News Byte

Talenthouse Brings in Nokia, Adidas and Coca-Cola to Sponsor Engagement Platform

Los Angeles-based Talenthouse, a global creative collaboration community with two million members, said that it was launching an “engagement” platform with Adidas’s eyewear, Coca-Cola’s Vitaminwater and Nokia to allow its members to be paired with the mega-brands and be sponsored by them. Talenthouse said that artists will get paid based on engagements that their project and their content generates for those brands, which will be able to “integrate their message directly into the artists’ projects & portfolios and become part of all peer to peer social media conversation.”

Mobile Goes Global

From New York City today and tomorrow, D: Dive Into Mobile puts top execs onstage for their perspective on the global mobile scene.
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Elissa Murphy, One of Yahoo’s High-Profile Tech Execs, Heads to Go Daddy as CTO (Memo Time!)

It’s the second talent raid by former Yahoo product head Blake Irving, who is now CEO at the domain giant.
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Eventbrite Hires CFO in Expansion of Top Exec Ranks

In its first C-level hire from outside the company, Eventbrite has brought in experienced finance exec Mark Rubash as CFO.
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Global Platform Head Carroll Departs Yahoo for Go Daddy, While Yahoo News Head Leaves for NBC

An internationalization exec and key news exec take their skills elsewhere.
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Some More Inconvenient Truths (Including Spider Goats): Al Gore Talks About “The Future” at SXSW

Live from Austin, Texas, it’s the man who brought you the Internet. (Really, he did, along with others.)
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Voices

Smartphone Math Doesn’t Add Up

For every winner, there has to be a loser. Smartphone sales have defied gravity in recent years, but there’s no defying simple math.

Facebook Nabs Brunswick’s Buckley for Top Communications Job

A new PR dude we can irritate!
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News Byte

Tennis Champ Agassi Gives Yahoo Sales Troops a Pep Talk

Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro has been holding a global sales conference in Las Vegas this week, bringing together the large group of employees at the Silicon Valley Internet giant who are in charge of a big chunk of its revenue. While it’s a lot of talking by top execs about the dramatic new advertising structure that he has put into place, there is always the requisite inspirational speaker (in 2007, at another meeting, it was Apple’s Steve Jobs). For this event, sources said, it was former tennis champ Andre Agassi appearing there to get the troops juiced. The once-pugnacious athlete — who is now married to another tennis phenom, Steffi Graf — was probably a good choice, especially since one of his well-known quotes is: “Being number two sucks.”

Rubicon Project Adds Two Top Execs, as Ad Tech Company Moves Toward IPO

Is ad tech ready to go big and go IPO?
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