beta program, we’re now preparing for the company’s next phase–bringing this technology to the rest of the market–and we can’t imagine a better partner than Kenny to drive this strategy and build a strong organization to support it. At SolarWinds, Kenny helped pioneer the bottom-up distribution model for selling software and SaaS into enterprises and small businesses–a sales approach we plan to develop further at Asana. This experience, together with an almost uncanny overlap of values, made it clear that Kenny is the right fit.

While finding Kenny concludes a long search for the right leader of Asana’s business operations, we are continuing to grow the team, looking for passionate designers and engineers to join us in our common purpose: using software to help groups of people work together more effectively.

–Dustin

Kenny Van Zant is a technology entrepreneur with leadership experience in start-ups and public companies. Kenny was most recently the SVP and Chief Product Strategist for SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) from 2006-2010, where he was responsible for products, marketing, and corporate strategy. At SolarWinds, Kenny helped pioneer a disruptive business model for selling software and SaaS into the enterprise and SMB segments from the “bottom-up,” using inside sales, online marketing, free products, and a loyal user community. Based on a unique combination of growth and profitability, SolarWinds enjoyed a successful IPO in May of 2009.

Prior to SolarWinds, Kenny was the EVP of Marketing and GM of the Communications BU for Motive (NASD: MOTV) and the co-founder and COO for BroadJump (acquired by Motive), where he managed the company’s growth from start-up in 1999 to over $60M in revenue and 350 global employees within 3 years.

Kenny has a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Rivet’s departure follows that of CEO Dirk Meyer, who resigned back in January, also rather abruptly. No word yet on AMD’s plans to replace either exec. CFO Thomas Seifert continues to serve as interim CEO of the company.

Former Google international exec Adam Freed (pictured here) has taken a job as COO of Etsy, the crafts e-commerce site, which just raised another $20 million in venture funding.

Index Ventures is part of the new round, which also includes previous investor Accel Partners.

Union Square Partners and Hubert Burda Media are also investors, as well as Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake.

Etsy has raised almost $52 million overall since its 2005 founding, which gives it a valuation of more than $300 million.

Etsy’s CEO is founder Rob Kalin, who took over again as CEO at the start-up last year.

But Freed brings more solid management with a global flavor to Etsy, having been a director of international product management at Google (GOOG). He left the company two years ago.

In that job, he focused on the localization and development of the search giant’s international products and had also worked in international online sales and operations, including setting up Google’s online advertising operations in London, Paris, Hamburg, Tokyo and Sydney.

He also established Google’s multilingual online operations center in Dublin.

Oh, yes, Freed speaks nine languages, which will come in handy at Etsy, since it helps craftspeople globally sell handmade items online.

Longtime Silicon Valley exec Dan Rosensweig (pictured here) is stepping down as CEO and president of the Guitar Hero division of Activision Blizzard to take a new job as president and CEO of Chegg, the top online textbook rental start-up.

Both companies confirmed the move, which is somewhat unexpected given that the former Yahoo (YHOO) COO landed the job running the top gaming franchise in March of last year.

It has been an eventful, but also a particularly tough year at Guitar Hero, in the face of yet another withering downturn in the gaming market.

While Activision (ATVI) introduced a new version of its flagship Guitar Hero game, as well as a new DJ Hero, Band Hero and a Guitar Hero: Van Halen version, sales were weaker overall, even though DJ Hero was the the No. 1 new game in both the U.S. and Europe.

Nonetheless, according to a recent report from research firm NPD Group, sales in the videogame space were down eight percent in 2009 from 2008.

And while Guitar Hero did gain market share as the most popular such game in its genre, most expect its trajectory to be downward.

Guitar Hero 5 sold slightly fewer than 996,000 units from September through December in North America, for example, according to NPD.

While global sales were better, Guitar Hero: World Tour, in comparison, sold 3.4 million units the year earlier.

In contrast, Rosensweig–who is probably much more suited to the pure Web space and the Silicon Valley scene–will be taking over a much faster-growing business at Chegg, based in Santa Clara, Calif.

It has become the front-runner in the increasingly competitive online textbook rental space.

To help maintain that lead, Chegg has garnered a huge $144 million investment kitty.

