Yahoo beat Wall Street estimates in its first-quarter earnings report today, with revenue of $1.08 billion and earnings of 23 cents. That’s a gain of 28 percent from a year ago in net earnings and 38 percent per diluted share.

Analysts had been expecting Yahoo to report revenue of $1.06 billion and earnings of 17 cents a share. But, as I reported earlier today, sources had indicated that the results would be on the upside.

Still, revenue was only up year over year by 1 percent — not exactly a great achievement, given exploding growth across the Internet industry. The real drag was the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions, whose revenue was down 9 percent — which Yahoo attributed to the weak economy there — with its “contribution” down 27 percent. That region has been run by Rich Riley, who is now Yahoo’s sales lead in the U.S.

One interesting note: While display revenue was down, search revenue was up. And unique visitors to Yahoo were up 7 percent, which was lower growth than in previous quarters. The reason was declines in search and communications, with media up strongly.

Now, investors are hoping to get more clarity from new CEO Scott Thompson in a call at 2 pm PT about the overall strategy for the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant, which just restructured its management again and also had layoffs of 2,000 employees.

Thompson has yet to articulate a specific plan beyond the broad strokes of media, commerce and data/platforms as Yahoo’s aim.

But there is a lot more to deal with and in detail, including figuring out its troubled advertising search partnership with Microsoft, the talks around selling off parts of the company’s lucrative Asian assets, Yahoo’s patent lawsuit against Facebook, how Yahoo is going to deal with activist shareholder Third Point’s possible proxy challenge and whether more layoffs beyond recent firings will be needed.

“In the first quarter, Yahoo!’s results came in at the high end of our guidance range and beat consensus on revenue and profits,” Thompson said in a statement. “We also made changes to resize the organization and establish a new leadership structure to quickly deliver the best user and advertiser experiences at scale.”

Until Thompson gives more deets on the earnings call, which I will be liveblogging, here’s Yahoo’s official press release and cool charts on the subject:

YHOO News 2012-4-17 General

YHOO_Q112EarningsPresentation

If you want a quick analysis of why Facebook would pay $1 billion for popular photo-sharing service Instagram, please ignore the obvious financials that just don’t add up at all and have most of the typically unshockable digerati shocked by the sheer amount of the price.

Actually, it’s pretty simple: Photos. Photos. And, oh yes, mobile photos — lots and lots and lots of them.

Astonishingly, Facebook users already upload an average of more than 250 million images daily, making it the most popular photo-sharing service on the Web.

But it’s not the best by far and not the most mobile, which is Facebook’s biggest weakness — that has been accomplished many others, especially Instagram, the favorite of power users who scoffed at Facebook’s weak tools. (The horror of no filters!)

Now — instead of all those billions of juicy digital photos snapped by an ever-growing legion of smartphone users loading up to the beautifully designed Instagram mobile app and living on the servers of the small San Francisco-based start-up — Facebook has now captured all these memories for its massive social networking site.

And while $1 billion seems an awful lot to pay for that privilege — Twitter is quaking with “OMG!” and “Wow!” and “WTF!” tweets about the acquisition — this is apparently priceless for Facebook in a deal that went down quickly and quietly in recent weeks.

That and the fact that the huge sum prevented Instagram from being scooped up by Google.

It’s a clear signal from CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — who rules all product efforts at the company — of his intent to dominate all innovations that have to do with owning the social experience.

Because while many Instagram photos quickly made their way onto Facebook — sharing on the service, as well as on Twitter, was a big part of the app’s offering — the future of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company is tied to having control over key elements of the user experience.

Of all of those — communications, status updates, content linking — it has been photos that have become perhaps the most important part of Facebook, almost since its beginnings.

Photos are what allowed Facebook to grow so quickly and what made it more than just a blue sea of text and links to consumers. Its new Timeline depends on big, pretty photos, and Facebook even recently announced that it would allow full-screen viewing of high-resolution photos on its Web site, a pricey endeavor.

So, perhaps it was inevitable that Zuckerberg would pay up for Instagram, too — he knows a good entrepreneurial success when he sees one and apparently has the power to convince start-ups that he can make their bigger dreams come true.

Whether or not Instagram ever makes money is perhaps beside the point at this moment in time, as Facebook is poised to go public at 100 times the amount it forked over for Instagram.

But that it considers such a purchase worth as much as one percent of its expected valuation says a thousands words. And most of those words are “mobile” and “photo.”

As Ben Jacobs noted on Twitter: “Kodak goes bankrupt and Instagram is worth a billion dollars. 2012, y’all.”

Indeed. And, I have no doubt if Zuckerberg could figure out a way to shove all those Kodak moments from analog snapshots onto Facebook easily, he’d have paid up for that, too.

As I reported this morning, an activist fund aiming at AOL took a shot today, by putting up its slate of alternate directors.

In a nutshell, Starboard Value does not like the way CEO Tim Armstrong is running the company and thinks it can do better.

My two cents: The New York-based investment firm might have actually named some directors with some more recent media or Internet operating experience.

Several Internet execs approached by Starboard said they declined because they did not want to engage in a hostile action against AOL, even if they might agree with its assessment of the dicey situation for the company.

Instead, it’s investor guys, advisor guys and even an intellectual property guy. (Oh joy, so the plan is patent lawsuits a la Kodak?)

Yes, it is, according to Starboard’s letter to the AOL board.

It read, in part:

“We appreciate the ongoing dialog we have had with management and certain members of the Board over the past two months. However, we are extremely disappointed that our conversations regarding the issues raised in our letter have stalled. Specifically, we are troubled that the Company remains closed-minded to alternative value creation initiatives, and instead appears solely focused on pursuing the status quo.”

AOL fired back with a statement of its own, essentially saying things are just fine and Starboard’s characterization of the company was inaccurate.

Said AOL in a statement:

“We ended 2011 with our best performance as a company in the past five years, with substantial growth in advertising revenue, improvements in legacy revenue streams, and significant cost reductions. Our stock price has acted in kind, appreciating approximately 80% from our 2011 low and 20% year-­‐to-­‐date.”

Starboard declined to agree apparently.

Nothing like a he-said-he said, which follows a similar proxy fight situation at Yahoo!

Here is Starboard’s official press release with board selections, followed by AOL’s full statement:

Starboard Delivers Letter to AOL Board Nominates a Slate of Highly Qualified Candidates for Election at the 2012 Annual Meeting

NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Starboard Value LP (together with its affiliates, “Starboard”), one of the largest shareholders of AOL Inc. (“AOL” or the “Company”) AOL -0.95% with current ownership of approximately 5.2% of the outstanding shares, today announced that it has delivered a letter to the Company’s Board of Directors and has nominated a slate of highly qualified candidates for election to the AOL Board at the Company’s 2012 Annual Meeting.

