New research was released today by Forrester on Groupon’s second day of trading on the public markets. In midday trading, the daily deals giant was down 17 cents, or less than a percentage point, to $25.94.

In the report, Forrester’s biggest dig on the space is that it has created “deal-hunting gremlins,” who are getting a discount on services they would normally be willing to pay full price for. Additionally, analyst Sucharita Mulpuru finds that the daily email model is expensive to scale and that consumers will ultimately unsubscribe as offers fill up their inboxes.

Other findings:

• 29 percent of subscribers of coupon and flash sales sites have unsubscribed because they don’t want to receive so many emails
• 49 percent don’t sign up because they don’t want to receive more email
• 83 percent receive emails from Groupon
• 41 percent receive emails from LivingSocial
• 26 percent of subscribers have purchased more than four offers.
• 36 percent have never made a purchase.

The survey was conducted from June 11 to 21 and had a total of 9,449 respondents.

(Image courtesy of Groupon’s Flickr page.)

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.

First and foremost is the launch of Livestand, a personalized news reader that is similar to Flipboard and a variety of other rivals, including — soon — Google.

It’s Yahoo’s attempt to present a business-as-usual feel — amidst a long and agonizing and very public strategic overview that might also include the sale of the company (or not!), in the wake of the recent firing of its last CEO, Carol Bartz.

It has caused a lot of trauma inside Yahoo, which can’t help with innovation.

But we press on!

In other words, despite the three-ring circus going on outside, Yahoo wants you to know it is still hard at work.

We begin:

10:35 am: As the strains of U2 die out, Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving takes the stage, which is actually set up in the company’s cafeteria. I can smell lunch being made nearby and I am hungry.

Apt — Yahoo certainly needs to show off a lot of cool stuff or its fate will be cooked.

No pressure, Blake!

“Personally, I am more bullish on Yahoo today,” he said. “What is Yahoo? Simple. It’s the premier digital media company. Period. Stop.”

Oh, if it were only that easy.

10:46 am: Irving pulls out his favorite slide, which looks like a chemistry test. It lists the various elements of the product strategy, with things like personalization, mobile, premium.

Now to Livestand, which is available on the Apple iTunes app store right now.

Don’t all rush at once!

Irving notes that Livestand is more than just an app — it is a platform.

In other words, Yahoo wants to help publishers publish online. Kind of a Facebook of content.

If Yahoo can pull it off, that is. (And, of course, unless Facebook decides to do the same.)

10:50 am: Livestand is an HTML5 “personalized living magazine.”

“This is the way Web pages are going to look,” declares Irving. Which is to say, heavy on photos, swoopy navigation, a television screen-like interface.

Irving uses the example of Surfer magazine, which is a good idea since waves always look pretty. Especially in a video-in-frame with Kelly Slater in Hawaii.

But, in essence, for anyone who has used Flipboard for years now, none of this is entirely different.

10:54 am: The look of what would be the Yahoo News page is actually much more interesting, since it is clearly a whole lot better than the Web page.

Irving also shows off a “living ad” — in this case, an unusually snuggly couple on a couch. It is cool, but creepy.

When launched, the ad has tap points. Irving — naughtily declaring about what is an ad, “I’ll tap that” — taps the lady’s butt, which would also have been my move. We learn about the jeans, of course.

10:58 am: Irving then shows off the ability to add feeds.

Next, something called “Cocktails.” First up, a developer tool called Yahoo Mojito and Yahoo Manhattan, which is a hosting service. The company will open-source both the technologies in 2012.

Irving brings up Mike Kerns, VP of Personalization & Social, who came to Yahoo when it bought the innovative sports fan site called Citizen Sports.

“We like to ship sh#t,” he notes. I like Mike Kerns immediately.

Kerns intros C.O.R.E. No, it is not a secret government organization that takes out fussy bloggers, who might be more critical than Yahoo execs would like.

In fact, it stands for “content optimization relevance engine.” Of course it does.

Simply put, C.O.R.E. is trying to link the right content or whatever to the right consumers and who likes what. Ladies like this, dudes like this. Apparently, “men of multiple ages” enjoy stories about golden chicken.

11:11 am: Kerns is moving on to social, especially its integration with Facebook. While much touted, sources tell me it has gone slower than expected in terms of use, but that it is improving.

Kerns talks about the idea of matching content to conversations to interests and, well, you know — the now exhausting world of modern media consumption.