Top venture firms, such as Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and, most recently, Insight Venture Partners, have presumably handed over that money to co-founders Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra in hopes of big returns.

The pair started Chegg in 2005 at Iowa State University as a classified rental service, where books were the dominant item, but evolved its business to focus on actually doing the textbook rentals.

The company’s unusual name, Chegg, is a mashup of chicken and egg and its model is similar to that of innovative video rental outfit Netflix (NFLX).

Chegg now serves close to 7,000 schools across the U.S. and has a cute and student-friendly practice of planting a tree for every textbook rented, bought or sold.

With 120 employees in Silicon Valley and more at a warehouse operation in Louisville, Ky., Chegg claims it has grown over 600 percent year over year since its founding, although the start-up would not provide more specifics on financials.

A spokeswoman said that company rented more books in January of this year than all of last year and has saved students more than $137 million.

Typically, a rental costs a fraction of what buying a book outright does. It is ordered online and then sent to a renter, who then returns it.

All this activity has attracted a lot of interest from both big and small players, especially given the $10 billion college textbook business.

While one can assume that a lot of Chegg’s business will eventually move to digital downloads, especially as the use of e-readers explodes, the physical business is strong for the near term.

The Barnes & Noble (BKS) College division recently began testing a textbook rental program, for example, and is rolling it out to 25 U.S. colleges. And BookRenter is a smaller competitor.

But with Chegg, Rosensweig is getting to ride the lead horse in the space, taking over from current CEO Rashid.

In an interview a year ago, in fact, Rashid said, “I do not want to be a long-term CEO. My passion is solving the problem and getting the company to a place where it can be taken to the next step.”

While he will remain chairman, the entrepreneur has recently closed $7.5 million in funding for a new stealth start-up called Kakai. Sources have said it is focused on the even more crowded e-reader space.

The replacement for Rosensweig–who had been working in private equity since his departure from Yahoo (YHOO) in late 2006 and has also worked at CNET Networks and Ziff-Davis–will be the Guitar Hero division’s current COO, David Haddad.

Until he has something to say about Chegg, here is a video interview I did with Rosensweig in September, when the new version of GH5, as well as Band Hero and DJ Hero, were launching:

Here is the full press release from Chegg about the appointment:

Chegg.com Names Daniel Rosensweig As President and Chief Executive Officer

Appointment accelerates explosive growth of market leader in textbook rentals

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 2 /PRNewswire/–Chegg.com, the No. 1 online textbook rental company, today announced that it has appointed Daniel Rosensweig as its new President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Effective immediately, Rosensweig joins a company that closed $112 million in funding from Insight Venture Partners, Pinnacle Ventures and TriplePoint Capital in November. That round added to the already impressive list of investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital, Gabriel Venture Partners and Primera Capital.

“We are thrilled that Dan is joining us as our President and CEO,” said Osman Rashid, co-founder and chairman of the board at Chegg.com. “Chegg.com has been growing at an exceptional rate, and now is the time to bring in a world class leader that has successfully managed high growth consumer businesses and innovative business models. With Dan’s breadth of global business experience and passion for the consumer, we know he is the right person to lead Chegg.com through the next phase of its growth.”

Rosensweig joins Chegg.com from Activision (Nasdaq: ATVI) Publishing’s Guitar Hero franchise, where he served as CEO and president, launching Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero and DJ Hero in 2009.

A proven leader, Rosensweig was previously the Chief Operating Officer at Yahoo from 2002-2006, where he oversaw the company’s worldwide operations including its product development, marketing and advertising sales.

Rosensweig started his career at Ziff-Davis, where he spent 18 years in a variety of senior positions, including president of the Ziff-Davis Internet Publishing group, vice president and publisher of PC Magazine and president and CEO of ZDNet, which he built from a standalone Ziff-Davis company to a publicly-traded, highly-trafficked Internet network.

“The opportunity to lead one of Silicon Valley’s fastest growing companies that offers real financial value to students is unparalleled,” said Rosensweig. “Chegg.com has a powerful business model and, I believe, the opportunity to transform the textbook industry.”

