Zynga just filed a new 8-K regulatory document outlining revised compensation arrangements with its top tier of execs that ups the salary and bonuses, as well as restricted stock units, but ties them more closely to performance and the turnaround of the struggling social gaming company.

That is, except CEO and founder Mark Pincus, whose annual salary has been reduced to $1 and who will not receive any bonus or equity in 2013 — which is not an uncommon move for tech company leaders.

Said Zynga in its filing:

“The Company’s 2013 executive compensation program is designed to focus on two primary objectives: first, retaining and motivating our talented, entrepreneurial executive leadership team; and second, aligning our executive pay structure with company performance-based incentives. We believe that by focusing on both retention and performance, the compensation packages align with our strategy to build long-term value for our stockholders.”

The Section 16 execs impacted include: COO David Ko; general counsel Reggie Davis; Steve Chiang, president of games; Barry Cottle, chief revenue officer; CTO Cadir Lee; and CFO Mark Vranesh.

Interestingly, most of their salaries — which are about double their previous compensation — are now $500,000 for all, except Vranesh and Davis, who will earn $425,000.

Possible bonuses of zero to 200 percent of their cash salary, as well as the same level of stock grants from 970,500 to 1.8 million shares each, are tied to the performance of Zynga games, expanding the network and certain adjusted EBITDA levels. The RSUs vest over four years and nothing will be paid until February of 2014, after performance targets are met.

Zynga, whose stock has largely languished since its IPO in late 2011, has also suffered from a spate of executive turnovers, which has seemed never-ending and has added to Wall Street’s concern. Most recently, CTO Debra Chrapaty resigned to take a CEO job elsewhere; and, this week, the head of Zynga’s New York office and former CEO of OMGPOP, Dan Porter, left after that $180 million acquisition failed to garner the pop it promised.

Due to the many departures, Pincus rejiggered his exec lineup in November, giving the latest team members larger roles and focusing the San Francisco-based group on major areas of opportunity, such as real-money gaming and mobile.

Here’s the whole filing:

Form 8-K

Now he’s out.

Porter’s departure isn’t a huge surprise, given both his timing (presumably long enough to hit certain employment and/or earn-out goals) and the fact that Zynga ended up writing off at least half of its OMGPOP deal a few months after it closed.

That said, it would have been nice if Zynga had been straightforward about Porter’s status when I asked them about it 15 days ago. Oh, well!*

OMGPOP, as you might recall, was the games startup that was running on fumes until it came across Draw Something, an iOS game that became a huge hit. Late last month, the company rolled out a sequel.

Here are some words about Porter’s departure, and his replacement, that Zynga is attributing to COO David Ko:

“Developing and launching games is a team effort, and we’re proud of the great work the Zynga New York team has done with Draw Something 2. Our follow up to the original hit is even more social and engaging, and we’re excited to get it into the hands of our players globally. We thank Dan Porter for his efforts in making the Draw Something franchise a success and wish him well in his future endeavors. We’re proud to see talent like Sean Kelly take a bigger leadership role as the Head of our New York studio and lead the team to the global launch of Draw Something 2.”

*To be fair, Porter could have done the same when I asked him.

Zynga CIO Debra Chrapaty, who has also done high-ranking stints at other big companies such as Cisco and Microsoft, has been named CEO of enterprise cloud storage company Nirvanix.

She replaces Dru Borden, who will remain at the San Diego-based company as SVP of planning and development and who will also remain a director. Chrapaty will also remain executive chairwoman of the board of Nirvanix, which has investments from Khosla Ventures and Intel Capital.

Chrapaty has most recently been CIO of Zynga, but was also SVP of Cisco’s collaboration software unit and was a corporate VP at Microsoft. She was also president and COO of E*Trade Technologies.

In an email to me, Chrapaty wrote: “I had a great run at Zynga, wish the company and the team the best. But this is a really unique opportunity to leverage a company that is at the center of unstoppable trends (to cloud which hasn’t really affected Fortune 1000 storage yet) and a company that already has some great existing people and customers and investors you have known for decades.”

Zynga has seen a number of high-level departures and top management reorgs in recent months, as it seeks to turn around its recent rocky performance.

Zynga said that Chrapaty, who was hired from Cisco in 2011, will be replaced by Zynga exec Dorion Carroll.

“We thank Debra for her leadership and contributions to Zynga over the past years and wish her luck in her future endeavors,” said Zynga COO David Ko in a statement. “As one of our Zynga Fellows, Dorion has provided direction, leadership and management across numerous technology and products teams at Zynga over the past three years as well as being one of our most senior technology leaders.”

The changes will close an office in New York, two in Texas, and one in Baltimore, Md. However, employees at three of the locations will be moved to other existing offices nearby, consolidating the workforce across fewer offices nationwide.

“In an effort to leverage resources as we focus on creating franchises and driving profitability, Zynga has made changes to four of our U.S. offices,” Zynga COO David Ko said in a statement. “We are closing the McKinney, Texas, and downtown Austin offices and relocating those teams nearby to our existing Dallas and North Austin offices. And, we will be consolidating our NYC offices to move staff to our NYC mobile studio.”

Only the Baltimore office will face employee layoffs. Half of the staff were able to be moved to other Zynga offices, while approximately 30 Zynga employees will be laid off.

“While these decisions are always difficult, these steps will affect approximately 1 percent of our workforce and enable us to focus our resources on the most significant growth opportunities,” Ko said.

The moves come on the heels of remarks Ko made during Zynga’s most recent earnings call, where the new COO spoke about focusing the company’s efforts on its best-performing franchises, with an obvious aim in stepping up overall profitability. It’s likely one in a series of moves to trim the excess fat in terms of superfluous real estate.

And though layoffs are always a bummer, these in particular weren’t a surprise. Zynga recently shut down Cityville 2, the game that studio in particular was focused on. Not to mention that chief game designer and Baltimore studio leader Brian Reynolds recently resigned.

Shares of Zynga were trading up 10 percent on the news at $3.51 per share, a bump of about 32 cents.

In after-hours trading, the stock was up nearly 6 percent to $2.90 a share.

The fourth-quarter and year-end results provide a bit of relief to the social games company, which has been trying to turn things around for the past three quarters.

On the call today, we heard from Zynga’s management team, including CEO Mark Pincus, but also from its new COO David Ko and CFO Mark Vranesh, who replaced Dave Wehner after he left for Facebook.

The call had two strong themes: How Zynga plans on driving additional revenue in the future, and how it will spend less money to do it.

Not unlike Facebook, mobile was one avenue where it expects to grow sales. As a testament to the company’s efforts in the space, Ko said that Zynga has grown the number of dedicated mobile employees from 20 a year ago to more than half the company today. Additionally, Zynga said 21 percent of its fourth-quarter bookings came from mobile, up from 8 percent a year ago.

On keeping expenses down, the company said it intends to spot games earlier in the development process that are unlikely to be hits. As part of that, it will be shutting down three duds, including the recently launched CityVille 2 sequel.

Here is the liveblog from earlier today:

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2:02 pm: Things should kick off any second. Pretty cute of Zynga to make the hold music the FarmVille 2 theme song. Too bad it’s looping tirelessly in the background.

