At a media event in New York today, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced a new office in Times Square for the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

“From one Mayor to another,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Mayer (get it?) about locating in Manhattan’s iconic location, which will house 500 Yahoo employees.

But not Tumblr, which will remain blissfully downtown, even after its $1.1 billion all-cash acquisition by Yahoo announced today.

“We’re very happy that Tumblr is a home-grown company,” said Bloomberg,

Irony alert: Yahoo’s new digs in the Big Apple is actually the old HQ of the New York Times.

“Twenty years ago there were a lot of Yahoos in New York,” said the Bloomberg, channeling Jackie Mason and then touting the local tech industry and reeling off the stats.

Boiled down: Geeks rule.

Mayer also talked briefly about the acquisition of Tumblr and repeated the trying-really-hard-to-be-wacky, “we’re going to try not to screw it up” promise.

Mayer then introduced another promise — a commitment to fix Yahoo’s last major acquisition screw-up, Flickr.

Yahoo exec Adam Cahan, who is in charge of the photo-sharing service and who uses the term “awesome” quite a lot, came on next to show the changes.

He introduced a new design, which looks kinda like Instagram and kinda like Flipboard and kinda like Apple and kinda like Facebook’s homepage. It does bring Yahoo up to speed with others in the key photo-sharing space, which is good.

(Sorry, I cannot be more detailed, since I could only see it via Internet, because AllThingsD.com was not invited to the event by Yahoo.)

From what I can tell, it’s very image-centric with big photos and little text.

Cahan also introed a new Google Android mobile version and said that Flickr will offer a terabyte of space for free to users, which is about 537,731 photos.

Then he talked about a terabyte a lot, claiming that “no other Internet company has offered you a terabyte” of space. (Well, I would imagine Google and Facebook will now do so in a New York minute.)

Some very nice man with a German accent demoed it. (Again, I am not there and did not see a name going by on screen, and I can’t ask Yahoo PR his name.)

It’s purty, for sure, and nice to be able to upload photos in their full fidelity without worrying about space constraints.

Mayer called it “spectacular,” “bigger” and, of course, “awesome.”

It is certainly much more striking than how the antiquated Flickr homepage used to look like — which was circa 1969. But, like I said, kinda like what others have already done, although these updates are certainly a welcome change for Flickr.

Mayer then ran a very cute video for the changes, which, well, was kinda like an Apple video.

“Flickr was awesome once and then it languished,” said Mayer, declaring victory already. “And now it’s awesome again.”

In a Q&A after, Mayer, Cahan and the nice German guy answered questions about integration of Tumblr and Flickr (not yet!); how it was like or not like Instagram (no cropping apparently — which is exactly what is fantastic about Instagram); the terabyte (it’s awesome!); and more Tumblr deets (you know them already); monetization; and a bizarre one about redundancy so you don’t lose photos.

Mayer also said that Yahoo had bought 11 billboards in Times Square to show off Flickr and noted there was a party after for the media. (Except the unchosen, so I am enjoying a nice glass of Cabernet all by my lonesome. Frankly, it’s awesome!)

(Photo credit: Kevin Tachman for Times Square Alliance.)

In retrospect, it’s easy to see why this works — while “Promoted Tweets,” the format the company describes as its “atomic unit” of its ad business, requires a lot of testing and experimentation, buying a trend for the day is a familiar concept for ad buyers.

Anyone who logs on to Twitter for the day will see the promotion, which makes it roughly similar to a homepage takeover on Yahoo or YouTube – it’s a digital billboard.

So who’s buying?

A one-month survey, conducted by CNBC social media strategist Eli Langer, offers some clues. By Langer’s count, Twitter sold 26 promoted trends in the U.S. in the last 32 days — at rate-card prices, that $5.2 million, plus whatever the advertisers paid for in promoted tweets to support the campaign (bear in mind that Twitter sells trends in many other territories worldwide).

Nearly half of those came from Big Media companies pushing movies and TV shows; another chunk came from food-and-beverage marketers.

Thursday (3/7): No Promoted Trend
Friday (3/8): #TheNextBigThing (Samsung)
Saturday (3/9): No Promoted Trend
Sunday (3/10): #TheBible (History Channel)
Monday (3/11): #FeedTheBeat (Taco Bell)
Tuesday (3/12): No Promoted Trend
Wednesday (3/13): #BurtWonderstone (Warner Brothers)
Thursday (3/14) #501s (Levi’s)
Friday (3/15) #TheCallMovie (Sony Pictures)
Saturday (3/16) #3dollarsub (Subway)
Sunday (3/17) No Promoted Trend
Monday (3/18) #BatesMotel (A&E)
Tuesday (3/19) #TheHobbit (The Hobbit Movie)
Wednesday (3/20) #HotNSpicy (McDonald’s)
Thursday (3/21) #BracketBusters (University of Phoenix)
Friday (3/20) #NickyFlash (AT&T)
Saturday (3/23) #RallyCry (Capital One)
Sunday (3/24) No Promoted Trend
Monday (3/25) #Blackberry10 (Blackberry)
Tuesday (3/26) #ItsNotComplicated (AT&T)
Wednesday (3/27) #NYIAS (Toyota)
Thursday (3/28) #TheHost (Twilight Movie)
Friday (3/29) #GiJoeRetaliation (Possibly a few production companies via The Rock’s Twitter account)
Saturday (3/30) #OrphanBlack (BBC America)
Sunday (3/31) #TheWalkingDead (AMC)
Monday (4/1) #AprilFools (Jockey )
Tuesday (4/2) #twEATfor1K (Wendys)
Wednesday (4/3) #BoBSantigoldLive (Vitamin Water)
Thursday (4/4) No Promoted Trend
Friday (4/5) #EvilDead (Sony)
Saturday (4/6) #FinalFour (Capital One)
Sunday (4/7) #MadMen (AMC)

Sandberg and her team have been encouraging women to post their personal stories of when they leaned into their careers and Mayer certainly does that in her post, including discussing taking the job at the top of the troubled Silicon Valley Internet company when she was seven months pregnant.