The high cost of textbooks is a real social and economic problem that is burdening millions of students and their families. Chegg.com’s innovative and convenient textbook rental model is helping relieve this burden and has already saved students more than $137 million.

“We invested in Chegg.com because of its impressive business model and unique value proposition – helping students and parents save on the overall cost of education,” said Deven Parekh, managing director of Insight Venture Partners. “With Dan joining the company, we are building a powerful consumer brand on college campuses across the country.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100202/exclusive-rosensweig-to-leave-guitar-hero-takes-over-as-ceo-of-online-textbook-rental-startup-chegg/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100113/rob-glaser-out-as-realnetworks-ceo/ http://allthingsd.com/20100113/rob-glaser-out-as-realnetworks-ceo/#comments Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:50:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=32613

Rob Glaser is stepping down as CEO of Real Networks, the company he founded in 1994. Sources say the move was instigated by his own board, but that he cooperated with the decision and was involved in the transition.

Glaser will be replaced by Robert Kimball, a well-liked executive who most recently served as general counsel and executive vice president of corporate development at RealNetworks (RNWK).

Glaser, who will remain chairman of the Seattle-based Internet company, owns 38.4 percent of Real’s shares, making him by far the largest investor.

His move follows other significant news at Real: Last week, a federal judge dismissed its claims against Hollywood studios in the RealDVD case.

A few days earlier, COO John Giamatteo said that he would step down; the company announced that news yesterday afternoon.

But it is Glaser’s departure that is most important, given that he has been an innovative, pioneering and high-profile Internet leader for so long. Nevertheless, he eventually had to answer for problems with performance.

In fact, Glaser and the board had been talking for some time about making these changes, although it came much more suddenly than Glaser preferred, according to several sources. He had wanted to do a search for a new CEO before he left and make the shift less abrupt.

But the board–with the message coming from director Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images–felt a quicker change was needed.

“It’s a typical case of a founder and Internet visionary who can’t convert it to the bottom line. There was a great deal of admiration and respect for Rob, which delayed the decision, but eventually you can’t ignore the results,” says a person familiar with the company. “This move was a long time postponed, because he always had another good idea. But you have a staff whose options are all underwater, and the conversion of gross into net profit was not happening.”

It’s unclear when Glaser’s board informed him of the decision, but sources say that after processing the news, Glaser cooperated with and helped in the transition. He represented the company in a series of meetings at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show without letting on that he was on his way out.

He did, however, post an untypically melancholy message on Twitter yesterday:

Some Real employees and investors have had grievances with the company’s founder for years. A long string of former Real employees, for example, describe Glaser as a cantankerous boss, and Real’s stock price has withered since 2006, when it nearly broke the $12 mark.

The stock is now trading below $4.

And while Real was a genuine pioneer in Web video software and an early player in Web music services–the company was originally called Progressive Networks after Glaser’s political bent–it has been idling for many years.

For a while, for example, it was investing time and money in Web-based “casual games” and had filed to spin off that unit in 2008. But those plans were iced by the recession.

Meanwhile, RealNetworks split its Rhapsody music service into a joint venture with Viacom (VIA) unit MTV, but that service has also stalled, and the two partners have been trying to renegotiate the terms of their partnership.

Real’s crowning achievement of the past few years: The whopping $761 million antitrust settlement it won in 2005 from Microsoft (MSFT), Glaser’s former employer.

Here’s Glaser’s memo to his staff, followed by a note from Robert Kimball, and, finally, the company’s press release.

From: Rob Glaser
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 1:35 PM
To: All RealNetworks Employees
Subject: Important Personal News

Team,

Today we’re announcing something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Nearly 16 years after founding RealNetworks in 1994, I’ve decided to step aside from day to day operations. Accordingly, we’re announcing today that I am relinquishing my CEO job and will focus on my role as Chairman of Real’s board.

A decision of this magnitude produces a complex bundle of feelings. First, profound gratitude for the amazing colleagues I’ve had the opportunity to work with during a chapter that has turned out to be a third of my life. I am incredibly proud of the creativity, persistence, and commitment to excellence that our teams around the world bring to the table every day.