Ahh, relief. The call has begun with the usual forward-looking warnings.

2:06 pm: Pincus introducing the new faces on the call, including David Ko, COO, and Mark Vranesh, CFO.

He’s proud of everyone at the company for reducing operating expenses, and exceeding bookings forecast and adjusted EBITDA forecast.

They took a number of actions during the quarter, he said, including realigning the company with a mobile-first focus, with more teams now focused on mobile than Web. It closed some studios, named new managers and invested in its existing talent, with 550 people taking on greater roles and responsibilities during the quarter.

“We’ve always been a learning company, learning from our successes and failures,” he said.

2:10 pm: Pincus highlights the accomplishments of its popular Ville franchises, saying that it has generated $1 billion in revenue, exclusive of partner fees. In Q4, he said the games generated $100 million in gross bookings, the 11th quarter in a row of doing so.

He’s also talking up its newer areas of emphasis that are a bit more sexy, like social casino, including its efforts in the real-money space in the U.K., and entering in new casual genres, like arcade. In 2013, he also said its pipeline is heavily weighted to “midcore.”

2:13 pm: More on mobile: “We are creating a network that will make it easier for people to play together. It will offer a powerful distribution channel.”

As we transition to mobile opportunity, he said the company will be “calling the ball” sooner and will discontinue games that it does not think will result in a hit. It will also be investing in growing its China and India development centers.

“The No. 1 focus is to deliver the best games. 2013 is a pivotal transition year for us at Zynga; we are excited to deliver a whole new class of mobile-social games that make it easier and better to play across mobile and social platforms.”

2:16 pm: Pincus hands the call over to Ko, who we are hearing from for the first time. Since being hired as COO, he said he has been focused on execution.

He said they are planning on launching many more games on mobile, including the Invest & Express category (its Ville games) in 2013.

Ko, the former chief mobile officer, is hot on mobile gaming. He said Zynga has the fifth largest audience on iOS, behind companies like Google and Facebook. In the quarter, they launched four new mobile games and four new Web games.

While it successfully expanded the portfolio during the quarter, Ko said several games missed expectations. As a result, it is closing three games: CityVille 2, Party Friends and The Friend Game.

“We are revamping our game quality process. We need to get feedback earlier in the process,” he said. “The two biggest changes is you’ll see a shift to mobile, and we’ll be calling the ball earlier on games. We’ll double down on the games with the most potential and ship fewer games.”

2:21 pm: Now hearing about Zynga’s advertising efforts, with the sales team closing big deals with top advertisers.

On the cost side, it cut back on outside services, reduced the size of the workforce and rationalized it’s product pipeline.

And, real-money gaming: We are on track to deliver products with Bwin during the first half of this year. And, they’ll be rolling out products across a variety of platforms, including Facebook, Web and mobile.

Interesting that Zynga said its real-money efforts in the U.K. will also be on the Facebook platform, which hasn’t really done a lot on the platform to date.

2:24 pm: Vranesh is now walking through financial results for the quarter and the year. Also the first time we are hearing from him, but Vranesh had been at the company a long time before Wehner replaced him in the lead-up to the IPO.

2:26 pm: During this summary of the press release, be sure to check out Mike’s piece on Zynga’s mobile numbers, which shows how much more mobile is contributing to the company than it was just a year earlier.

2:29 pm: Vranesh notes that headcount now totals 3,058, down 251 people, quarter over quarter.

Some perspective on where Zynga’s stock is currently trading. It has $1.65 billion in cash, which is slightly below the roughly $2 billion market value. Add to that the value of the company’s San Francisco headquarters and it easily exceeds where it is trading.

2:34 pm: Opening up the call to questions.

First question about the steps Zynga is taking on mobile platform to expand the network. What gives you confidence that they will use the network vs. the random opponents?

Ko takes this one: It comes down to a couple of things. We have an advantage today in mobile because of people and the network. A year ago, we had 20 people focused on mobile, and now a majority of the company is focused on mobile. On the network side, we have 72 million monthly users, we know we have games that they will enjoy and will want to play.

2:37 pm: Did the success of FarmVille 2 make it hard for CityVille 2 to be successful?

Ko: In terms of spacing them out, we are focused on franchises, our goal is to create franchises. You’ll see us launch less titles, so they will ultimately be spaced further apart. The reality is we had a longer lead time of testing and learning for FarmVille 2, and that was a key learning experience we didn’t have for CityVille 2.

2:41 pm: A question about the review process.

Zynga says to expect a lighter slate of games in Q1, which will increase the odds of creating new franchises throughout the year — this means fewer but bigger launches that have a greater chance of being long-term, sustainable hits (like the rest of the videogame industry tries to do).

2:44 pm: Question about the new agreement with Facebook that loosened Zynga’s requirements on the platform.

A pretty vague answer by Pincus: On the strategy side, what’s important about the amendment is that in the future, we’ll have more flexibility to market our games on the Web through more distribution channels, in a way that will still work in concert with Facebook.

2:47 pm: A question about Monthly Unique Payers, which is the number of people paying inside the company’s games.

Vranesh said that Web players who paid were slightly up due to FarmVille 2, and for mobile they were slightly down due to Draw Something.

2:54 pm: A question about Zynga’s mobile daily active users: The quarter-over-quarter decline slowed in Q4 compared to Q3. Is building out the mobile network helping you grow users while Draw Something’s decline has stabilized?

Pincus: So, in terms of thinking of looking at our overall DAUs on mobile. First, the stability of existing mobile game traffic. Our team on Words With Friends did a great job of growing engagement during the quarter, as well as mobile Poker. The second driver of traffic will be our new game launches this year. We are bringing existing major franchises, like FarmVille 2, to mobile and other new launches. The third is what we can do on the network level, by driving distribution and ongoing engagement.

2:58 pm: A question on year-over-year growth for mobile DAUs.

Vranesh: On a year-over-year basis, mobile MAUs have grown 75 percent to 72 million.

This is the first time that Zynga disclosed its mobile players, but it did not say in today’s release how much they have grown, so this piece of information is particularly interesting in order to judge the company’s year-over-year performance on mobile. Obviously, when Ko says that the company has gone from 20 employees focused on mobile a year ago to a majority of employees today, this is a reflection of that.

3:04 pm: The conference call has now concluded, you may all now disconnect.

In summary, Zynga continues to make progress on its message to investors, but it’s still scattered. Executives talk about its prospects on a number of fronts, ranging from real-money gaming to mobile and advertising. Clearly, there’s lots brewing, but it’s too early to tell how the company will perform over the long-term.

Minutes after the release went out, Zynga’s stock was up nearly 5 percent to $2.88 a share. During regular trading today, Zynga’s shares were already higher based on an analyst’s upgrade.

Here’s what it reported:

The social games company said bookings for the year totaled $1.15 billion to beat the company’s forecast of $1.1 billion (bookings account for the sales from virtual goods that occur in the fourth quarter).

It also said adjusted EBITDA, which is earnings before some expenses, totaled $213.2 million for the year, which was way above its range of $152 million to $162 million. For the full year, though, it said non-GAAP earnings totaled seven cents a share, a nice beat over its forecast of two cents to three cents a share.