The full text of the letter to the Board follows:

February 24, 2012

AOL Inc.
770 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Attn: Members of the Board of Directors

To the Board of Directors,

Starboard Value LP, together with its affiliates (“Starboard”), currently owns approximately 5.2% of the outstanding shares of AOL Inc. (“AOL” or “the Company”), making us one of the Company’s largest shareholders. As you know, we have strong views regarding the current state and future direction of AOL, which we articulated in our comprehensive letter to the Board of Directors (the “Board”) on December 21, 2011 (the “December Letter”). We appreciate the ongoing dialog we have had with management and certain members of the Board over the past two months. However, we are extremely disappointed that our conversations regarding the issues raised in our letter have stalled. Specifically, we are troubled that the Company remains closed-minded to alternative value creation initiatives, and instead appears solely focused on pursuing the status quo. AOL is a diverse company with tremendous assets in a variety of different businesses that collectively are being undervalued in the marketplace. We continue to believe that significant opportunities exist to unlock value based on actions within the control of management and the Board.

As one specific example, in addition to the valuable assets highlighted in our December Letter, AOL owns a robust portfolio of extremely valuable and foundational intellectual property that has gone unrecognized and underutilized. This portfolio of more than 800 patents broadly covers internet technologies with focus in areas such as secure data transit and e-commerce, travel navigation and turn-by-turn directions, search-related online advertising, real-time shopping, and shopping wish list, among many others.

Since our initial public involvement in AOL, we have been approached by multiple parties specializing in intellectual property valuation and monetization, some of whom believe that (i) a significant number of large internet-related technology companies may be infringing on these patents, and (ii) AOL’s patent portfolio could produce in excess of $1 billion of licensing income if appropriately harvested and monetized. Unfortunately, several of these parties have expressed severe frustration that AOL has been entirely unresponsive to their proposals regarding ways to take advantage of this underutilized asset. The Company’s inaction is alarming given our understanding that many of the key patents have looming expiration dates over the next several years which could render them worthless if not immediately utilized.

As a result of the dynamics highlighted above, we are increasingly uncomfortable with the direction of the Company and the leadership of the Board. To this end, and as a result of our inability to arrive at a mutually agreeable resolution on the composition of the Board, we have identified the following highly-qualified candidates who have agreed to be nominated to the AOL Board at the 2012 Annual Meeting. We believe these nominees possess a well-balanced mix of skill sets to ensure that the Company evaluates, with an open mind and a keen sense of urgency, all alternative strategies to determine the best path forward to maximize value for all shareholders.

Starboard’s Director Nominees:

Ronald S. Epstein is the Founder and CEO of Epicenter IP Group LLC, a company dedicated to assisting patent owners in obtaining maximum value for their intellectual property. Previously, Mr. Epstein was Vice President and General Counsel of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., and Director of Licensing at Intel Corporation. Before joining Intel, Mr. Epstein was a member of the Technology Licensing Group at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati. Mr. Epstein has more than 20 years of experience in developing, optimizing, and transacting intellectual property asset portfolios, and has delivered significant value to patent owners from the sale or licensing of patents in over 150 transactions.

Steven B. Fink is currently a private investor with extensive experience building and managing technology companies. Mr. Fink is the former CEO of Lawrence Investments, LLC, a venture with Larry Ellison that owns and manages all of Mr. Ellison’s non-Oracle investments. Lawrence Investments founded and invested in numerous technology, education, medical, and biotechnology companies. Mr. Fink previously served as Chairman and CEO of Anthony Manufacturing Company, Chairman and Managing Director of Knowledge Universe, and Chairman and CEO of Nextera. Mr. Fink currently serves as Vice Chairman of Heron International, and as a member of the Board of Directors of K-12. Previously, Mr. Fink served as the Chairman of the Board of Leapfrog, Inc., and Spring Group until its sale in 2007.

Dennis A. Miller is a strategic advisor to Lionsgate Entertainment and has been focused primarily on investing at the intersection of media and technology. Previously, he was a General Partner at Spark Capital, a venture fund where he invested in companies including Twitter, CNET, and AdMeld. As a Managing Director for Constellation Ventures, he invested in companies such as Capital IQ. Mr. Miller has also served as Executive Vice President of Lionsgate Entertainment, Executive Vice President of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Executive Vice President of Turner Network Television.

Jeffrey C. Smith is co-Founder and CEO of Starboard Value, a New York-based investment firm that is one of the largest shareholders of AOL. Mr. Smith has extensive public company board experience. Currently, he serves on the boards of Regis Corp., and SurModics Inc. Previously, he was the Chairman of the Board of Phoenix Technologies Ltd., and a director of Zoran Corporation, Actel Corporation, S1 Corporation, and Kensey Nash Corp. Mr. Smith also served as a member of the Management Committee for Register.com.

James Warner is the principal of Third Floor Enterprises, an advisory firm specializing in digital marketing and media. Previously, he was Executive Vice President of Avenue A | Razorfish, and served on the executive committee of aQuantive, its parent company. He has also served as President of Primedia Magazine Group, President of the CBS Television Network, President of CBS Enterprises, and Vice President at HBO. Mr. Warner served as a director on the board of MediaMind Technologies Inc until its sale to DG FastChannel, Inc. in July 2011.

It is our understanding that the terms of eight directors currently serving on the Board expire at the 2012 Annual Meeting. We would view any attempt by the Company to expand the size of the Board following the receipt of this letter, and given our previous discussions regarding board composition, as a tactic designed to manipulate the composition of the Board with regard to this year’s Annual Meeting. To preserve our rights, and in the event that the Company expands the Board prior to the 2012 Annual Meeting, we are therefore nominating five director candidates. We do not currently intend to seek to replace a majority of the Board. However, we do believe significant change to the composition of the Board is warranted given the qualifications of our nominees and the long-term underperformance of AOL.

We remain prepared to engage in constructive dialog with the Board to reach a mutually agreeable resolution. However, if an agreement is not reached, we are fully prepared to solicit the support of our fellow shareholders to elect a new slate of directors at the 2012 Annual Meeting who are committed to representing the best interests of all AOL shareholders. Starboard has a long history of working constructively with undervalued public companies to improve board effectiveness and enhance shareholder value. We hope that the Board will begin to recognize that our interests are directly aligned with those of all shareholders and that we only want what is best for AOL and its shareholders.

Best Regards,

Jeffrey C. Smith
Managing Member
Starboard Value LP

AOL ISSUES STATEMENT

NEW YORK, NY — February 24, 2012 – AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) issued the following statement in response to Starboard Value LP’s Letter to the AOL Board

The recent improved earnings results of AOL Inc. (“AOL” or “the Company”) highlight the significant progress we are making in executing our strategy to improve AOL’s growth trajectory and create meaningful shareholder value. We ended 2011 with our best performance as a company in the past five years, with substantial growth in advertising revenue, improvements in legacy revenue streams, and significant cost reductions. Our stock price has acted in kind, appreciating approximately 80% from our 2011 low and 20% year-­‐to-­‐date.