Second, deep appreciation for the billions (yes, billions!) of consumers that use or have used our products, the hundreds of millions of consumers that use our products every year, and the tens of millions of consumers that use our products and services every month. I am also grateful for the trust placed in us by our fantastic carrier and other distribution partners. Very few companies get to have the global reach and impact that we do.

Third, great confidence in the team that will be running the company day-to-day. As we kick off a search for my permanent successor, Real will be led by Bob Kimball as Acting CEO. Bob is one of the most passionate, hard-charging, and lucid executives I’ve ever had an opportunity to work with, and given his decade of leadership at Real, I am confident that the company won’t skip a beat.

Fourth, the bittersweet feelings that come from closing the book on a 16 year labor of love, emphasis on both labor and love. I feel very fortunate that as Chairman I will still get to carry the torch for everything that has made and will continue to make our company great.  And with 2 small children and a third on the way, I feel very lucky that the rhythm of my life can now change, at least for a time, to allow our family to do some things that might not otherwise have been possible. I also look forward to spending more time on civic and other projects outside of Real.

While there’s never an ideal time to make a change like this, this is as good a time as any. We’ve weathered the brunt of the Great Recession and have done what we said we wanted to do, which was to keep our core solid while also building for the future. We’ve also undertaken an extremely rigorous strategy review and have a very exciting road map for the future that you’ll hear about in the days and weeks ahead. And the start of a new decade is a good time, poetically, to pass the baton.

Thanks again for everything, and I hope to see all of you soon.

Rob

From: Robert Kimball
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 1:07 PM
To: Real@real.com
Subject: Important News

Dear Team,

Rob Glaser, our founder, has resigned as CEO effective today. Rob is sending out a separate note discussing his decision. While Rob will no longer have an operating role, he will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board. We look forward to continuing to work with Rob and I want to thank him for making RealNetworks what it is today and leaving us with a strong foundation upon which to build.

The Board has asked me to assume Rob’s executive responsibilities and has appointed me President and acting CEO. The Board of Directors will consider candidates for the permanent CEO role in the coming months. The senior executive team is galvanized and committed to making RealNetworks a company where customers love our products, employees are excited about being here, and we create value for our shareholders. We want RealNetworks to be a more focused, faster growing and profitable company. We are going to simplify the way we do business, empower employees to do their jobs, and hold people accountable for their results. I look forward to working with all of you to transform RealNetworks as part of this next chapter.

As part of transforming RealNetworks, I am personally committed to providing you with candid, clear and frequent communication so you know where we stand and where we want to go. In the coming weeks, we will be sharing with you changes in the way we operate and organize our business. And we want you to talk to us. Tell us when we are succeeding and when we are failing to make the changes necessary to transform. We plan to hit the ground running and we will need your help and input to succeed.

As you learned yesterday, John Giamatteo announced that he will be leaving in April to pursue another opportunity. John has built a great team here are Real and is completely supportive of the executive team going forward and will be working closely with all of us to ensure a smooth transition. Finally, I want to thank all of you for your contributions to RealNetworks. Our employees are our greatest asset and I humbly ask for your support and commitment to build our company into the great company we all know it can be.

Best to all,

Bob

REALNETWORKS’ FOUNDER ROB GLASER STEPS DOWN AS CEO

Company appoints Robert Kimball President and Acting CEO

SEATTLE–January 13, 2010 Digital entertainment services company RealNetworks, Inc., (Nasdaq: RNWK) announced today that founder Rob Glaser has stepped down as CEO. He will remain chairman of the board of directors of RealNetworks. The company also announced that its board of directors has appointed Robert Kimball president and acting chief executive officer. The board also appointed Mr. Kimball to the board of directors.

“After nearly 16 years, I’ve decided it’s time for me to step away from day-to-day operations,” said Glaser. “I’m grateful to all of our stakeholders–customers, partners, shareholders, and most of all, employees–for the support and commitment they’ve given to RealNetworks. I remain committed to the company and look forward to continuing to serve in my capacity as board chairman.”

In February 1994, Mr. Glaser founded what was then known as Progressive Networks, a pioneer in the field of digital audio and video technology for the Internet. Under his leadership, Real has grown into a multinational company, providing digital entertainment products and services to hundreds of millions of consumers around the world.