On a quarterly basis, Zynga beat analyst expectations, which were no doubt low for the period.

The company reported a net loss of six cents a share (or a profit of one cent a share on an adjusted basis) on revenue of $311.2 million. Analysts were expecting an adjusted loss of three cents a share on revenue of $212.1 million, according to FactSet.

Zynga’s GAAP net loss of $209.4 million in 2012 was heavily influenced by a $53.8 million restructuring charge for changes it made internationally. However, revenue was up 12 percent year over year to $1.28 billion, fueled by a 7 percent increase in online game revenue and an 84 percent increase in advertising revenue.

Over the past three quarters, Zynga has been working hard on its turnaround, so this is just another baby step along the way.

The San Francisco games company slashed expenses, including a reduction in headcount, and named an all-new executive team as AllThingsD featured in a story yesterday. We’ll be hearing at 2 pm PT from the company’s management team, including CEO Mark Pincus, along with its new COO David Ko and CFO Mark Vranesh, who replaced Dave Wehner in November.

Was it only just over a year ago that Zynga was the hottest game company on the planet?

Today — after seemingly endless executive departures (among the missing in action are the COO, CMO, CFO and the chief creative officer), a falloff in the popularity of its many games on the important Facebook platform, and a perpetually moribund stock price from a $9 billion valuation at its IPO in December of 2011 to $2 billion today — such a moment of glory seems but a very distant memory.

Now, in the wake of the crash, Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus is betting his dwindling chips on a trio of lieutenants to make things right: Steve Chiang, who is now president of games; David Ko, Zynga’s former chief mobile officer, who has been promoted to COO; and Barry Cottle, who was named chief revenue officer.

Establishing the three executives’ credibility and skill sets will be instrumental in regaining Wall Street’s confidence in the San Francisco gaming company, and perhaps reestablishing it as a growing and thriving concern.

So, can they do it? To find out, AllThingsD interviewed all three, as well as more than a dozen current and former co-workers of the managers, to get a handle on who they are and what roles they are playing in the company’s turnaround process.

Steve Chiang, president of games:

Chiang, 41, who is now leading all game development, has one of the toughest jobs at the company.

Zynga operates a hits-driven business, and must continue to make compelling games to draw in large audiences, something it has of late struggled to do.

One problem is that it has persisted in churning out its once powerful Ville-style games — FarmVille, CityVille, et al — while its competitors moved on to other genres, such as casino games and action-packed games aimed at males.

Those two new categories, as well as its original Ville genre, which it calls “Invest and Express,” will be at the top of the company’s priority list, in addition to developing across social and mobile.

In this, Chiang’s efforts are critical. But what has made this executive’s path at Zynga unusual was his rise, then fall —  and then rise again — within the corporate ranks.

Ahead of the IPO, Zynga was relentless in its efforts to build out a strong bench of C-level executives. One impressive hire was John Schappert, who came on board as chief operating officer to lead the company’s game strategy.

Schappert hailed from Electronic Arts, where he knew Chiang better than anyone else. Together, Chiang and Schappert co-founded Tiburon Entertainment, which was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1998, and continues to be responsible for hit games such as Madden NFL.

Chiang arrived at Zynga first, in March 2010, as EVP of Games. But when Schappert joined Zynga in April 2011, Chiang’s responsibilities naturally decreased as less work was left to go around.

Zynga’s former chief creative officer, Mike Verdu, who worked closely with Chiang, recalled the transition. “There was certainly a period, especially as other executives came in, that the weight of influence shifted away from Steve,” he said. “All of our roles changed a bit when John was there. He had a very different way of doing things, and when he left, there was a realignment of the organization.”

Schappert stepped down in August of 2012, one of the company’s highest-profile departures.

Because Schappert was the front man in the company’s IPO, the shy Chiang is not as well-known, despite having worked there for three years. His resume at the company includes releasing CityVille, which became the biggest game at the time. He also grew the company into a worldwide organization, adding studios across the U.S. and internationally. He pushed the company into new categories, such as arcade-style gaming and hidden objects. Recent credits include the launch of FarmVille 2, the company’s most recent hit.

Chiang spoke briefly and without a lot of actual detail about his time working with Schappert at Zynga. “He’s a personal friend of mine, and he brought a lot to the company, and we made some internal changes and he decided to move on,” he said.

Now, with the reins in Chiang’s hands, he says he will focus on developing games that appeal to a wide audience. To free up talent to work on new projects, the company is sunsetting 13 of its games, including PetVille, Mafia Wars 2 and Indiana Jones Adventure World.

“We’ve had a number of great game makers who have been tied up and now they are focused on new projects,” Chiang said. “We are reducing the number of games we are making, and focusing on fewer with the highest potential in Invest and Express, player versus player, and casino.”

Whether Chiang can pull it off remains to be seen. But one of Chiang’s direct reports — who declined to be named — said: “We aren’t all driven by money or fame. A lot of people are driven by pride. Steve internalizes that. He’s a champion for the game makers, but ultimately, for the players themselves.”

For more on Chiang, click here for an exclusive Q&A interview.

David Ko, chief operations officer:

There’s a long list of reasons why David Ko, 41, earned the promotion to chief operations officer. Over the past two years as chief mobile officer, the former Yahoo exec has overseen the release of 30 mobile games and closed two of Zynga’s largest acquisitions.

The first acquisition was Newtoy, which is known for the very popular Words With Friends mobile game. The second acquisition, of OMGPOP, was less successful. Immediately after Zynga purchased the company for $180 million in cash, its hit product, Draw Something, fell dramatically in the rankings, although it still accounts for the bulk of the company’s mobile users today.

That said, if mobile is critically important to the company’s future, then having Ko as the second in command was a clear message of its importance.

Ko is now second in command, with purview over 3,000 employees, as well as being the public face for the media and Wall Street. On Tuesday, in fact, he will make his first appearance on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.

He has a lot to learn, which is why Ko asked everyone to stand up and introduce themselves at a recent meeting of 130 managers. “It was interesting to go around the room and hear from people who had been there for four to five years, or for two months,” he said. “It was a great diversity of talent, and they came from all different backgrounds.”

Ko’s more inclusive management style is likely to be welcomed by employees, especially since Pincus is known for valuing data over people. “Mark [Pincus] misses that stuff at times,” one former employee said. “It’s a mercenary culture; he looked at people as fungible.”

But Ko’s fast ascent to COO is not sudden as it may look, say insiders.

“In spite of the fact that he looks like he is 12, he’s the adult in the room,” said a former co-worker of Ko’s, who knew him from his days at Yahoo. “That’s the irony.”

Prior to Zynga, Ko worked at Yahoo for a decade starting in 2000. He was based initially in Asia, where he ran the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s mobile business. In 2009, Ko then returned Yahoo’s headquarters as the SVP of mobile, but was quickly promoted amid much executive turmoil to be the North American audience head.

Ko said his non-gaming background is a plus, because he has extensive experience monetizing content.

“We have lots of people with all kinds of backgrounds in social or gaming, but what the company needs is about making sure the content is available to everyone and can be monetized in different ways, whether it’s advertising or user pay.” he said. “I have a lot of experience with this. Advertising is becoming a bigger piece of monetizing, and that’s one of my core competencies.”