AOL’s Board of Directors and management team consistently review the strategy and performance of the Company and have taken meaningful actions to enhance shareholder return including the divestiture of non-core assets, significant cost reduction, a meaningful buyback of Company equity, and the implementation of an accountable and performance-based culture to operate against our clear strategy.

AOL has held several meetings with Starboard Value LP to address their questions. AOL communicated our continued intent to simplify AOL’s business and our efforts to accelerate shareholder value creation. AOL has offered Starboard Value LP an opportunity to help shape the Company’s Board of Directors composition and size. Unfortunately, Starboard Value LP has a singularly focused agenda and rejected this productive path to address their stated concerns and drive increased shareholder value.

Our Board of Directors and management team remain firmly committed to creating value for all shareholders. We have a valuable patent portfolio and several months ago, prior to Starboard’s first letter, the AOL Board of Directors authorized the start of a process, and hired advisors, to realize the value of these non-strategic assets. AOL has a clear plan to provide our consumers and customers with exceptional value, which we believe will lead to the creation of shareholder value. We will continue to aggressively execute and innovate on our strategy as we continue the turnaround of AOL.

It’s the typically newsless time around Christmas and New Year’s, but for once there has actually been a lot going on at Yahoo.

Last week, the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s typically moribund board decided to move ahead with negotiations to sell part of its stake in China’s Alibaba Group, as well as all of its shares in Yahoo Japan.

While that is still not a done deal, it adds clarity to the Yahoo mishegas, as current leaders there seek to turn around the company’s lagging fortunes.

Now, as Yahoo continues to contemplate a pair of partial investment bids by private equity firms Silver Lake and TPG Capital into 2012, more focus will be on the selection of a CEO candidate to take over, sources said.

While I have floated some names that have been contemplated — such as Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson, former aQuantive and Microsoft exec Brian McAndrews, and board member David Kenny — I have collected some more that seem to be getting the once-over and are being mentioned internally as well as externally.

Sources said that the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee at Yahoo, which is run by independent director Patti Hart, has been looking for someone with definite public company experience, as well as expertise in large-scale management.

As to talent, candidates seem to be either good at running big platforms, or deeply knowledgeable about advertising and media as well as technology.

Another important criteria, said sources: Someone who is “collaborative” and nonconfrontational. As in, not like the former and very pugnacious CEO Carol Bartz, who was fired in September.

Thus, here’s another trio of candidates to consider, while we wait — and who knows how long that will be given that the Asian activity could have tired out for a bit this usually slow-moving board:

Chris Liddell: The former CFO of Microsoft is an interesting name that just popped up recently, and it makes some sense when you think about the possible mindset of the Yahoo board.

Liddell, who has a charming New Zealand accent, did a short stint, from January of 2010 to March of this year, as CFO at General Motors. Recently married to another former Microsoft exec, he has since been living in New York.

He apparently loves living in the Big Apple.

But when he left GM, Liddell made it clear he wanted to go for a top job next. He was among the candidates for a recent search for a CEO of Time Warner’s Time Inc. (an effort that was run by exec search firm Heidrick & Struggles, which is also conducting the Yahoo hunt).

Known as tough and decisive, he certainly is qualified to deal with complex financial situations, such as the one in which Yahoo now finds itself knee-deep. One knock: Little product or advertising experience.

Laura Desmond: While certainly a dark horse, Desmond has been queried by Heidrick, said several sources.

She is CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, a subsidiary of Publicis, one of the largest media planning and buying agencies, making Desmond one of advertising’s most prominent players.

Well-known in Yahoo’s key market, she is considered a savvy and smart exec with a wry sense of humor.

I happen to particularly like one line from one of her bios:

“Ms. Desmond’s career has been driven by two caveats: Take intelligent risks and learn more from failure than from success.”

She could learn a lot at Yahoo. (I know, easy jab, but it works!)

David Rosenblatt: The former DoubleClick CEO, who went on to a big ad job at Google after it paid $3.2 billion for the company, is also a long shot, mostly by his own choosing.

The sharp exec is always on the short list of CEO candidates for a lot of big, splashy online jobs, but he seems to want to swim his own way.

Case in point: He was recently named CEO of New York-based 1stdibs, a relatively obscure online marketplace known among antique dealers and interior designers looking for one-of-a-kind furniture, art and lighting.

Yes, that’s right: Fancy lamps.

Rosenblatt also serves on the boards at Group Commerce, Twitter and IAC.

All that Internet ad and e-commerce experience is exactly why Rosenblatt would be one of the better choices for CEO of Yahoo. But, for him, I would guess taking such a job is probably in the life’s-too-short category.

More to come, obvi!

Maybe get something cooking in the whole what-will-Yahoo-do stakes, now that one of Yahoo’s more active board members is back.

And by “back,” I mean that Kenny — no longer a candidate for CEO — has no further need to recuse himself from the strategic process in which the Silicon Valley Internet company finds itself.

In an interview with Advertising Age last week, Kenny — the well-regarded online ad exec who recently stepped down as president of network infrastructure giant Akamai — released an unusual statement:

As a matter of policy, I do not comment on matters related to Yahoo as a Yahoo director. However, as a personal matter, I want to clarify that I believe Yahoo is a great company with enormous potential, but I am not — and will not be — a candidate for the CEO position. I look forward to my continued service on the Yahoo Board of Directors.”

By removing himself from the fray, that means, according to several sources, that Kenny will be diving back into sleeve-rolling duties at Yahoo, as one of its — how can I put this? — less comatose board members.

In fact — until he was sidelined by the obvious conflict of interest inherent in wanting to be CEO, while also directing the fate of Yahoo for shareholder value — Kenny had been deeply involved in a lot of the changes that had taken place of late, after a long period of board inaction.

That included the ouster of CEO Carol Bartz, who was fired for a number of reasons, including lack of strategic vision. It was relatively new board member Kenny — he became a director in February — who led the strategy committee that had asked Bartz for her road map, which she did not deliver to their liking. Obviously.

Because of the swirl around his possible CEO candidacy — Kenny was a noticeable inside candidate, since he is well known in the Internet advertising world for running and then selling Digitas to the Publicis Groupe for $1.3 billion in 2006 — he gave up leadership of the committee to Intuit President Brad Smith.

Sources said it is unlikely Kenny will get that top job back, but he remains a member of the transactions committee, which is leading the strategic review of the company.

That’s the key slot for the independent board members of Yahoo, who must ultimately be the ones to determine what path or offer the company will take.

One plus: Kenny has close relationships with most of the bidders — largely private equity firms — looking at Yahoo, and also is well known among the media and tech companies poking around, too. He also has advertising — and now tech — experience, which will be much needed as Yahoo explores its options.