“Few people have changed an industry and created a unique experience for billions of people,” said Jonathan Klein, a board member of RealNetworks and the co-founder and CEO of Getty Images. “Rob has changed the face of digital entertainment with RealNetworks’ streaming media products. At the same time Rob has had a profound impact on politics and philanthropy. I’m sure he will continue to do this extraordinary work as well as spending time with his wife and young children. We are grateful for all he has done for the company, the industry and employees, and are pleased that he will continue to serve on the board.”

Bob Kimball joined the company in 1999 and has been a member of the senior executive team since 2003. He most recently served as general counsel and executive vice president of corporate development at Real. “In the decade he’s been at Real, Bob has proven to be an outstanding business executive and leader, and under his leadership the company won’t skip a beat,” said Mr. Glaser. “Our board has great confidence in Bob, and he will be a candidate for the permanent CEO position as part of a formal search process that will begin soon.”

“I look forward to the opportunity ahead,” said Mr. Kimball. “Real has a great team in place, a strong financial position, close customer relationships and fantastic products. We plan to transform Real into a more focused and more profitable company that delivers value to our shareholders.”

[Peter Kafka contributed to this report.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100113/rob-glaser-out-as-realnetworks-ceo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090427/myspace-musical-chairs-jason-hirschhorn-also-in-at-myspace-as-chief-product-officer/ http://allthingsd.com/20090427/myspace-musical-chairs-jason-hirschhorn-also-in-at-myspace-as-chief-product-officer/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:09:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=12908

MySpace has officially announced the appointment of entrepreneur and former AOL exec Mike Jones as COO, as BoomTown reported earlier today.

But the social-networking site also named former Sling Media top exec Jason Hirschhorn as chief product officer in what has become a series of senior management moves at MySpace.

The paidContent Web site first reported on the Hirschhorn appointment earlier this morning.

Besides Sling, which he recently left in a mass departure of top execs, Hirschhorn was also the top digital exec at MTV Networks and was part of the team at Viacom (VIA) that unsuccessfully tried to buy MySpace many years ago.

Both Hirschhorn and Jones, who are already based in Los Angeles, will report to newly named CEO Owen Van Natta, the former COO of Facebook, who replaced MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe last week.

Recently installed News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller has put in place a trio of well-known Internet execs at the top of MySpace, which has seen its buzz and momentum wane in the face of the huge growth at Facebook.

MySpace’s motto is “A Place for Friends.” But it might very well now be: A place for wandering digital execs.

And expect more top execs to wander away from MySpace too. Once the trio get their bearings, many sources indicate that News Corp., the owner of MySpace, has given Van Natta and his key execs free rein to remake the unit.

There is a lot to fix at the entertainment-, music- and media-heavy site, from a renegotiation with Google (GOOG) over its advertising search deal to goosing traffic to innovating its look and feel.

In addition, MySpace is likely to forge closer tech ties with Silicon Valley, where Facebook is based.

News Corp. already noted that it was in talks with MySpace co-founder and President Tom Anderson about a new role in the company. Also likely to get a major look-see are top execs like sales head Jeff Berman and CTO Aber Whitcomb, as well as a number of others.

To begin, though, the trio will meet the staff of MySpace, more than 1,000 people, in an all-hands event to be held outside of its building in Beverly Hills, Calif., at about 3:30 p.m. today.

Sources tell me there is no space big enough at the HQ to accommodate them, so the courtyard of the building will be used.

BoomTown is in Los Angeles today, by coincidence, but will not be crashing the event, so send interesting tidbits my way.

Here is the full release:

Los Angeles, CA, April 27, 2009–News Corporation today announced an expansion of MySpace’s management team with two key new hires. Michael Jones has been named Chief Operating Officer and Jason Hirschhorn has been named Chief Product Officer, effective immediately. Mr. Jones and Mr. Hirschhorn will be based in Los Angeles and report to MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta.

Jones has founded and operated several online businesses, including Userplane, a leading provider of tools for online communities such as MySpace. Userplane was acquired in 2006 by AOL, where Jones subsequently served as a senior vice president and focused on social media monetization and also pioneered the distribution of widgets and other technology to Web publishers. Most recently, he was the founder and CEO of Tsavo Media, an online content and search network developing next-generation publishing platforms and technology services.