In his first three months as COO, Ko said, he has made three priorities at the company: To create a sense of discipline, to make the company’s strategies clear and to have fun doing it.

The reality of it all, Ko said, is that he has spent most of his time on the first two: “I have to remind myself at times, we are still a games company. We do have to do some fun things.”

One time the whole company has fun is for an hour every Wednesday when Zynga staffers drop everything they are doing to play a game under development. It was a practice that the company used to do in the early days, and Pincus asked Ko to bring back. After the employees play, they then provide feedback on what they liked and didn’t like about the game.

“Ultimately, we are a games company, and we have to make sure that people find the games fun that we are going to launch,” Ko said.

Barry Cottle, chief revenue officer:

Barry Cottle, 51, is the newest to Zynga of the three top execs, having joined the company in January 2012 as EVP of corporate and business development.

Previously, he was head of EA Interactive, where he oversaw a group the size of Zynga, including the company’s social and mobile gaming divisions and its PopCap unit. As such, his departure was a particularly big blow to EA.

As chief revenue officer at Zynga, Cottle is now responsible for securing partnerships and advertising, plus he is responsible for sales operations and the company’s real-money gaming initiatives.

And also the care and maintenance of Zynga’s most significant relationship — with Facebook.

In November, Zynga and Facebook announced that the two companies had renegotiated their contract, which will make their partnership less complicated. It also provided some benefits to Zynga, such as the ability to launch games first for mobile. Cottle worked directly with Facebook’s Dan Rose on the new terms, unlike the original contract, which was negotiated directly between the two Marks: Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Pincus.

He also moved quickly on the company’s online gambling efforts by setting up a partnership with Bwin in the U.K., which will go live early this year, and also kicked off the years-long process of getting a real-money gaming license in the U.S., starting with Nevada.

The deals are a demonstration of just how eager Cottle is to drum up new revenue wherever he can.

In Cottle’s previous jobs, he had to be equally scrappy. He joined EA in 2007 to manage the company’s roughly $700 million acquisition of Jamdat, a mobile games company. At the time, mobile gaming consisted of developers making Java and Brew games.

But when the iPhone came out, Cottle took on the job of convincing his superiors that smartphones were the future.

One of his former reports at EA recalled that as soon as Cottle made the decision to develop five games for the iPhone’s App Store, “We were in the war room the next day and were moving resources to the iPhone.”

Prior to EA, Cottle co-founded a company called Mobile Digital Media. (The company, which was later renamed Quickoffice, was acquired by Google last year.) The entrepreneurial effort was a spinoff from Cottle’s days at Palm, where he was part of the executive team that took the company public. Earlier in his career, he was a Disney executive for 10 years, working on the company’s TV and Internet services.

In many ways, Cottle’s job at Zynga is similar to the one at EA. But instead of managing the move from feature phone to smartphone, this time he’s transitioning the company from social gaming to mobile gaming.

As part of that, one of Cottle’s biggest challenges will be finding a way for Zynga’s games to be discovered on mobile.

With Facebook, Zynga leveraged virality — friends invited friends to play, or discovered games through their news feeds. But mobile does not have the same dynamics, making distribution much more challenging. Last year, Cottle inked a deal directly with T-Mobile USA, which preloads some of Zynga’s games on to smartphones, and which is actually a throwback to when games were best distributed through the carriers.

Recognizing the pace at which the business is moving, Cottle said, “You have to be able to move fast and adapt and ensure that you bring your consumers with you. They’ll move from platform to platform; we just need to bring our franchises along with them.”

To accomplish this, Cottle has one key strength in his corner: A reputation for working as hard as it takes.

Zynga’s general counsel, Reggie Davis, who has known Cottle since they both worked at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City 25 years ago, said: “He’s Midwest like me. We got taught to show up early and to clean up afterwards — and if you do, you might get asked back. That’s totally Barry.”

Today, AllThingsD has learned of another appointment: Zynga has promoted Tim LeTourneau to the position of Chief Creative Officer, replacing Mike Verdu, who left the company in August to start his own game company.

Previously, LeTourneau was Zynga’s VP of games in charge of FarmVille 2, the company’s most successful game launch over the past few months. As part of his new role, he’ll be stepping away from the day-to-day job operations of FarmVille 2 to spend more time on game design across the board. LeTourneau will report to Steve Chiang, president of games, and Maureen Fan will become FarmVille 2’s new general manager.

Zynga confirmed the two appointments took place earlier this month at a quarterly all-hands meeting.

The company is essentially playing a game of musical chairs, plugging each hole with talent from another part of the company. At the same all-hands meeting, for instance, 680 people were recognized for taking on bigger roles within the roughly 3,000-employee organization. Additionally, David Ko and Barry Cottle were recently promoted to chief operations officer and chief revenue officer, respectively. They are filling vacancies created when other managers stepped down over the summer, including John Schappert and Jeff Karp.

LeTourneau joined Zynga almost two years ago after working at Electronic Arts since 1990. During his two decades at EA, he spent most of his time working on the longstanding and popular Sims franchise.

The restructuring includes appointing David Ko, the former chief mobile officer, to the position of chief operations officer; Barry Cottle takes over as chief revenue officer; Steven Chiang becomes president of Games; and Mark Vranesh is the new CFO and chief accounting officer.

As part of the shake-up, Dave Wehner, who was CFO, has resigned; he’s joining Facebook as VP of corporate finance and business planning. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the appointment and said he will be reporting to Facebook’s CFO David Ebersman.

Ko will be replacing John Schappert, who left the company in August after Zynga reported poor second-quarter results. The company also lost Jeff Karp, the company’s chief marketing and revenue officer, who Cottle will obviously be replacing. Most of the other departures, which have been numerous, have been on the games front, including several general managers.

In a release, Zynga CEO and founder Marc Pincus said, “Dave [Wehner] remains a good friend to us all and we wish him success in his next role. Mark, David, Barry and Steve are rooted in our culture, committed to our future and part of the talented bench of leadership at Zynga. I’m confident we have the right team to deliver on our mission of connecting the world through games and position us for long-term growth.”

Vranesh previously served as the CFO of Zynga from May 2008 until August 2010. Since August 2010, he has served as the company’s chief accounting officer.

By looking internally for replacements for the several departures, it demonstrates the deep talent pool that is still working at the social games giant. The promotions, including Ko’s move to COO, marks the importance in emphasizing mobile gaming over Facebook games as the platforms change in popularity.

Zynga’s stock is up just a couple of pennies in after hours following the news; shares are trading just four cents above the company’s all-time low of $2.13 a share.

Here’s the note that Pincus sent to the troops today:

Team:

Today we’re announcing some important changes to the responsibilities of our senior team.

David Ko has been named chief operations officer. In his new role, he will oversee strategy planning, international, infrastructure and operations of the company. Since joining us in 2010, we’ve all seen Dave scale our mobile organization, grow our portfolio by 25 new games and help unite game development teams on our cross platform efforts.