The world in which you can no longer simply read an article and enjoy it — you must comment, share, discuss, parse, tweet.

Does anyone remember when you read something cool and just kept it to yourself?

Forget it, pal! It is a full-information society now and you better get on board and start poking your friends about every little thing.

(Personally, I plan on becoming a hermit in 3 … 2 … 1.)

11:18 am: Now Tim Parsey, who is Yahoo’s design head. He is hands down the most delightful exec the company has had in a while, mostly because he loves to smirk adorkably.

He shows off Yahoo’s first original design, which was a dull list. And then another really bad logo. But Parsey loves it! It’s kitschy!

Smirk attack!

Parsey moves into what has to happen now, which is to deliver a much more emotional experience and a much better designed one. He uses words like “humanism.”

Say what? He is right — Yahoo has for too long completely ignored design as an important part of the experience.

That’s why Flipboard was so quickly touted — it was pretty and fun. And it is why everyone is simply forced to love Apple products.

11:22 am: Parsey even has a code for it, called REM — for rational, emotional and meaningful.

He shows off a weather app. People take photos and they can be used in the app. Then Yahoo Mail for the iPad, whic is also handsome with photos and video. Livestand, also pretty.

“Great way to differentiate,” says Parsey. He calls it “one Yahoo!” Indeed.

11:35 am: I’ll admit it. After Parsey-fest, I zoned out for a sec when IntoNow dude, Adam Cahan, comes up.

Donut emergency!

Back to IntoNow, it’s the television indexing service that Yahoo bought in April.

Essentially, more ways to watch the media — in this case, video — and do 53 other things at the very same time. Memo to humanity: We will all be paying continuous partial attention for the rest of eternity.

Like I said: Hermitage!

11:41 am: Product dude Irving is back, making a point that, despite all the public mishegas, Yahoo has been busy at innovating.

A redo of email, better search, social “Facebar” with Facebook, Flickr for Google Android.

Irving is correct — Yahoo’s engineers have been hard at work and deserve kudos for doing so, even with attrition issues, stock declines and questions about the company’s very future being debated daily.

The problem is that too many of these improvements are mostly incremental and essentially table stakes for tech companies, most of whom have introed many more significant innovations in the same time frame as Yahoo has.

Google did Android, Google+ (as well as some notable failures). Microsoft did Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8. Amazon did Kindle Fire. Facebook did a range of major updates, as it has grown like a weed.

And there’s Apple. You might have heard of the iPhone and the iPad.

You get my point. Yahoo’s Product Runway today is well done, but what it really needs to be is just the beginning of a take-off.

11:48 am: Now Q&A time.

The first question is what took so long to get Livestand out, the second is why should people use Livestand since Flipboard and others have already been around for a dog’s age.

I ask about design — mostly because I want Parsey to use the word “delicious” a lot — and also about all the turmoil around the company and its impact on product creation. (I decide not to mention that Yahoo blew its acquisition of the bookmarking site, Delicious, and then sold it.)

Parsey delivers on the delicious scale, noting that Yahoo must have one design experience and yet has a lot of different interfaces. In other words, it cannot be Apple, but it can feel a lot more cohesive.

Irving talks a little bit around the obvious elephant in the room — the future of Yahoo — noting that the product staff was trying to focus and forget the storm going on outside.

“We have dreams about what this company can be,” says Irving.

You and me both, brother.

12:04 pm: More questions that are too detailed for my tastes, since they have delivered lunch and I can see it and I am ravenous.

As Parsey might say: It looks deliiiiiccccious.

Now, let’s hope Yahoo can do even more tasty stuff.

Do sale rumors make a troubled asset more attractive? Yes — except when more rumors (that those sales rumors might not be true) appear.

Welcome to just another day in the life of Yahoo, which saw its shares drop more than 5.5 percent today. Its stock declined almost a dollar to close at $15.64, after it was reported by various news orgs that Yahoo might be leaning toward no sale and a shareholder dividend, and toward taking control of its own sale of its lucrative Asian assets.

That was counter to the news — from a number of the very same outlets — touting a variety of ever more elaborate and sometimes breathless sale scenarios last week, featuring various configurations of Microsoft, Google and private equity firms like Silver Lake and others.

Silver Lake, in fact, appears to be the most aggressive in the possible bidding for all or parts of Yahoo, and has been noodling such a deal most intently, and for a long time now.

It makes sense, given that Silver Lake was successful in a vaguely similar deal that ultimately saved the Internet telephony service Skype, which it eventually peddled at a high price to Microsoft.