Most importantly, Kenny is an independent director, which will be very important to the process going forward, especially since a lot of the spotlight has fallen on Yahoo co-founder and director Jerry Yang.

Yang — who has been a bit of a Yahoo lightning rod at times — has been involved in some of the meetings with those interested, along with interim CEO Tim Morse. The company recently noted that this was at the behest of the board.

While these were only informational meetings so far — and not negotiations, as some reports have surmised — Yang’s involvement will likely have to be more curtailed, at least publicly, especially if any of the deals include using his own large stake in Yahoo.

“This process has to be above board, since it is so easy for those wanting a better deal to try to cause all kinds of trouble,” said one source. “The company is already under attack in that regard.”

That’s a reference to a recent salvo by hedge fund activist Dan Loeb, a major Yahoo shareholder who has taken aim at the board and, last week, at Yang. Loeb essentially accused Yang of double-dealing in the process.

Enter Kenny, along with Smith and — to an increasingly lesser extent, of late — Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock. While there are other independent board members involved, these are the three to watch most closely now.

While some think Kenny still would like to be CEO of Yahoo — he was also on the short list several years ago when Bartz was hired — sources said he is more likely to take a job at another consumer Internet company.

While he certainly could slot into a large advertising firm or into the digital division of a big media concern, sources said Kenny is looking to be a CEO.

Just not at Yahoo.

At least for now, since down the road it is unclear what will become of Yahoo and who will run it in years to come.

In fact, it might even be Kenny in the end.

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.

Tonight at 1 am PT, techies who have nothing else to do — that would be me! — can click onto a brand new tech site called The Verge.

Well, kind of — it’s the result of many months of work by the gang that defected from AOL’s popular Engadget tech powerhouse, set up temporary shop under the Web site name This Is My Next and busied themselves with creating The Verge.

I have another screenshot below of the new site that will be focused on news, reviews and features about tech, and which has been getting a final tweaking all today.

From my quick perusal, it has a vibrant and slick design, with a lot of packed boxes, swooshy movement and plenty of content.

Along with the launch, The Verge’s parent company — formerly doing business as SB Nation, focused on sports — will also transform into Vox Media.

In a chit-chat with Vox’s CEO Jim Bankoff, top exec Marty Moe and Josh Topolsky, The Verge’s Editor-in-Chief, the trio of former AOLers all said they were going to for the big time.

“We want to build the platform for talented native Web voices, in sports and tech for now, and then we plan to grow more verticals,” said Bankoff.

“We want to create more than a news site or blog about tech — the frustration at AOL was that we did not get the resources or manpower to realize that bigger vision,” said Topolsky.

(You’re speaking to the choir, brother!)

Said Moe: “We think this category has not had a large enough vision…not enough has been innovated over the years and we think it is a big opportunity.”

Topolsky said the site, along with a mass of original content from 30 writers, will also be helped by a strong database of information about all its topics and gadgets and also focus a lot on community input.

“What we want to do was graduate beyond the blog,” he said.

(Hmm…and here I just got the hang of this blog thing.)

Bankoff, who would not say how much Vox spent on launching The Verge — my back-of-the-envelope guess, several million dollars — said that costs were spread out between the tech and sports sites with centralized sales and product teams.

Initial launch sponsors are BMW, Sony and Samsung, said Moe, who is aiming to sell “major brand advertisers on the idea that we will be the premiere destination of consumer tech coverage.”

It has to grow past big sites like Engadget to do so, but Topolsky said that This Is My Next had three million unique visitors in the last month and more than 10 million page views.

“We have done that with a lot of editorials and in-depth reviews,” he said. “I think people are really hungry for great content and stories.”

As to competitors, Topolsky said that “this not to necessarily I win if you lose,” although his clear aim is to unseat sites like CBS-owned CNET, Engadget and Gawker Media’s Gizmodo and perhaps even newsier sites such as TechCrunch and AllThingsD (as if!).

“We are going to do the nuts and bolts stuff,” he said. “Somewhere between Engadget and Wired.”

Topolsky compared The Verge to a “boutique hotel — we have the same stuff everyone else has, but it is a much more elegant experience.”

Later, that will change, he promised, noting that “this is only version 1.0.”

Of course — but what else would you expect from a gadget site?

(Good luck and congrats to the entire The Verge team from AllThingsD!)

And here is another lovely screenshot, as promised:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phew!

Georgiadis must bring calm to this perfect storm.

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

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

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

(Lesson learned!)

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

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

As I wrote two weeks ago:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In an interview BoomTown did yesterday with Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving–the video of which will be posted later today–at the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s HQ in Sunnyvale, CA, he managed to actually give me some news to report: the hire of crackerjack user experience design head Tim Parsey.

Parsey’s title will be SVP of User Experience Design at Yahoo, which is now centralizing the important task, Irving said. Previously, in the 67-ring circus that has been Yahoo’s product organization, design was widely dispersed.

Parsey certainly has the cred in the industry, with stints at Apple, Microsoft’s entertainment and devices unit, Mattel and Motorola. Most recently, he was a principal at a Seattle-based design firm called shiftalliance.

The British native ran Apple’s design studio for five years in the early 1990s and and was the main dude behind Motorola’s freaky V70 switchblade mobile phone in 2001.

Best of all: Parsey was once responsible for Barbie, as you can read below from his bio from shiftalliance, which announced his departure several days ago on its site:

[Tim Parsey] co-founded shiftalliance to focus on higher order value creation in business. The company is built on three beliefs: 1. that higher order, or meaningful, value is the next value driver in mature markets; 2. that sustainable innovation needs to consider the whole business model and; 3. that establishing a people-centric continuous change process is critical for success in today’s markets .

Prior to shiftalliance, he served as Partner, User Experience (UX) Director, Xbox Design at Microsoft, where he led a 22-person team responsible for the design and development of a new technology-enabled paradigm of interaction and entertainment that would not disrupt revenue streams from the existing Xbox gaming platform and contribute to the business in a more strategic way.

Previously, at Mattel as VP, Consumer Products Design, Tim was responsible for the Barbie, Hot Wheels and Fisher Price brands (in all non-toy categories) across 45,000 sku’s contributing nearly $2 billion in revenue worldwide. His charge was to establish the strategic and creative vision, and evolve the culture from a traditional licensing to a ‘leveraged innovation’ and ‘marketed product’ based approach. Key components of this evolution were to establish the first design languages for Mattel brands; lead design innovation for cross-functionally conceived marketing platforms (product, entertainment/web and 360 degree marketing); and nurture the individual licensee businesses and 5,000 designers across the portfolio into a community motivated to share and innovate together, thereby driving the business evolution at an appropriate pace. Before that, as VP, Wheels Design, he led 45 toy designers to advance the Hot Wheels, Matchbox and Pixar CARS toy design businesses. Activities included establishing product and brand design strategies, evolving the toy teams and building the first licensed consumer products design team, all of which led to re-energized business growth. This experience was a planned opportunity to understand toy design and specifically play innovation, and led to the formalization of the first play design methodology for Mattel.