Barry Cottle has been named our chief revenue officer and will be responsible for corporate and business development, distribution, strategic partnerships, advertising sales and operations, publishing and real money gaming. Barry is a seasoned leader having built and scaled businesses for Palm, The Walt Disney Company and Electronic Arts.

Steve Chiang has been named our president of games where he will oversee all games and new IP development across web and mobile and unite all of our game teams under one leader. We’ve all seen Steve guide the game development of Bubble Safari, ChefVille and FarmVille2 among others. He has more than 20 years of experience in the game industry building AAA titles and teams.

I also wanted to let you know that our CFO, Dave Wehner is leaving to accept a senior position with Facebook.

Dave provided great leadership to our financial team over the past two years, helping guide the company’s transition from startup through IPO. Dave has been a great partner for me, the senior team and the whole company. He remains a good friend to us all and we wish him success in his next endeavor.

Mark Vranesh has been named our chief financial officer. This is a role he knows well – he was our CFO during our rapid growth as a private company. As CFO, Mark built and ran our finance, accounting and controls functions and transitioned to the role of chief accounting officer in 2010.

These changes come at an important time. We are positioning ourselves for long-term growth and I’m confident that we have the breadth and depth of management talent to deliver on our mission of connecting the world through games. We are also today reaffirming our 2012 financial outlook that we communicated on October 24, 2012.

With some of our recent game success and the great work that’s being done to move with our players to mobile, we’re making progress. We still have a lot of work to do, but it’s been great to see so many of you step forward to put us on the move again.

Please join me in congratulating David, Barry, Steve and Mark on their new roles.

Mark

As part of restructuring, David Ko, Zynga’s chief mobile officer, and Steve Chiang, its EVP of games, will report directly to Pincus, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the changes.

Ko and Chiang previously reported to COO John Schappert, one of Zynga’s priciest — and most prized — recruits from Electronic Arts.

Update: Zynga provided an official statement this morning: “We can confirm that in order to unify our company around a multiplatform approach, we reorganized our teams in July to integrate web and mobile groups. These groups are led by David Ko, our Chief Mobile Officer and our EVP of Games Steve Chiang, who are overseeing our game divisions, our Chief Operating Officer John Schappert overseeing our day to day business operations and our CTO Cadir Lee, overseeing our new Platform division; all of whom report to our CEO Mark Pincus. Our players expect their favorite games on every platform and we want to unlock everyone in the company to continue moving quickly against the multiplatform opportunity.”

However, Bloomberg’s report suggests that Schappert has “lost support within the company and taken some of the blame for underperformance.”

According to sources that spoke to AllThingsD, the situation is more complicated than that, as the statement issued this morning suggests.

While at least one source agrees with the assessment that Schappert is in the dog house, other sources say the main purpose of the reorg is to make games work across multiple platforms by prioritizing mobile. That has been challenging for Zynga, since up until now it was easy to make increasingly more money on Facebook. Plus, as the founder, Pincus has always closely overseen game development, and at times continues to hold the title of Chief Product Officer.

More evidence that there continues to be a blurring of the lines is that Ko is now overseeing key game franchises on Facebook — not just mobile, insiders tell AllThingsD. By giving Ko more control, Pincus is obviously serious about helping the two game silos work closely together.

But going forward, it’s unclear what role Schappert is playing now.

As yet another example of his diminishing role, sources close to the situation say Schappert is no longer heading up the company’s ad technology, which has been handed off to Cadir Lee, Zynga’s CTO. The list of things that Schappert is responsible for is now relatively small, especially in comparison to the size of his paycheck.

A year ago in April, when Zynga first lured him away from EA, his compensation was valued at $42.8 million, according to Bloomberg’s estimates.

Last week, the company wildly missed its internal projections, blaming a number of woes, including changes made to the Facebook platform. In an interview with Schappert immediately following earnings, he did not let on that a shake-up was underway, and spoke about a wide range of topics, including the company’s future plans.

Yesterday, Zynga’s shares continued to spiral downward, losing another 2 percent, to close at $2.95 a share. Since raising $1 billion in a public offering late last year, the company’s stock has fallen more than 70 percent. In early trading this morning, shares reached a new low, crashing 3.7 percent to hit $2.84 share.

At this precipitous rate, it didn’t take long for lawsuits to start bubbling up. Following a cratering of that magnitude, shareholders filed a pair of lawsuits against Zynga, accusing the company of failing to warn about declines in user and revenue growth ahead of last week’s surprisingly weak results. The California suits are seeking class-action status, Reuters reports.

Yesterday, it acquired OMGPOP, the developer that suddenly unseated the social game giant after its overnight success with Draw Something.

Draw Something, which challenges players to guess what another person is drawing, much like Pictionary, has been downloaded more than 35 million times in the past six weeks.

In the words of OMGPOP’s CEO Dan Porter, that’s pretty “Drawsome!”

But in making the acquisition, Zynga may have inadvertently set the expectation that if it doesn’t create the No. 1 game on Facebook — it will acquire it.

In this case, that wasn’t a cheap thing to do.

Zynga declined to say how much it spent on OMGPOP, but our sources say it paid $210 million, including $30 million in employee-retention payments. 

The message Zynga is sending with this acquisition is that it is committed to having the most popular games — a difficult and expensive proposition, especially if acquisitions are always the answer.

Just ask Porter how difficult it is. It took him 34 attempts and six years to build a hit.

“You are always trying to figure out what everyone wants,” he said in an interview. “But a hit is a hit for reasons that are hard to understand. I’ve told investors before — if I could, I would only make those games, and not the other games.”

Porter likened it to the music business, where he started his career. While busy signing every hot band he could find, the unexpected runaway hit was the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack.

Still, the stock market rewarded Zynga’s decision yesterday, sending the company’s stock up about 5.3 percent, to $14.45 a share, after getting confirmation of the acquisition at noon. However, by the end of the day, enthusiasm waned, and shares closed at $13.72 a share.

Since going public in December, it’s been a rocky ride for Zynga.

After raising $1 billion to make it the largest Internet IPO since Google, it has traded as low as $7.97 and as high as $15.91. Based on yesterday’s closing price, the stock is now up 37 percent.

Acquisitions are hardly a new strategy for the company.

Last year, it set a pace of buying more than one company every month, seeking both employees and new games to maintain its rapid growth rate.

In this case, OMGPOP’s 40 New York employees will join forces with Zynga’s existing New York office, and Porter will become the new VP and GM.

What really stands out about this acquisition is the price — at $210 million, it’s the most expensive company Zynga has purchased. Prior to this acquisition, Zynga’s largest buy was the $53 million purchase of Newtoy, the developer behind Words With Friends.

That’s not to say that Zynga hasn’t attempted other big purchases. In 2011, it courted Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, and unsuccessfully bid for PopCap, which instead sold to Electronic Arts for $750 million.

Although Draw Something has been proven to be astonishingly popular in the short term, it doesn’t have the same kind of track record as Rovio or PopCap.

The mobile game sits atop the iTunes “top paid,” “top free” and “top-grossing app” lists, an unusual accomplishment. On iTunes, it beats every single Zynga title — including Zynga Poker, which is frequently one of the highest-grossing apps.