In fact, according to several sources, Yahoo director and co-founder Jerry Yang — also a former CEO of the company, who appears to have seized the ball firmly in the strategy game — met with Silver Lake today for an unspecified little chitchat.

That said, one source told me, “what is deeply uncertain is whether Silver Lake will do something at all.”

This is par for the course in this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink drama. Because — although it makes for a boring post, and the back and forth throat-clearing before an actual event might be entertaining — so far, not very much is actually happening as yet at Yahoo, with regard to its variety of options.

Of course, this could change in an hour. Or tomorrow, or the next day. Most of all, it’s clear that Yahoo’s board has to move in some significant way before the end of the year.

So, yes, the Silicon Valley Internet giant is doing all the sales-oriented stuff it should do with its coterie of pricey bankers (presumably being paid by the hour).

Yes, it has recently hired a talent-search firm, which is eyeing the landscape to find a willing CEO. (Even more adviser costs!)

And, yes, it is still wrangling with its Asian partners — Alibaba Group and SoftBank — over how to do a tax-free transaction (you’d think from all the sweating over it that this deal was harder to solve than the European debt crisis).

And, on schedule, activist shareholders — like hedge-fund agitator Dan Loeb of Third Point — should be attacking again soon, until a deal is done.

But according to many sources both inside and outside Yahoo, what’s happening is pretty much business as usual for this Hamlet of a company, which is lugubriously debating and weighing and pondering its fate.

I suppose it should, given the importance of it all, except it is a conundrum that has been going on for far too long at Yahoo, and under a number of different leaders.

In other words, it’s like “As the World Turns,” except with some new characters and a whole lot more amnesia.

But the slowness of a very real process is also causing deep frustration with all those dealing with Yahoo now — including possible bidders, and definitely its Asian partners.

Their gripes — which are louder than in most deals — are not surprising: They refuse to sign a too-onerous NDA to look at Yahoo’s books; there’s an irksome tone of indecision on the part of the company’s board; and, as always, the incessant leaks about all of this and more are making it worse.

One bidder has likened the company to a “melting iceberg that has a lot less time than the planet has to put its house in order.”

Another bemoaned the variety of trial balloons being floated, and noted that no movement was what Yahoo seems to do best.

That’s not exactly true, of course, so expect to see more leaks about plots and plans and meetings.

But no matter what you hear, keep in mind that having Yahoo’s fate being spun about like a top on a daily basis on Wall Street and in the media is not good for the company itself — or for its employees and shareholders.

Since it makes me dizzy — even though I like a good scoop as much as the next reporter — that’s the reason I have largely stuck to reporting about the actual internal turmoil inside Yahoo, from poor employee morale to various staff rejiggerings to more relentless brain drain.

Because while everyone fiddles, Yahoo’s real prospects of maintaining its core business melt a little bit more every day.

Yahoo is on its third CEO in four years, it has lost advertising momentum to Google and Facebook, its engagement levels are dangerously slowing, its social and mobile strategies are unclear and even its powerful email product is under siege.

And in the end, it is only these things that will matter to whoever runs the company in the end.

[Photo from Mat Honan's fantastic tweet here.]

It’s official: Seven billion people are alive in the world at this moment, a high population point of all time.

Births are obviously outstripping deaths by a little more than two to one.

Here is a really cool site called Worldometers that has the countdown and all kinds of other cool stats, accounting for our little and now more crowded world.

The section on society and media is particularly terrific, showing how many cellphones are being sold, emails sent, tweets posted and, of course, blogs created. Like this one, blink and you will definitely miss it.

And note how much slower new book titles published and televisions sold are in comparison to digital stats.

Facebook, by the way, is now closing on one billion users, sources said — although the official number for the huge social networking site here is 800 million.

As happened last week to its centralized marketing division, Yahoo has broken up its Customer Advocacy organization, with its staff distributed to the various regions and the product unit of the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Customer Advocacy has been led by EVP Jeff Russakow, whose fate is now similarly unclear as it is for CMO Elisa Steele, whose division was diced up to the regions last week.

Both execs — who were hired by fired CEO Carol Bartz — plan to remain at the company until at least January, sources said.

Russakow, according to his Yahoo bio, has had “global responsibility for all of Yahoo!’s customer support functions, including audience, small business, ad operations, and search network quality.” He came to Yahoo from previous jobs at Symantec and Adobe.