Prior to Mattel, Tim served as Corporate Vice President at Motorola, where he built and led the Consumer Experience Design (CxD) group for the Personal Communications Sector (mobile phones) from an established industrial design team of approximately 22 in the US to a multifunctional design organization of approximately 150 distributed. This journey that included developing design as a competitive advantage for the company began 5 years after the StarTac and led to the design of Razr, the most successful brand and product range to be informed by a design strategy called ‘rich minimalism’. At the time, approximately 100 cell phones a year were being designed with a broad range of derivatives for different markets and carriers. CxD was distributed across Asia, North America and Europe and included Advanced Design and Design Planning groups that fed advanced thinking and strategies into the User Interface, Industrial Design and Human Factors groups. Specific achievements included establishing a collaborative industrial and user interface design methodology with key carriers.

Before that, Tim served as VP, Product Design and Development for ACCO, a manufacturer of office supplies and Manager, Design Studio at Apple after working as staff designer at ID Two (now IDEO) and other leading design consulting firms.

And here is a video of him speaking at a TEDx event about a year ago:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Memo to tech CEOs everywhere: Now that’s how to write an internal memo.

That would be the 1,300-word one that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (pictured here) apparently penned for employees at the Finnish telecom giant, which inevitably leaked to the media (in this case, kudos to Engadget for getting the whole thing, which is below).

Elop uses the harsh but cogent metaphor of a burning oil platform to take a bracing opening shot at turning around Nokia, which has lost market share–and, more importantly, mindshare–to both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating system.

This is not breaking news to anyone in the wider tech world, of course. But for the CEO to say it so flatly and brutally to the insular troops at Nokia makes it remarkable.

As you can read, it’s dramatic all right, and just the kind of thing a lot of leaders at troubled companies–Hello, Yahoo!–could learn a thing or two from.

That’s because it’s honest and also genuine, and with enough of a direction and glimpses into pending action–to be revealed later this week at an event to unveil a new strategy–that it’s not just a diatribe by a new manager about how bad the previous managers were.

There is clearly plenty of that, of course, which is no surprise. But with rumors of an imminent significant management overhaul–which few execs ever do enough of at the start of their tenure, when it is easiest–there seems to be teeth to the memo too.

And although the burning platform part will get all the attention, perhaps the most important observation was in one particular passage that outlines exactly the giant challenge Nokia faces to catch up:

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

Because, as it has turned out, it is all about ecosystems and using them to provide consumers with the best and most seamless experience possible.

Walt Mossberg and I will be interviewing Elop–the former Microsoft exec, who is neither a Nokia insider nor Finnish–about all this and more at the ninth D: All Thing Digital conference in late May.

Obviously, there will be a lot to talk about.

But, until then, here’s Elop’s memo below in its entirety.

I also reposted a video interview I did with Elop in April of 2009 in which he talked about making Microsoft a more open and innovative place, the changing business model of software and more.

Also below is a video Elop ordered up while running Microsoft’s Business Division as part of an “Envisioning” series.

These see-into-the-future videos were done by Microsoft Office Labs as part of a “Productivity Future Vision” series that sketched out a landscape of smartphones, touchscreens everywhere and a whole lot of cool interacting.

It would be nice if he can drag Nokia back into that world–although Elop’s memo is a good start.

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times–his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion–we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.

Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally–taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward–a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/nokias-stephen-elop-didnt-start-the-fire-but-his-burning-platform-certainly-lights-one/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110125/facebook-sets-mobile-sights-on-html5/ http://allthingsd.com/20110125/facebook-sets-mobile-sights-on-html5/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:15:09 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2752 “Mobile is our primary focus for our platform this year,” Facebook CTO Bret Taylor told an audience of developers at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco today.

Taylor said Facebook will emphasize HTML5 development in order to have maximum impact across fragmented mobile platforms for both his company and those who build on the Facebook platform.

HTML5–which is the new browser standard that gives Web applications capabilities on par with native applications–Taylor said, “might be a little ahead of that curve, but that’s where we’re putting a huge amount of investment in the next year.”

Already, said Taylor, 125 million of Facebook’s 200 million-plus mobile users are using HTML5-capable devices like the iPhone and Android.

Even so, when Facebook introduces a new feature, it has to implement it across seven different versions: facebook.com, m.facebook.com, touch.facebook.com, its iPhone app, Android app, BlackBerry app and custom integrations for other handset OSs.

Facebook wants to reduce that friction for its own sake and its developers’ as well. The company’s first step toward this goal was its single sign-on for mobile apps introduced last year, which has already had significant impact on developers like Flixster, Taylor said.

Facebook’s HTML5 push brings it into step with Google, which has put a major emphasis on Web apps despite its own Android mobile OS. But even so, the two companies have had major success with native apps, when they’ve chosen to build them. Facebook has the No. 1 free iPhone app of all time, while Google Mobile for iPhone is No. 3. (Coming in second is Pandora’s streaming radio.)

“Mobile devices are inherently social,” said Taylor, noting that he feels that the combination of mobile, social and location will be an especially fruitful area for products like Facebook Places and Foursquare.

Taylor said Facebook is likely to create its own “high-quality location database”–which would compete with start-ups like SimpleGeo–though it’s not something the company has specific plans for yet.

Addressing start-ups wary of Facebook competing with their products by making them a part of its platform, Taylor said, “Our philosophy has always been to build products into Facebook that are generally useful, which is why we built location into the platform. We felt like it would have a really big impact for developers if they could all leverage a common location infrastructure.”

Facebook’s platform focus in 2010 was about improving user experience, Taylor said, and he considers that effort a success. He said Facebook reduced spam (a.k.a. unwanted posts about games like FarmVille and other applications) by 95 percent last year through policy simplifications.

Though it shut down ways for applications to recruit users, it wasn’t like Facebook prevented games from growing, said Taylor, citing the fantastic ascent of Zynga’s CityVille, which grew to 100 million users in 40 days, compared with the four years it took Facebook itself to reach that number.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110125/facebook-sets-mobile-sights-on-html5/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101202/if-when-goopon-closes-remember-her-name-googles-commerce-chief-stephanie-tilenius/ http://allthingsd.com/20101202/if-when-goopon-closes-remember-her-name-googles-commerce-chief-stephanie-tilenius/#comments Thu, 02 Dec 2010 12:45:13 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37960

As the possible acquisition of Groupon by Google chugs along–sources tell me bankers are starting to swan around annoyingly, which could be a sign of fruition, but we shall see–BoomTown realized that I have been remiss in mentioning one likely key person in the deal strategy.