As mentioned at the top of this post, Draw Something is also the most popular game on Facebook. However, what’s interesting is that the game isn’t available on the social network. Instead, it uses Facebook credentials as a way for players to register on their mobile phones.

From what we’ve heard, it has also been generating a lot of cash, based in large part on in-app purchases made by players. People familiar with the company told my colleague Peter Kafka that it has recently been netting around $250,000 a day from the game — after Apple takes its 30 percent cut.

In an interview, Zynga’s Chief Mobile Officer David Ko said OMGPOP’s acquisition represents more than a hit game for the company.

“It was about the team and how well we connected,” he said. “We found a great leader in Dan, and an amazing team around him. I couldn’t be happier in partnering with the team.”

Indeed, that’s Drawsome.

Zynga unveiled a slate of new products today, and mobile was a central theme.

In addition to announcing a new online games platform, three new Facebook games and one new game on Google+, Zynga also revealed five mobile games.

Three of the games — Zynga Poker, Words With Friends and FarmVille Express — will utilize HTML5 technology and run on Facebook’s iPad app and mobile Web sites. Those games are expected to launch tonight.

A fourth game is Mafia ShakeDown; the fifth is Dream Zoo, a standalone mobile game that is Zynga’s first zoo-themed game.

Dream Zoo will challenge players to pet, feed, bathe and breed all sorts of animals, from rainbow giraffes to polka-dotted flamingos and electric-green elephants.

In an interview at Zynga’s event, Chief Mobile Officer David Ko told me it will be the first time Zynga is incorporating location-based check-ins — similar to Foursquare or Facebook Places — into a mobile game.

He said the game will rely on Facebook’s data, allowing users to check in based on where they are playing the game.

In a follow-up interview, Ya-Bing Chu, the general manager of Words With Friends, told me users will get rare items in the game for going to a particular location, but generally, Zynga will be experimenting to see what users end up liking.

In the game, players will be expected to complete expeditions, but he said you could envision how that could overlap into real life, like going to a city park or even a real-life zoo. ”We aren’t sure what will work,” he said.

Zynga’s mobile announcements today can be considered a major push, given that Zynga has been slow to roll out aggressive plans in mobile. Dream Zoo and Mafia ShakeDown are expected to launch shortly.

But it has fews ties to the social network version, which is being played by more than 18 million people a day.

In fact, CityVille Hometown is a standalone game for iPhone and the iPad. It will launch in Canada as soon as this week, and then become available later globally in four additional languages.

Justin Cinicolo, Zynga’s General Manager of Mobility, said the game will be familiar to those who already play, but there will be a couple of key differences.

For example, the mobile version will be used to build a small town vs. a large metropolis on Facebook. Players will also have their choice of choosing computer-generated people to live in their buildings, instead of real-life friends.

One area where there will be some overlap between the games is in gifting and sharing resources. Mobile players will be able to swap energy and send and receive special limited edition items to players on Facebook.

The free game will be monetized through virtual goods, which users will be able to purchase through in-app payments on the iPhone.

In an earlier interview, Zynga’s SVP of Mobile David Ko told me the company is taking two approaches to the market: building games first for mobile that are not on the PC, and developing applications that are an extension of mobile.

Last week, it launched Hanging With Friends on iPhone, a hangman game that closely follows the popular Scrabble-like game Words With Friends. Ko said it will soon be on pace to release one game every quarter.

Many social game companies are looking at mobile as a way to diversify, given the dominance of Facebook.

Ko said using mobile to hedge their bets on Facebook “is the wrong way to think about it. … Where are people going today to be social? It’s on Facebook. But mobile has the opportunity to be larger than the PC.”

A Yahoo representative confirmed Shim’s planned exit and said that Shim’s boss, Senior VP of Business Development Raymond Stern, will assume Shim’s responsibilities.

The move comes as the local deals market gets increasingly crowded, with both Facebook and Google getting in on the act. Yahoo itself announced a local offers program back in November, while Groupon rival LivingSocial scored a lot of attention and new customers last week with a nationwide deal on Amazon gift cards.

Google offered billions for Groupon, but in the end the company decided to stick it out and is clearly bulking up for a major battle.

Update: 9:47 am PT: Groupon confirmed the move, noting that Shim will be heading its efforts to expand Groupon’s reach on mobile devices, working alongside Mihir Shah, Groupon’s VP of mobile. “We’re thrilled to have him,” a Groupon representative told Mobilized.

It’s not all departures!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s unclear if Mafia Wars or a Poker game, which was announced last month, will be the first Zynga title to hit the Android Market since both are roughly expected by the end of the year. So far, Zynga has launched mobile game titles only for the iPhone, including Mafia Wars, Poker and other popular virtual-world titles like FarmVille.

The company’s Android plans were revealed by David Ko, Zynga’s new head of mobile, who appeared at the LeWeb conference in France yesterday.

Earlier this month, Zynga acquired Newtoy, which will help it expand to more mobile platforms. At the time, Ko said FarmVille had been downloaded seven million times in five months, and in general, Zynga has more than 10 million people accessing Zynga games on a mobile phone. “Our goal is to have Zynga games available to anyone anywhere, on any device,” he said.

Does that include other platforms, like Windows Phone 7 or BlackBerry? “As we start to think across international territories, we’re going to have to think about some of the other platforms out there,” Ko reportedly said.

It’s unclear how Zynga will monetize its games on Android, which doesn’t support buying virtual goods from within the app as seamlessly as the iPhone.

For example, Rovio, the developer of the very popular Angry Birds, has had to come up with its own workaround. Today, it announced that it is launching a new mobile payment system called Bad Piggy Bank, which charges purchases to a customer’s monthly cellphone bill. The system will initially launch on Elisa, the largest network operator in Finland. Rovio has intentions of rolling out with more carriers worldwide, and will potentially make it available to other developers as a payment platform, CNET reports.

Zynga hosted a press conference this morning to announce that it has acquired Texas-based Newtoy, a two-year-old mobile games company to help expand its games onto all mobile devices.

Terms of the deal, which marks the company’s seventh acquisition in seven months, were not disclosed.

David Ko, Zynga’s new head of mobile and former Yahoo executive, said Newtoy has been successful with such hits as “Words with Friends” and “Chess with Friends.”

The Newtoy offices will become “Zynga with Friends Studio,” and will be headed by the two founding brothers, Paul and David Bettner.

Ko: “Mobile is the next great frontier for social gaming. In only five months, Farmville has been downloaded seven million times, and we have more than 10 million people a month accessing Zynga games on a mobile phone. Our goal is to have Zynga games available to anyone anywhere, on any device.”

Newtoy’s hit title “Words with Friends” has been downloaded 12 million time across iPhone, iPod and iPad.

While the acquisition is being announced today, the two companies have been working together for some time under the code name Jet Pack. One of the two brothers said during the call that the name represented how the two will “move even faster toward our shared goal of connecting the world with shared games.”

Newtoy does not generate revenue today like Zynga, which relies on selling virtual goods. Rather, it’s focused on experimenting with paid and ad-supported models.

He’s baaaaaack.

Former Fox Interactive Media President Ross Levinsohn, that is, who is the top candidate to replace Hilary Schneider as Yahoo’s North American head, according to several sources close to the situation.