Interim CEO Tim Morse sent a memo to employees about the change, noting Russakow is looking for his next opportunity, using much the same language as Steele used in her internal email.

The moves are interesting, given Yahoo’s current effort to find a new strategy, which includes a possible sale of all or parts of the company. But there is also a strong sentiment within the company to reorganize around strengthening its advertising platform and products.

I have a call into Yahoo PR for comment (but let’s assume I am accurate about this, shall we?).

More, obviously, to come.

Between 8:58 and 10:20 BST this morning we sent an email to 3,521 of you that contained the names and email addresses of 46,524 of our readers. Obviously, this was an error. The two-stage send process that is the norm for all of our mailers was over-looked because someone was in a hurry. We would like to offer our genuine and humble apologies for the error.

From the Register Web site

Here’s the direct quote taken from the transcript:

“IPhone continues to be adopted as the standard across the enterprise with 93 percent of the Fortune 500 deploying or testing the device, up from 91 percent last quarter and 60 percent of the Global 500 testing or deploying iPhone, up from 57 percent last quarter. A recent example of iPhone’s enterprise success is Lowe’s. Lowe’s is in the process of rolling out over 40,000 iPhones with a custom application to allow their store associates to execute real-time inventory checks, product orders and interactive customers with how-to videos.

Additional examples of companies around the world supporting iPhone on their corporate networks include L’Oreal, Royal Bank of Scotland, SAP, Texas Instruments, Jacobs Engineering Group, Tenet Healthcare, Jaguar Land Rover, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Lincoln National and CSX Corporation. And of course, we’re thrilled to begin shipping iPhone 4S this month.”

And later, a similar section devoted to the iPad:

“Every day, we learn about innovative new ways our enterprise customers are using iPad. The airline industry is a great example of the momentum we’re seeing. United Continental Holdings is putting iPads in every cockpit to replace heavy, paper-based flight bags. In Japan, All Nippon Airways is now using iPad in training programs for flight attendants.

Sonic Automotive is using iPad for customer check-in at the service department and also to provide analytics to regional managers. Aflac, Biogen and General Mills have developed internal apps that their field sales teams leverage daily, and technicians of Siemens Energy are bringing iPads along when they do maintenance work at the top of their wind turbines.”

It turns out that it’s not a new thing, exactly. Cook has recited similar lists on Apple conference calls before. But as recently as 2008, when Businessweek published its cover story called “The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit” (which, full disclosure, I worked on), Apple was generally considered an outsider in the enterprise IT business, and Apple products a novelty in the office. In broad brushstrokes, Macs tended to show up at media and advertising companies, and in the creative and marketing departments of other companies. The iPhone, and later the iPad, changed all that.

Here’s about as good an indication of that trend as I’ve ever seen: Intermedia, a company that operated a hosted Microsoft Exchange service for small and mid-sized businesses, said earlier this month that among its 41,000 customers, 78 percent are using Apple devices to get their mail, contact lists and calendars.

Meanwhile, look at all the companies that have developed enterprise applications for iOS: Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Citrix immediately come to mind. And Tidemark — the business intelligence start-up I wrote about yesterday — is iPad-ready from the start. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of examples I’m missing.

Apple has cumulatively sold 40 million iPads since the device launched last year. The company doesn’t offer much in the way of a data breakdown of how many of those are sold to businesses, but it almost doesn’t matter, because in so many cases, people buy one and just take it to the office. When you hear the phrase “consumerization of IT,” which already feels pretty worn out to me, it refers mostly to people who want to use iOS devices at work, and to a lesser extent, Google’s Android. A recent survey of 750 IT managers found that the iPhone led the pack of personal devices used at work, followed by Android Phones and the iPad.

I probably shouldn’t be surprised by all this, but when I heard Tim Cook list all those big companies using iThings to get things done, it finally dawned on me: Apple is as much an enterprise story as it is a consumer story.

Experian CheetahMail client data indicates that as part of the retail push, marketers will be sending coupons and offering deep discounts, such as 10 percent off or free shipping, as the shopping frenzy ramps up.

Email has proven to be a very effective channel, especially for new local commerce providers, such as Groupon and LivingSocial, and flash sales sites, such as Gilt Groupe, Rue La La or ideeli. But already some critics are using the words “deal fatigue” to signal that consumers are growing tired of seeing offers in their inbox.

While the study didn’t mention those sectors specifically, it found that one of the big contributors that has ramped up e-marketing since last year was the travel sector, growing by 126 percent, followed by media and entertainment at 77 percent.