And, I am only guessing, that would be the Silicon Valley search giant’s relatively new head of commerce, Stephanie Tilenius (pictured above).

That’s because the unassuming former longtime eBay exec–you won’t see her all over the scene swanning, for sure–is one of the few at the company sharp enough to have seen Groupon’s copious local retail data from its social buying business as a strong fit into Google.

I met Tilenius a dog’s age ago when she co-founded PlanetRx.com, a very early online drugstore in Web 1.0.

In her long tenure at eBay, she ran eBay North America, global product management for eBay Marketplaces, merchant services at its PayPal unit, eBay Motors and eBay Asia Pacific and Latin America.

After she left eBay in late 2009, Tilenius came to Google early this year, in the newly created position of VP of commerce. In that job, she has purview over Google Checkout, payment system and e-commerce.

And, while Google’s former search experience and now new local head Marissa Mayer is often mentioned as benefiting from this Goopon deal, it seems to me that it is Tilenius who will be charged with taking Google in this pricey and risky new direction.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101202/if-when-goopon-closes-remember-her-name-googles-commerce-chief-stephanie-tilenius/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20101116/gogobot-ceo-travis-katz-talks-about-beta-launch-of-social-travel-site/ http://allthingsd.com/20101116/gogobot-ceo-travis-katz-talks-about-beta-launch-of-social-travel-site/#comments Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:00:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37340

Last week, BoomTown sat down with former Myspace exec Travis Katz to talk about the private beta launch of his new start-up, Gogobot.

No, it’s not a robot from Google–it’s a social travel site, which uses friends to enhance the travel-planning experience.

The name means nothing really except that it sounded energetic and adventurous to Katz, with a bit of tech mixed in.

While in a bit of a stealth mode, Gogobot has been a bit of an open secret in Silicon Valley.

Katz and CTO Ori Zaltzman–most recently the chief architect of Yahoo BOSS–started the company earlier this year with a small team.

It garnered $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Gogobot rides on top of social networking behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter.

Said Gogogot in its press release:

“Unlike other travel sites, Gogobot connects users with friends and people like them for travel advice and links the advice they give in real-time with maps, pictures, pricing and descriptions.”

Essentially, it feels like Facebook for trips, but with really good images.

Currently, Gogobot links users to hotels and other information, but eventually its business plan is to complete reservations and garner lead generation revenues.

We’ll see how it goes, but the online travel business, despite being huge among consumers, certainly could use some updating and organization–and some innovation.

Here’s the video interview I did last week with Katz–who ran international operations for Myspace–talking about where Gogobot is traveling to:

And here are a pair of screenshots for the service (click on the images to make them larger):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101116/gogobot-ceo-travis-katz-talks-about-beta-launch-of-social-travel-site/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101103/liveblogging-the-facebook-mobile-event-single-sign-on/ http://allthingsd.com/20101103/liveblogging-the-facebook-mobile-event-single-sign-on/#comments Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:55:54 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=36691

BoomTown arrived late to the Facebook mobile event for the press due to traffic related to the parade today for the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory–and where I would much rather be right now.

Go Giants!

10:53 am PT: In any case, I am here in the cafeteria of Facebook again, where the company continues its attempts to take over the known digital universe before Google does.

Currently, the social networking giant notes “200 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook from a phone, more than triple the number just one year ago.”

Thus, some new tries of a lot of stuff, such as single sign-on.

Meaning you sign on a Facebook and it signs you on all over the Web (or at least at those in partnership with the company).

Such as at Groupon and Zynga.

This single sign-on stuff has been tried by many before, a kind of Holy Grail of the Web, and where everyone has failed.

But it also the proverbial camel’s nose poking in your digital tent.

As in, the whole Facebook body is surely coming in next.

Facebook’s exec in charge of all this, Eric Tseng, talks about a virtuous circle of single sign-on, happy users and happy developers, sounding as if this is the single biggest problem facing humanity.

A password crisis! Silicon Valley to the rescue!

Perhaps the only issue the now damaged administration of President Barack Obama could actually get some legislation passed on now.

“My fellow Americans, we have too long be stuck in a miasma of forgetting which name of our dog we used for our password plus the number one…”

How much do I want to be at Giants parade right now? Much!

11:02 am: Next, we move onto more ability to show your location to friends on Facebook better and make sense of it by opening location APIs.

More heavy pontificating about what a disaster it is that we cannot properly see where our friends are on Facebook in the real world.

Of course, this leaves out the pertinent point that my “friends” on Facebook are exactly those I do not want to run into at the Starbucks on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, Calif.

Loopt Founder Sam Altman comes up to show off the integration with Facebook Places, where this problem is solved anyway.

“We believe data wants to be unified,” says Altman.

Certainly if you are the Borg, you want it to be unified. Me, not so much.

11:11 am: Now comes the attempted Groupon-killer from Facebook, which is creatively called “Deals.”

This is essentially allowing Facebook Places to locate a person and then merchants to offer deals when a user is nearby via a platform offered by Facebook.

You can do individual deals, such as getting a beer at a bar when you check in. Then, there is a loyalty deal on the phone, taking the place of that dog-eared card you always lose.

And there is the “friend deal.” This is not friends with benefits, sadly.

It means if you check in and bring a lot of folks, one eats free–which sounds just a little naughty.

Also, there is one deal type related to charity.

For the Gap, for example, you get a free jeans if you are among the first 10,000 to check in at a Gap store. There are 500 million Facebook users, so you do the math.

Essentially, it is about getting stuff if you check in, including experiences.

So, just like little white mice in Facebook’s lab, we push the button, we get the cheese. Sigh.

But I wonder if I check in right now, I can be transported to the Giants parade via a time machine. Now that might be something worth handing over my privacy to Facebook.

“The big takeaway for today is that there is obviously a lot of change in the social space,” says Facebook CEO and Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. “You can rethink any product area and make it be social.”

Indeed, you can. And Facebook obviously is going to be plowing on through a lot of them in order to solidify its stranglehold on the consumer.

11:23 am: Q&A!

The first question is on privacy and third-party developers giving up your location.

Yes, that!

Zuckerberg makes assurances that the current privacy steps now in place are working just fine and also users need to consent.

“The place information about people is not public,” he says.

There is question from Ben Parr of Mashable, about whether there is an iPad app for Facebook coming.

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” declares Zuckerberg, dismissing the very good question.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” countered Parr, correctly.

“Well, sorry,” said Zuckerberg with more than a little bit of snark.

For a second, he sounds just like the guy from the Facebook movie.

But Zuckerberg quickly declares his love of Apple products and apologizes, although he should not have as it was a funny exchange.

A question about single sign-on. Zuckerberg notes that it has been tried, but the experience was bad.

“What we think is going to happen now is that it is so easy when it works, it is a whole different experience,” he said, comparing it to the way YouTube made video uploading on the Web easier.