While the deal is not completely struck, sources said Levinsohn is very close to taking the job.

Sources added, if he does, he is likely to remain living in Los Angeles, where he has long been located. Yahoo has a large facility in Santa Monica.

The move is a bold one for Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who desperately needs to bring in major Internet talent to the company to shore up her worrisome inexperience in the space.

Yahoo has been rocked by management turmoil–especially in the media and advertising unit–and also troubling weakness in revenue growth and innovative spark.

Levinsohn, one of the more colorful of Web personalities, certainly has a spark.

Levinsohn is currently an investor at Fuse Capital, which funds digital media and communications start-ups.

But sources said he has been itching to get back at a big company with scale in the digital media business and has been interested in Yahoo for some months.

At Yahoo, presumably, he will have purview over what Schneider did (and perhaps more), including the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s powerful media properties and its large advertising sales force in the U.S..

It’s likely Yahoo will hire a major ad sales exec to work under Levinsohn, and sources said the company has been in contact with several prominent execs to fill the slot left open with the March departure of Joanne Bradford to Demand Media.

Besides Schneider, also among the recent departures in the unit Levinsohn would run: VP of Media Jimmy Pitaro, who went to Disney, and U.S. Audience head David Ko, who moved to social gaming phenom Zynga.

Until now, Levinsohn is best known for his stint running digital operations for News Corp.’s then FIM unit.

It was at FIM that he rose to prominence after he bought MySpace, the social networking site that was once the hottest property on the Web.

At the time, Levinsohn and other execs also struck a gigantically lucrative advertising search deal with Google that garnered MySpace huge revenues.

After leaving News Corp. after repeated clashes with MySpace Co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe, he partnered with former AOL CEO Jon Miller in another investment company, Velocity Capital.

Ironically, both Miller and Levinsohn were the top choice of billionaire shareholder activist Carl Icahn as the execs he wanted to run Yahoo when he was agitating for change there a few years back in the midst of the failed takeover attempt by Microsoft.

When reached today, Miller–who now is the Chief Digital Officer of News Corp.–declined to comment on his former associate’s job prospects.

But he said: “If Yahoo is so lucky to get Ross, it would be great, because he is one of few people who understands all media.”

Indeed, although Levinsohn is better known as a dealmaker and media exec than as a sales expert, although he did manage digital advertising properties at FIM.

Previous to FIM, Levinsohn ran Fox Sports Interactive Media. He has also worked at the AltaVista Network, an early search pioneer, CBS Sportsline and Time Warner’s pay cable giant HBO. In addition, according to his bio at Fuse.

He also worked at Saatchi and Saatchi and in sports management and marketing with ProServ and Lapin and Rose Communications.

Yahoo declined to comment about the possible appointment of Levinsohn.

(And let’s hope Yahoo–especially the hip-shooting Bartz–doesn’t announce his arrival by also unfairly kicking former execs in the media and advertising unit in the teeth, as has been cloddishly done already too many times.)

BoomTown has also contacted Levinsohn via email and phone and has not heard back from the typically voluble exec.

But you can enjoy his stylings here, in a video interview I did with him in 2007:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101026/exclusive-yahoo-courts-former-news-corp-digital-exec-ross-levinsohn-as-u-s-head/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20101019/exclusive-yahoos-head-of-mobile-north-america-leaves-as-u-s-unit-reorgs/ http://allthingsd.com/20101019/exclusive-yahoos-head-of-mobile-north-america-leaves-as-u-s-unit-reorgs/#comments Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:03:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35868 Today in Yahoo’s third-quarter earnings conference call with Wall Street analysts, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said tersely of a flood of exec departures at the Silicon Valley Internet giant:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yahoo! VP of Mobile, North America David Katz discusses CTIA announcements @ Yahoo! Video

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101019/exclusive-yahoos-head-of-mobile-north-america-leaves-as-u-s-unit-reorgs/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20101004/exclusive-yahoos-david-ko-to-head-mobile-at-online-gaming-powerhouse-zynga/ http://allthingsd.com/20101004/exclusive-yahoos-david-ko-to-head-mobile-at-online-gaming-powerhouse-zynga/#comments Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:11:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34789

David Ko (pictured here), who just announced he was leaving Yahoo as head of its powerful U.S. Audience unit, is taking a job heading mobile efforts at hot social gaming start-up Zynga, according to sources.

The move comes only a day after Jimmy Pitaro, who also departed his job as SVP of Media at the Internet giant last week (working under Ko, in fact), landed at Disney (DIS) as the new co-president of its Internet division.

For Zynga–the fast-growing San Francisco-based maker of such online hits as Farmville and Mafia Wars that got its start on Facebook–mobile is becoming a critical new platform for growth, as consumers use a variety of increasingly functional mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers.

It’s also the fastest growing area internationally, where mobile phones are more widespread and where Zynga is seeking its next spurt of growth.

Sources said Zynga had been pursuing Ko for months.

Before heading the Audience unit at Yahoo (YHOO), Ko ran its mobile operations, which included heading product development, making distribution deals and more.

Under Ko, Yahoo’s mobile efforts first centered on building apps for smartphones, such as the Apple (AAPL) iPhone, but shifted to encompass more of its copious content assets.

Ko, who worked in a variety of areas at Yahoo, took over as SVP of Yahoo Mobile in 2009 after Marco Boerries left as EVP of the Connected Device Division, which now does not exist under that name.

Ko had also run Yahoo’s mobile business in the Asia-Pacific region.

According to one of Ko’s old Yahoo bios, he previously worked at Salomon Smith Barney as a senior associate and analyst. He is a graduate of New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Ko, who lives in San Francisco with his family, the bio notes, inexplicably “enjoys reading tech blogs.”

In his new job, as SVP of Mobile at Zynga, he will report directly to CEO Mark Pincus, sources said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101004/exclusive-yahoos-david-ko-to-head-mobile-at-online-gaming-powerhouse-zynga/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101004/no-massive-reorg-at-yahoo-but-more-exec-departures-plus-the-schneider-goodbye-letter/ http://allthingsd.com/20101004/no-massive-reorg-at-yahoo-but-more-exec-departures-plus-the-schneider-goodbye-letter/#comments Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:05:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34712

Sorry, folks, but–despite reports–Yahoo will not be unveiling another new organizational structure this week.

In actuality, the beleaguered Internet giant is just cleaning up from last week’s shake-up–in which it announced that a chunk of its top media and sales leadership was leaving–as well as settling in new hires made in recent months by its relatively new product head, Blake Irving.

In fact, those changes in Irving’s unit have resulted in the departure of two more execs. That would be former SVP of Media Products and Solutions Jeff Kinder and SVP for Cloud Computing Shelton Shugar, who are on their way out.

Kinder actually left his job many weeks ago and was offered the chance to find another within Yahoo (YHOO), although sources said he has now definitely decided to leave the company on his own.

CEO Carol Bartz held a meeting Friday with senior leadership to go over the situation and to assure management that changes to come would stabilize the company going forward.

To be sure, Yahoo needs some kind of reassurance and fast.