In addition to pushing offers, Experian said, it was also trendy for the emails to link to social media, including Twitter and Facebook, and carry mobile-specific features, such as QR codes.

[Image via eyeidea/Shutterstock]

Here’s some electric weekend reading for those interested in the push and pull between venture investors and start-ups in the frothy Web 2.0 environment.

In an email to Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky (which I obtained, embedded below), former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya, who now runs an investment fund called the Social+Capital Partnership, is passing on participating in the recent $112 million round for the hot online rental site that was announced in July.

The deal — which values the company at $1.2 billion — has not officially closed yet, but includes venture firms such as DST Global, Andreessen Horowitz and others. Previous investors include Sequoia Capital.

Palihapitiya confirmed to me that it was his email and that his possible investment in Airbnb was small.

That said, his concerns center on how much voting control of new investors’ preferred shares the founders have in the latest round and also a $22.5 million cashing out, $21 million of which is going to those founders.

Another $9.6 million is being used to buy secondary stock from current Airbnb shareholders, who have to render parts of their vested stakes for the money.

Such wrangling between investors and entrepreneurs is not uncommon in Silicon Valley these days, as ever-dumber money chases ever-more-powerful geeks. But Palihapitiya’s email is a smart, reasonable and well-written argument to stop the madness.

According to sources close to Airbnb, the numbers that he refers to below are accurate, as is what appears to be an unusual level of voting control by its founders. Presumably, it is to protect the company from possible future sales on the secondary markets and to keep control with its founders as the number of investors grows.

In any case, the Palihapitiya email to Chesky is well worth the read (I have removed email addresses as a courtesy):

From: Chamath Palihapitiya
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2011 11:16:05 -0700

To: Brian Chesky

Subject: Airbnb financing…

Brian,

Cc Marc, Reid, my deal team

Thanks again for giving me the chance to participate in your latest financing. I had a chance to review the docs at length yesterday and I wanted to follow up as, quite honestly, I’ve never seen a deal like this over ~60 investments I’ve done and I’m pretty concerned.

I’m all for getting the best valuation you can, minimizing dilution and maximizing control. We did this brilliantly at Facebook…all of our financings (except our first $$$ from Peter Thiel) were done not out of necessity but opportunity. As such, our investors had virtually no control and it resulted in a much better outcome. As we’ve discussed, I generally don’t believe investors add much to a success story and so minimizing their impact is a great strategy when you are onto something that is working.

This said, while several of these concepts are reflected in the current deal, there is one big thing that I am fundamentally against and violates my principles and will prevent me from participating in your round. When I saw that you guys were taking $31M out of the company, I didn’t think much of it as I just assumed it would entirely be via a secondary sale.

But as I understand the deal, it seems that you are doing only $9.6M in secondary and $22.5M as a dividend to common (of which $21M goes to you and your co-founders). I am really uncomfortable with this and don’t think its in the spirit of building a good, long term business. Effectively, it is a strategy that allows you guys to take money out of the business and not dilute yourself — I’m not sure why this is such a big deal when you guys are almost 90% vested and the financing is at $1.2B where your dilution is marginal. Further, it excludes many of the employees that probably have helped you and your co–founders get the company to this place as most of these folks probably don’t have any stock but have unexercised stock options and thus won’t get a dividend.

My basic principle on this stuff is that if you want liquidity, that’s fine, but you should make it available to everyone. Otherwise, no one should get it. Your current deal is the farthest away from this principle that I’ve seen in a while…this strategy has been done once before — at Groupon. We can see how “well” they are doing and how short term the investor community is now viewing their motives. I really think you can do better than this…and that you are better than this.

Separately, when you look at successful tech companies, it seems that dividends are an approach used by cash rich operations to distribute excess earnings — in fact, the most successful, cash rich tech company in the world, Apple, hasn’t issued a dividend and they have more than $75B in cash! Again, while I think Airbnb will be a good company, this is nowhere near the truth now — you guys still need to scale and build this thing for the future.