Hirschhorn has led both start-up and established online businesses. Most recently, he was president of Sling Media, Inc.’s Entertainment Group, which created consumer-driven applications and services for the Slingbox device. Previously, he was chief digital officer at MTV Networks, where he oversaw the company’s digital media businesses, products and strategies. Hirschhorn joined MTV Networks following the acquisition of his company, Mischief New Media, which provided interactive services to the entertainment industry.

“Michael’s operational insight and knowledge of the social media market will prove to be a valuable asset as we set out to evolve the MySpace product offering,” said Jon Miller, chief digital officer, News Corporation. “From a product perspective, there’s no better choice than Jason, who is highly regarded as an incredibly talented innovator, media executive and leader, all qualities I know will greatly benefit our team and our users.”

“We were attracted to Michael’s unique background in building and operating successful businesses that fall directly in our sweet spot, and I look forward to leveraging his skill set as we further refine and shape the MySpace vision,” said Mr. Van Natta. “Jason’s reputation for creating compelling consumer experiences that leverage the intersection of technology, design and media is unmatched and we’re excited to have him join us.”

“I am so fortunate to have the opportunity to build upon the successes of the company’s founders and am eager to work with Owen and Jon and the rest of the incredible management team at MySpace as we enter this exciting new phase in the company’s already revered history,” said Mr. Jones. Mr. Hirschhorn continued, “MySpace is one of the most alluring innovations of our time and I am honored to collaborate with Tom Anderson and the rest of the MySpace team to take what is already a stellar product into its next evolution.”

(New Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090427/myspace-musical-chairs-jason-hirschhorn-also-in-at-myspace-as-chief-product-officer/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090422/former-facebook-exec-van-natta-set-to-take-over-at-myspace-as-founder-dewolfe-steps-down/ http://allthingsd.com/20090422/former-facebook-exec-van-natta-set-to-take-over-at-myspace-as-founder-dewolfe-steps-down/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:08:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=12711

Finally, Owen Van Natta is about to win out over a founder.

The former Facebook COO (pictured here) is poised to become the CEO of MySpace, replacing co-founder and current CEO Chris DeWolfe.

DeWolfe will likely get a title as a special adviser to MySpace in a deal that is still coming together.

Settling all the specifics could take at least a day and there is always the possibility that this changing-of-the-guard deal could fall apart. But multiple sources close to the situation said it is more just a matter of ironing out the details.

Thus, the die seems cast for Van Natta to take over the thorny job of rehauling MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS).

(News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site).

In a post this morning, MediaMemo was the first to name Van Natta as the only candidate in the running to take over as leader of MySpace.

It’s familiar territory for him.

Van Natta never got the big job at Facebook, which is under the firm control of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

But Van Natta–who got to Facebook in its early days after stints at various companies, including Amazon (AMZN)–was a key early player in making the social-networking site into the juggernaut it is today.

He played a large role in its advertising and investment deals with Microsoft (MSFT), for example, as well as in hiring many of its current execs.

But, like many at Facebook, Van Natta left Facebook in early 2008 under tense circumstances, although he now is on good terms with Zuckerberg and others at Facebook.

Maybe not any longer.

In a delicious digital irony, he will be taking on Facebook head on, as MySpace–once the momentum player in the space–tries to regain its step against Facebook.

Van Natta is currently CEO of music start-up Project Playlist and it is not yet clear what will happen there. When he was previously talking to MySpace about running its music site, there was speculation that it might buy the start-up.

Today’s developments have happened quickly and without a lot of advance planning.

The talks to complete this deal are being led by new digital boss Jon Miller (pictured here), who came to News Corp. last month.

News Corp. officials declined to comment on the developing situation.

But sources said that Miller hadn’t been planning on getting rid of DeWolfe in the near future, and until yesterday, he was still evaluating his options.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch had once treated DeWolfe as a favorite and gave him significant autonomy at MySpace.

But Murdoch, who brought Miller on, has been leaning toward a change in leadership as MySpace’s traffic has stagnated and its buzz and momentum have moved to Facebook.