BoomTown broke the news last week that U.S. head Hilary Schneider was departing the company (see her goodbye memo below), along with U.S. Audience head David Ko and SVP of Media Jimmy Pitaro.

Pitaro has since landed a big job as co-president of the Internet unit of Disney (DIS).

The overall corporate turmoil has put more scrutiny on Bartz. For two years, she has been trying to turn around the company, with only a modicum of success.

While Bartz did strike a search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) to better battle Google (GOOG), she has not goosed flat revenue nor been able to boost Yahoo’s moribund stock.

Perhaps more critically, she has not stopped the steady exodus of talent, especially of more senior execs.

Departures in the last six months include U.S. advertising sales head Joanne Bradford, Integrated Consumer Experiences SVP Tapan Bhat, CTO Ari Balogh, as well as the heads of its social platform and communications product units.

But last week’s departure trifecta of the execs running Yahoo’s powerful and successful media unit drove the talent drain issue home for many investors and other observers.

While each departure case was different, of course, the leavings have lent a feeling of instability inside and outside the company.

That has happened more quietly over the several months of reshuffling by Irving (pictured here), who came to Yahoo from Microsoft, and which I have reported on here previously several times.

For example, in September, Irving hired Microsoft exec John Matheny to head the communications products and communities unit.

Previous to that, in July, Irving brought in another old colleague from the software giant–Bill Shaughnessy–as SVP of Product Management.

Thus, Irving–who is a little too busy traveling to a number of Yahoo product and technology units in Asia and India over the next weeks to announce yet another reorg–has pretty much already moved his part of the business around, although there are likely to be some more hires to come.

It is not unusual for a new senior exec to do this, of course, but Irving’s many moves reportedly sparked some tension between him and Schneider.

That might have been moot, since she had decided to leave some months ago, but was asked to stay on by Bartz.

To be sure, in recent months, many sources said that their relationship had become strained too as Yahoo ad sales continue to struggle, and they also disagreed on the company’s strategic direction.

Still, it should be noted that Schneider is staying on until a new exec is named to replace her.

Whatever the various machinations in the corporate suite at Yahoo, Bartz needs to find a way to convince Wall Street that she still has the ability to complete her much touted turnaround of the Silicon Valley pioneer to a new period of growth and innovation.

How quickly she is doing that will come into sharp relief in a few weeks when Yahoo reports its third-quarter earnings on October 19.

And while executive departures garner a lot of attention, that is the bottom line for Yahoo, the thing most important of all to watch.

Finally, given I love a good internal memo, here is, belatedly, the email that Schneider sent to her staff last week about her leaving:

Team,

I’m sure by now you’ve all had a chance to read Carol’s note, and know that I made the decision to move on to the next stage of my career. When I joined Yahoo! four years ago, I knew it would be an amazing and rich experience…and it has exceeded every expectation. Our consumers look to Yahoo! as they navigate their lives, our advertisers look to Yahoo! for leadership, and publisher looks to Yahoo! for our amazing scale and reach. Our team, however, is our secret weapon!

Meanwhile, the search for my successor is under way and I will continue to lead our team until we make the transition.

Additionally. David Ko, SVP of Audience and Mobile, and Jimmy Pitaro, VP of North America Media, have decided to leave Yahoo! David and Jimmy are amazing leaders and we will miss them. Yahoo!’s leadership positions in Sports, News, Entertainment, Finance and Mobile are their legacy that we have to proudly continue.

Raymond Stern will be the SVP of North America Audience and will be responsible for the Audience teams. Raymond has been an integral part of Americas leadership team as the SVP of Business Development and Partnerships. Before joining Yahoo! a year ago, he held a wide range of business leadership positions, including more than 10 years as a Partner the Boston Consulting Group where he ran the Technology and Media Practice on the west coast. He also held senior leadership roles at Intuit, including CMO.

Raymond will immediately start diving in to the Audience business, and David and Jimmy are committed to working with Raymond through the transition. Right now, Raymond will continue overseeing the business development and partnership teams while we think through the best structure for these teams moving forward.

I know that transitions can create swirl–but our customers, both consumer and marketers, are looking to us for continued leadership…and I know we can deliver this.

You are Yahoo!’s magic, and I thank you for your tremendous commitment, leadership, and support.

Hilary

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101004/no-massive-reorg-at-yahoo-but-more-exec-departures-plus-the-schneider-goodbye-letter/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100930/yahoo-confirms-exec-departures-the-internal-memo-from-the-foxhole/ http://allthingsd.com/20100930/yahoo-confirms-exec-departures-the-internal-memo-from-the-foxhole/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2010 21:02:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34623

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yahoos,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol

And here is the official statement from Yahoo:

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

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

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

And here is the 8-K:

Current Report on Form 8-K.html –

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100930/yahoo-confirms-exec-departures-the-internal-memo-from-the-foxhole/feed/ 13 http://allthingsd.com/20100930/yahoo-troops-skittish-with-no-word-from-top-on-exec-departures-sos-microsoft/ http://allthingsd.com/20100930/yahoo-troops-skittish-with-no-word-from-top-on-exec-departures-sos-microsoft/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:49:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34550

“We are wandering around and people are asking us questions and we don’t know what’s going on ourselves,” said one very nervous Yahoo ad salesperson this morning, in New York for Advertising Week, the most important gathering of the year for online sales. “There’s a lot of uncertainty from an employee perspective.”

You can say that again.

Today, as news BoomTown broke about the departure of Yahoo’s U.S. head Hilary Schneider and two other key execs at the Internet giant spread, I have been on the receiving end of a spate of emails and calls and text messages from staffers at the Silicon Valley icon searching for information about what’s up at their own company.

That’s because neither the top management of Yahoo (YHOO) nor its typically ineffectual board has communicated to its thousands of employees about exactly what is going on, nor about plans to replace bosses in charge of giant swaths of the business.

Now, for example, Yahoo’s ad sales execs say they don’t know who to report to, since Schneider is headed out and no one person replaced U.S. ad sales leader Joanne Bradford in Yahoo’s key moneymaking market after she left in March.

And media workers, such as GMs of powerful Yahoo news, sports, finance and mobile efforts, all under departing Audience head David Ko and VP of Media Jimmy Pitaro, are also wondering who is now in charge.

Here’s my promise: I will have all internal memos here, as soon as they are released and I can get my mitts on them.

It’s not clear when that will be. Sources said Yahoo might make a statement about the situation this afternoon, before the planned announcement tomorrow afternoon about the exec departures, but it has not been determined yet.

But sources said Yahoo might have an exec to announce to replace at least Schneider by today, given how important sales are to the company.

Since Chief Product Officer Blake Irving is from Microsoft and he has brought in several execs from there to Yahoo, rumors are swirling around yet another one coming in.

Some outside partners are also nervous, including those staying at Microsoft.

In an interview just this morning with the new head of global ad sales for Microsoft (MSFT) Carolyn Everson, for example, she pointed out that Yahoo is slated to take over premium online ad sales for the software giant under the terms of their search and technology partnership in just two weeks.

“I’ll be honest,” she said. “We are a little worried.” But she added that Yahoo remains an important strategic partner and the success of the alliance is a key focus.

Worried? Get in line, it seems.

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