Zuckerberg’s goal is that all apps become social, which is also a virtuous circle for Facebook, of course.

A question about the deals offer. It seems for Zuckerberg that Facebook is not getting a cut from retailers right now, as Groupon does.

Ruh-roh, Andrew Mason!

Zuckerberg then notes that the Places offering is going well, without giving a lot of specifics.

At the end, PR maven Brandee Barker wraps it up by saying what I have been thinking this entire time:

“Go Giants!”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101103/liveblogging-the-facebook-mobile-event-single-sign-on/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101006/yahoo-upgrades-search-experience-as-it-ports-over-tech-to-microsoft/ http://allthingsd.com/20101006/yahoo-upgrades-search-experience-as-it-ports-over-tech-to-microsoft/#comments Thu, 07 Oct 2010 04:00:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35049 Tonight, Yahoo is introducing a new set of search upgrades, moving to focus on boosting its experience for consumers as it ports responsibility for underlying search technology over to Microsoft under its new partnership.

The new features include an innovative, if odd, vertical “accordion” tab.

“We have been actively working on the algorithmic transition of search, which was completed in August, and we are already releasing new features to the search experience,” said Shashi Seth, SVP of Yahoo Search and Marketplaces, in an interview with BoomTown today. “Since we are not actively spending a lot of energy on back-end stuff, we can focus our efforts on new things.”

Among the new enhancements to Yahoo (YHOO) search: A vertical “accordion” paradigm with shortcuts on search results that allow for new kinds of information presentation; “quick apps,” beginning with one for Netflix (NFLX) that lets its members add movies to their queue directly from the search results page; slideshows within search from the “Trending Now” lists on Yahoo; more immersive and theater-style photo and video search, as well as “the ability for people to view personally meaningful public Facebook albums from friends,” when they sign in to Facebook; and a new mobile search experience for Apple (AAPL) iPhone and Google Android smartphones, as well as feature phones, that uses HTML5 technology.

“We wanted users to see that things had changed dramatically,” said Seth. “Consumer needs for search engines have changed.”

He said that in testing so far, engagement–an increasingly important measure for advertisers–had spiked with the new features, especially in “taking search from an information need to action at an end.”

Seth promised a “huge pipeline of stuff” to come in search, where the Silicon Valley Internet giant holds the No. 2 position in market share, well behind Google (GOOG) and ahead of the Microsoft (MSFT) Bing service.

Both Google and Microsoft have been adding a series of search upgrades over the last year, such as Google Instant, while Yahoo has not.

Yahoo has a blog post up about it here.

And here are some screenshots, as well as the official press release and an overview by Yahoo of the new search features (click on the images to make them bigger):

Yahoo! Makes Searching More Relevant, Productive and Fun

New features help people explore their interests and do more

SUNNYVALE, Calif., October 7, 2010–Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) today introduced new Search enhancements that will help millions of people be entertained, productive, and informed anywhere they are across Yahoo!. Leveraging Yahoo!’s rich content and robust technology platforms, these new Yahoo! Search features will help people get to the entertainment and news content they care about on all connected devices–and do more with the things they find.

“Our goal is to understand what people care about and to make it fun for them to explore the most personally relevant, interesting, and informative content so that they can get things done faster and stay in the know,” said Shashi Seth, senior vice president, Yahoo! Search and Marketplaces. “Yahoo!’s new immersive Search is a cornerstone of the overall Yahoo! experience, creating more ways to connect people with whatever and whoever interests them.”

To start using the new enhancements, go to Yahoo.com and search for topics such as “Lady Gaga” or “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” The features include 3D multifaceted results and tools that let people:

• Cut to the chase–Intelligent shortcuts for movies, musical artists, celebrities and news topics conveniently organize the most important details such as images, articles, videos, tweets, event listings, and ratings. They also provide quick and easy ways to purchase movie or concert tickets while searching.

• Find favorite flicks–The first in a series of unique “quick apps” from Yahoo! Search, a new Web app for Netflix provides an easy way for Netflix members to add movies to their Queue right from the Search results page. In the coming months, Yahoo! plans to launch additional apps that change the search paradigm from finding to doing.

• Watch what’s happening now–Continuing to bring Search to more people in more places across Yahoo!, the company is helping people feed their curiosity by displaying image slideshows right above the standard results for interesting topics from Yahoo!’s Trending Now lists on Yahoo.com and elsewhere.

• Lean back and browse more pictures–An immersive new Yahoo! Image Search delivers engaging slideshows with public photos from Flickr and Yahoo!’s leading content sites, as well as the ability for people to view personally meaningful public Facebook albums from friends when they sign-in and connect their Yahoo! accounts to Facebook.

• Search on the go–Android and iPhone users can now get faster, more sophisticated Search results, thanks to the latest HTML5 technology. Rich content on entertainment, finance, and local topics is surfaced in more unique and compelling ways for high-end mobile devices.

Working toward its vision to be the center of people’s online lives, Yahoo! is dedicated to re-imagining Search by creating new ways to bring people closer to what they need and want on the Web. Today’s visually stunning new Search experiences throughout the Yahoo! network, along with innovative technology enhancements and quality improvements for rich local and shopping searches, all supplement organic algorithmic Search listings from the recently transitioned Microsoft search platform. Yahoo! expects current and future innovations to redefine Yahoo! Search and drive greater consumer engagement and loyalty.

New features began rolling out to Search users across the U.S. today, and Yahoo! expects to launch them for additional global markets in 2011.

Search Launch Overview Oct 2010

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101006/yahoo-upgrades-search-experience-as-it-ports-over-tech-to-microsoft/feed/ 11 http://allthingsd.com/20091204/google-to-hold-an-anything-bing-can-do-we-can-do-better-search-event-monday/ http://allthingsd.com/20091204/google-to-hold-an-anything-bing-can-do-we-can-do-better-search-event-monday/#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:28:25 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21465 Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Google answered BoomTown’s blatantly begging plea to call, write or just say hi after I was inundated with news about Bing search from Microsoft (MSFT) this week–emailing yesterday about a “search event” to be held Monday in Silicon Valley.

It will be at the Computer History Museum, and the PR minion who wrote me (see email below) noted “there’ll be lots of news.”

News? Well, you don’t have to ask me and my Flip twice!

Included in the confab will be Google VP of Search Products & User Experience Marissa Mayer, VP of Engineering and Renaissance man Vic Gundotra and Google Fellow Amit Singhal, who is known as the master of ranking algorithm and search quality.

Already, I feel dumber than a box of hammers. But, can I resist? Of course not!

Sources tell me the event is for unveiling a wide range of feature updates to the Google service, probably to take some of its search innovations out for a showy walk around the park before Bing sucks up all the PR oxygen.