Under DeWolfe, many have felt it has dropped the ball on innovation and in making key improvements to its technology and features.

Worst of all, MySpace’s lucrative $900 million search advertising deal with Google (GOOG) is also coming to an end, a deal that essentially paid for the News Corp. acquisition.

Recently, several key execs have left too, including COO Amit Kapur.

In general, the social-networking giant has had an air of decline about it, despite its still-enormous size.

Nonetheless, Murdoch had left the decision about the site’s leadership to Miller, his new hire, sources said.

Miller had been talking to many and was indeed leaning toward putting a new CEO in place, but not in this fashion. He had hoped to work out the transition with DeWolfe, said several sources.

Miller himself had been badly treated, when Time Warner (TWX) dumped him as CEO of AOL several years ago. Ironically, the media giant just ousted the execs who ousted Miller.

But Miller’s options narrowed last night, once TechCrunch ran a story claiming that News Corp. had hired a headhunting firm to “scour for possible replacements” for DeWolfe.

News Corp. hadn’t actually hired a headhunter at all, but the story spooked DeWolfe into calling Miller to ask what his plans were. That conversation led to today’s negotiations.

Van Natta is well known at News Corp. and was, at one point, the leading candidate to head up MySpace Music, which launched last fall, and the two sides held extensive conversations.

But Van Natta did not like the job’s org chart: Rather than a standalone company, MySpace Music is simply a unit of MySpace, reporting to DeWolfe.

MTV executive Courtney Holt eventually took the job.

Van Natta is intertwined with MySpace in other ways.

Project Playlist, the free music-streaming site he took over last fall, has seen traffic plummet after MySpace, along with Facebook, cut off the sites’ access to their users, a move prompted by lawsuits from several major music companies.

Van Natta has made some headway at extracting the company from its legal mess, which predated his hiring, and he has hammered out a settlement with EMI Music Group.

But Playlist is still being sued by other music labels.

And, even music sites that aren’t in legal trouble are struggling to keep their heads above water.

Thus, plenty of Silicon Valley watchers–including BoomTown, who calls Van Natta periodically to ask why he seemed to enjoyed the pain of running an online music business–have wondered why Van Natta landed at Playlist in the first place, and have speculated that he has been looking for a way out.

He has been on the short list for many big Web jobs at places like Microsoft and other Silicon Valley start-ups, but has not bitten until now.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090422/former-facebook-exec-van-natta-set-to-take-over-at-myspace-as-founder-dewolfe-steps-down/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090422/live-apple-earnings-call/ http://allthingsd.com/20090422/live-apple-earnings-call/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:07:30 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=6557 Next to no news from the Apple earnings call this afternoon, which is just the way Apple execs like their earnings calls. Once again, the company provided no information about CEO Steve Jobs’s health except to note that he is still scheduled to come back to work in June. And the company continued to pooh-pooh the concept of netbooks–supercheap, supersmall laptops with very little horsepower that are the hottest part of the PC business right now.

But COO (and temporary CEO) Tim Cook’s dismissal of the netbook market will continue to spark speculation that the company is readying something that sits in between a laptop and an iPhone (which is itself a computer, of course). Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer got more of Cook’s response than I did so I’ll reprint his quote here:

“When I look at what is being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens, and just not a consumer experience and not something we would put the Mac brand on. So it’s not a space–as it exists today–that we’re interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in. That said, we do look at the space and are interested in how customers respond to it. People who want a small computer than does browsing and email might want to buy an iPod touch or iPhone. We play indirect basis. Then of course if we find a way where we can deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, then we’ll do that. We have some interesting ideas in this space.”

EARLIER:

Apple (AAPL) just turned in a strong quarter and followed it up with conservative guidance. A fairly typical performance for the company. Now investors will want to know about new product lines, Steve Jobs’s health and other matters. I’ll be covering the call live. Please refresh this page for the most current information. Click here if you want to listen in yourself.

Joining call now. Tim Cook CFO Peter Oppenheimer going over info that’s already in the release.