I really think you are onto something but I would implore you to not take the easy way out. Treat your employees the same as you’d treat yourself. Do things that you will be proud of and can defend to anyone including your Board, employees, prospective hires etc. In such a competitive hiring market, you are competing with not just your obvious competitors, but also any successful tech company who is also looking for great talent. A principle that treats your employees as well as you’d treat yourself is a huge strategy for differentiation, retention and long term happiness of the exact types of people you will need to be successful. In contrast, if you are viewed as self-dealing and shady, it will only hurt your long term prospects…

In summary, I’m passing on this financing because I strongly disagree with what’s going on. I’m not sure who advocated this approach but I did mention this to Reid [Hoffman, another Airbnb investor via Greylock Partners] last night and he was of a similar mind to myself and surprised this was the approach being taken. If you want some good advice — I would ask that you consider pinging him about different ways to think about going about the liquidity portion.

If you change your mind on how to close this financing, let me know and I’d love to reconsider. Otherwise, good luck and lets keep in touch.

Take care,

Chamath

Yahoo’s interim CEO Tim Morse penned another weekly email to staff at the Silicon Valley Internet giant today; the only one from the company’s leadership, which sent out two internal memos last week.

It’s below, and again addresses the swirl of news around Yahoo’s plans as part of its ongoing strategery over the company’s future.

“I know there was some more swirl out there this week,” wrote Morse. “You know we don’t comment on rumors or speculation and for now, everything has been just that — rumors.”

Well, not so much, which I will be weighing in on soon via an old-fangled thing called reporting, Tim!

Until then, here is the latest missive:

Short note from me today. Before we head into the weekend, I wanted to give a shout out to the Flickr team for their great work on their new mobile features. What they rolled out this week got rave reviews and tons of great buzz. We also had a nice Demos and Drinks event here in Sunnyvale that I was able to check out, so thanks to all the Yahoos involved in that.

Last but certainly not least, I want to say thank you to the teams that are working hard on Advertising Week. It kicks off on Monday, and we’ve got some big stuff in store, so stay tuned on that front.

I know there was some more swirl out there this week. You know we don’t comment on rumors or speculation and for now, everything has been just that — rumors.

Rest assured, when we have something to share, we will. In the meantime, please know how much the entire executive team appreciates your great work — and please keep it up!

Have a good weekend.

Tim

The first two Smartr apps are for Gmail and Android, available today; the next one on the list is iPhone. The Gmail and Android apps had previously been in beta, so the news today is more about the overall strategy than their existence. Xobni’s Outlook product will continue to be called Xobni.

All the Smartr apps will learn from users’ emailing, social networking and calling histories, compiling a detailed and constantly updated dossier on each contact. That expresses itself in some handy features, like an autosuggesting email composer that understands which people belong in a group together and whether to use their work or personal email.

That kind of feature may be especially useful on mobile, where users can type just a few letters rather than scroll through alphabetical lists of people they know.

Another Smartr feature compiles an automatic Twitter list of the accounts for all the people a user has recently emailed.

Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte said upcoming Smartr apps will include caller ID and map views, and described recent company hack projects such as a Facebook app that shows when two users first met and an Assassins-style game.

Bonus video: Does the new brand make anyone else think of “The Simpsons”? See below:

“It is critical that we speak with one voice,” wrote Whitman in an internal email I obtained (below).

Thus, she has appointed longtime HP exec Lynn Anderson (pictured here) to “take on the role of acting Chief Communications Officer reporting directly to me,” according to the memo she sent to senior leaders at the company.

Not sure what “acting” means yet, but Anderson has gotten the job that was once that of former SAP exec Bill Wohl. He was put on “special assignment” late this summer, whatever that means, with his duties being taken up by Global Marketing EVP Marty Homlish.

Now Anderson is taking over, having helped during the Wohl transition. She previously headed up influencer relations for HP’s enterprise business.

And before that, she worked on a variety of marketing jobs for HP Canada. Anderson’s background is wonky, according to her company bio: “Before joining HP in 1983 as a systems engineer, Anderson was a programmer, analyst and operations manager for several IT departments.”

During the initial announcement of her new job running HP, Whitman relied on longtime comms adviser Henry Gomez. Gomez, who worked closely with her when Whitman was CEO of eBay and later on her unsuccessful run for California governor, has a consulting business and presumably did not want to work full time for HP.

Here’s the memo:

To: Senior Leaders
Subject: Acting Chief Communications Officer

As we continue to execute our strategy for HP, communications will be an extremely important function and it is critical that we speak with one voice.

I want to thank Marty Homlish, EVP Global Marketing who stepped in and provided leadership during a critical junction. Going forward, I have asked Lynn Anderson to take on the role of acting Chief Communications Officer reporting directly to me.

Please ensure that Lynn is brought into all communications activities.

Regards,

Meg