Here’s the note I got:

Hey Kara,

Hope you’re doing well. Wanted to check in quickly to see if you or someone else from ATD might be interested in attending the Google search event being held at the Computer History Museum on Monday. There’ll be a lot of news, as well as an opportunity to speak with execs like Marissa Mayer, Vic Gundotra, and Amit Singhal. Would definitely be worth your time.

Let me know if you’re interested and we’ll get you signed up.

Now, if Yahoo (YHOO) would only throw a look-at-me-too search event soon, it will be a trifecta!

Until Monday, please enjoy a video of one of my favorite musical scenes and songs–mostly due to the line, “You couldn’t give me a lesson in long-distance spitting!”–from the movie version of “Annie Get Your Gun,” sung by the perfect Betty Hutton and Howard Keel:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091204/google-to-hold-an-anything-bing-can-do-we-can-do-better-search-event-monday/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20090724/pre-analysts/ http://allthingsd.com/20090724/pre-analysts/#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:23:15 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=22153

Now this is just getting silly.

Pali Research says sales of the Palm Pre are slowing. RBC’s Mike Abramsky says they aren’t and claims 325,000 to 375,000 have been sold to date, ahead of his expectations.

Citing some decidedly unscientific poll data, Jesup and Lamont analyst Kevin Dede suggests the device is plagued by build-quality issues and a high exchange/return rate, potentially 40 percent. Abramsky says it’s between two and three percent and calls BS on the build-quality issue.

“Most buyers appear delighted with their new Pre user experience,” Abramsky said in a research note Friday. “Pre satisfaction appears higher than legacy Palm devices (e.g., Treo), affirming improved execution from the ‘New’ Palm, including engineering, manufacturing, quality and process improvements.”

So, Pre sales are slowing. Or, they’re not.

And exchange/return rates are high.

Unless they’re not.

And these analysts are on point.

Unless, of course, they’re not. Too bad it’s impossible to tell without official numbers from Palm (PALM) or Sprint (S).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090724/pre-analysts/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090519/apple-rim-no-netbooks/ http://allthingsd.com/20090519/apple-rim-no-netbooks/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 11:30:50 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=17863 Apple and Research in Motion may disagree on many things, but they are of the same mind when it comes to the netbook phenomenon: It will be short-lived. Asked about Apple’s interest in the category during a late-April earnings call, COO Tim Cook said the company has none.

“When I look at netbooks, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens,” he explained, noting that it’s “a stretch” to call a netbook a personal computer. “It’s just not a good consumer experience and not something we would put the Mac brand on….it’s not a space as it exists today that we are interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in. It’s a segment we would choose not to play in. That said, we do look at the space and are interested to see our customers’ respond to it. People that want a small computer so to speak that does browsing and e-mail, might want to buy an iPod Touch or they might want to buy an iPhone. And so, we have other products to accomplish some of what people are buying netbooks for and so, in that particular way we play in an indirect basis.”

Turns out, Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie feels pretty much the same way. In a recent interview with Reuters, he said the company has no interest in adding a netbook to RIM’s product line. The only netbook Balsillie is interested in is one “you can hold up to your ear and clip onto your belt.” In other words, a BlackBerry. Anything larger just won’t cut it, as a parade of discontinued nonphone portable hardware has already shown us. “These devices don’t work,” Balsillie said. “At the end of the day what we’ve really found is that if [customers] can do it on a BlackBerry that’s what they’ll want.”

Interesting to hear these two companies come out so strongly against netbooks given the current buzz around them. Demand for netbooks is reportedly surging, so much so, it’s singlehandedly bolstering PC sales slowed by the econalypse. Nokia (NOK) is considering entering the netbook market according to Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. So why are Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM) thumbing their noses at it? Perhaps because they view the netbook as an interim product, a placeholder. Perhaps because they know that the handset is the next computer?

Apple certainly does. The iPhone already runs a spartan version of the company’s OS X operating system. How long will it be before the device is outfitted with a more powerful processor–perhaps one designed by PA Semi–capable of running OS X SL? How long before the iPhone (or its dock) is outfitted with the Mini DisplayPort that will connect it to a monitor? How long before we no longer need netbooks or notebooks because our handsets do it all?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090519/apple-rim-no-netbooks/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20090113/jerry-yang-is-out-premium-apparently-already-baked-into-yahoo-stock-price/ http://allthingsd.com/20090113/jerry-yang-is-out-premium-apparently-already-baked-into-yahoo-stock-price/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:17:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=11236 The markets are having their say about Yahoo’s choice of Autodesk Chairwoman Carol Bartz as CEO and they don’t seem to much care for it. Though Bartz is a widely respected Silicon Valley veteran and has done much to improve Autodesk’s fortunes, investors aren’t so sure she’ll do the same for Yahoo (YHOO).

Shares of the deteriorating Internet company slipped on news of the impending announcement, falling more than two percent to $11.96. Earlier in the day, they’d been trading at $12.79.

Clearly, Bartz’s appointment doesn’t appear to be inspiring much confidence in investors–at least at the outset. Perhaps all her enterprise experience is proving a bit of a turnoff. Ten years as vice president at Sun Microsystems (JAVA). Board seats at Intel (INTC), Cisco Systems (CSCO), and NetApp (NTAP). Where’s the Internet experience? Where’s Steve Jobs? Surely he could right this sinking ship.

“She was an inoffensive, but largely unexciting candidate–someone who would be a steady hand at the wheel–but investors were hoping for a lot more than that,” Jeff Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York, told Bloomberg. “She’s undoubtedly a competent and able executive. The problem is, is she the right fit for the job?”

Likely a better fit than Jerry Yang. And that’s a start, right? Oh, there’s this as well: When Bartz started at Autodesk it had revenues of $285 million. Today it generates about $1.5 billion.

Says Needham analyst Mark May:

If the reports are accurate, our initial reaction is that we view Bartz as a good choice because:

1. she has an established track record of running (CEO) a major public company (there are few/no such individuals w/ both major public CEO and new media experience)
2. she has a strong technical background, having run Autodesk and served on the Boards of Cisco, Intel, NetApp and others
3. based on our conversations, she is well-regarded by industry counterparts, investors and analysts
4. based on our conversations as well as a review of a series of presentations Bartz has given over the years, she not only shows great leadership qualities, but is thoughtful and passionate about a number of topics important to Yahoo today (e.g., global ops mgmt, consumer targeting/personalization, integration w/ wireless platforms, dealing w/ unexpected corp stresses, etc.)
5. Bartz is a known quantity at the senior levels of Yahoo, w/ Yang having served w/ her on the Cisco board and Yahoo! President Sue Decker serving on the Intel board w/ her.

Of course, there is more we’d like to see/hear before making our final determination, such as i) what’s Bartz’s strategy/vision; ii) will current President Sue Decker resign; iii) will Bartz hire a strong #2 w/ new media experience; and, iv) will Chairman Roy Bostock resign. That said, our initial reaction to the possibility of Bartz being named Yahoo!’s new CEO is favorable.

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