Mac products: 2.2 million Macs, a three percent decline year-to-year. Tough comparison from last year. But better than the seven percent drop in PC sales overall. “We feel very positive about our Mac performance.” Began and ended quarter with three-to-four weeks of Mac inventory.

iPod: People still buying ‘em! iPod touch selling well, and so are apps. Claims people like the new shuffle player. [Dubious about that]. We own the MP3 player market. [Duh.] Began and ended the quarter with four-to-six weeks of inventory.

iTunes store: 35,000 apps available in store, up from 15,000 a quarter ago. “We are within hours” of one billions app downloaded.

iPhones: Unless I’m missing something, absolutely no new data here. Praising new iPhone 0S 3.0 that’s in the works. Apple delayed the start of revenue recognition of all iPhones sold after the company announced the new OS, which was March 17. Will start up again once OS is released.

Stores: Half our Macs sold to people who had never owned one before. Average revenue per store is down year over year, because the economy is lousy.

Gross margins: Commodity and other component costs lower than expected. Higher-margin sales better are also than expected. Apple also spent less on operating expenses than expected.

Guidance: Forecasting is “challenging” in macroenvironment. Again, noting delay in revenue recognition for iPhones (see above). Excited about new products in pipeline, etc.

Q&A

Outlook for pricing on component supply? Mostly favorable, but some commodities, like NAND, will increase sequentially. Cook does not expect to see the level of reduction seen in calendar Q1. Will it be down? It will be “in a similar range as last quarter.”

Cash flow issues? Not really, for several reasons: 1) Apple made prepayment to…. [sorry, I didn't catch who that was]; 2) accounts payable were down, from holiday quarter to spring quarter, which is standard; 3) at $1.3 billion, tax payments were up “significantly” from last year.

Mac business: Desktops selling well, but average selling price down quite a bit. What’s going on? Sales accelerated in March after Apple announced new product launch. Higher-end Pro products sold to professionals are down a bit, which is related to economy for obvious reasons. Education sales also down a bit, for same reasons. Hoping Federal stimulus funds will help with that.

Back to netbooks–why won’t Apple sell them? Cook is still criticizing netbooks. The ones available today are ”just not a consumer experience and not something we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly. It’s not a space today that we’re interested in, and it’s not a space we think that customers in the long-term are interested in.” But… a slight hedge with regard to smaller computers, which are, of course, what the iPhone and iPod Touch are. We “have interesting ideas in this space.” Today’s netbooks really shouldn’t even be called computers, really.

App store: What’s the mix between paid and free downloads and the iPod and iTouch mix? Nope. Apple won’t say. Again, Cook notes that we’re just “hours away” from the one billionth download. Cook: One of the keys behind the growth of iPod has been that sales of the iPod touch “more than doubled year-over-year.” The iPod and iPod Touch have reached sales of 37 million units, a big platform for developers. So there’s a virtuous cycle there.

[Sorry, missed two questions here.]

Why is Apple still doing an exclusive with AT&T for the iPhone? And how’s Steve Jobs? AT&T (T) is the best wireless provider in the U.S. “They have done a very good job with iPhone….We’re very happy with the relationship we have and do not intend to change it.” Structurally, we’re using GSM architecture, and Verizon (VZ) uses CDMA, and we wanted a world phone.

And Steve Jobs? Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer: “We look forward to Steve returning to Apple at the end of June.” [Translation: No news.]

[Yet another question missing here. Apologies.]

Any info on DRM-free/”iTunes plus” sales? Too early to tell.

How much impact did Wal-Mart (WMT) have on Apple sales? Very key partner for the iPod. The company believes Wal-Mart provides extended reach. Pleased with results, but “early going, and not much to report there yet.”

So many iPhone Apps. How can you make them easier to find on iTunes? (Same problem as music.) Any kind of unusual patterns? Nonanswer here.

Please talk about competition for smartphones–i.e., please discuss the Palm (PALM) Pre. “Difficult to comment on products that aren’t shipping. So there’s nothing intelligent I could say on the Pre.” But “we think we’re years ahead.” We see things through software lens and that has benefited us and customers very well. Power of device and ecosystem enormous and we’re now just scratching the surface.”

What about suing Palm re: patents on the Pre, etc.? “We think that Apple’s innovation is leading the industry by years. We think competition is great; we think it makes all of us better as long as other companies invent their own stuff.”

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