She wrote:

Looking back to reflect on the question: Could I really take the helm of Yahoo when I was 28 weeks pregnant? Even now, it sounds absolutely crazy. I considered if and how I could make it work: learning more about the role, getting words of encouragement from close friends and family, and developing a plan. I’ve always believed you can never have everything that you want, but with work and dedication, you can have the things that really matter to you. If I took the opportunity, it was clear that I would have to find a way to have time with my baby without a long maternity leave. I also knew going forward that there wouldn’t be much time beyond my job and my family for anything else. Ultimately, I decided I was fine with that, because my family and my job are what really matter to me.

In the piece, Mayer also noted that she jumped at the chance to run Yahoo, which had actually put Google in business in many ways with an early search deal. She started her career at the search giant and was one of its higher-ranking execs.

“The alignment with my experience and career was uncanny: search, email, homepage, news, finance, maps, social, mobile and more,” she wrote, although she also said that after “13 years of really hard work at Google, I had been envisioning a glorious six-month maternity leave.”

Not so. Mayer took off from Yahoo only a few weeks after she had her baby son last fall, and she said it has turned out well for her. “I’ve come to realize that being a mother makes me a better executive, because motherhood forces prioritization,” she wrote. “Being a mom gives you so much more clarity on what is important.”

According to numerous sources, Vivek Sharma, who is GM of the powerful Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger products, has left the company.

It’s not clear where Sharma — who has been at the Silicon Valley Internet giant since 2009 and has worked in a number of areas, including commerce and search — is going or what the reasons are for his departure from Yahoo.

Some sources said he clashed with CEO Marissa Mayer, who has been involved in the recent overhaul of one of Yahoo’s key consumer products, due in part to recent issues related to email vulnerability and other issues. But others said he simply wanted to move on and has a new job lined up already.

There are several other top Yahoo execs who are likely to go in the coming weeks, especially given many bonuses are awarded this month. Mayer has also been looking over her top management and wider workforce and culling it, sometimes in ways that attract national controversy and even a lawsuit.

Keeping talent and finding new blood has been an issue for the fledgling CEO. As I have previously reported, as well as others in more detail this week, she is approving all new hires herself and has put in place more stringent hiring standards at Yahoo.

Sources said she has been trying to convince a top product exec at Google to essentially replace Shashi Seth — with whom she parted ways in January — who would oversee Mail, Answers, Messenger, the homepage and possibly the media group.

In addition, her COO Henrique De Castro has a search out for a new head of the key Americas unit to man its important sales division and more in the U.S. market.

In other words, a lot of empty desks that need filling.

I have an email in for comment into Yahoo, but you know how that goes (FYI: It doesn’t).

Lost in the sauce of the national work-from-home debate of last week that engulfed all things Yahoo, was a fascinating tidbit that several employees passed on to me from a recent Friday FYI meeting at its Silicon Valley HQ.

At the gathering, CEO Marissa Mayer talked briefly about the new telecommuting arrangements for some staffers, including the controversial new work-from-home memo that HR head Jackie Reses had issued that day.

But when Reses — who also wears another corporate hat as head of M&A at Yahoo — spoke she mentioned to the crowd that Yahoo was working on two “significant” acquisitions and about six smaller talent “acqhires.”

“It was kind of odd to telegraph it in such a big forum,” said one employee of Reses’ comments at the meeting in late February.

The revelation was unusual, to be sure, but perhaps not a surprise, given the recent run-up in Yahoo stock, its healthy cash position and, most of all, its need to add meaningful growth to the current efforts at turnaround.

And while some of its recent buys have been interesting and focused on improving its moribund mobile efforts, they have also been very small. And, as one high-ranking exec there told me, they “don’t move the needle in the way we need to in bringing in senior talent or loads of users or serious revenue.”

Indeed, while Yahoo shares have benefited greatly from the impressive performance by Alibaba Group in China, which is clearly on a roll, many think that showing actual improvement in its core business will be critical in the months ahead.

While making changes to Yahoo’s homepage and email, as well as cutting products, has been done, it is not yet clear what the impact is; the changes are aimed more at holding on to consumers rather than exciting them with new offerings.

Yahoo could also create its own new products to wow the masses, but that has been harder for it over the years. (Remember Livestand? Yeah, not so much.) In any case, an innovation infusion of such a large magnitude will take some time, given Mayer has to get the right people into place to do so.

Thus, a big purchase of an exciting new company with prominent leadership seems more likely than not and sooner than later. While Mayer has not articulated her vision for the new Yahoo in anything more than general ways, what she buys will say a lot.

Thus, sources said that Yahoo has been looking at a range of such acquisitions, in a number of categories such as advertising tech, mobile monetization and, of course, consumer “daily delight,” which is a phrase Mayer has used a lot.

It would be bold if Mayer went all out and made a mega-buy that would shake up the competitive landscape. My first choice for that is Pinterest, the scrapbooking phenom that was just valued at $2.5 billion in a new funding round. Mayer has also shown a lot of interest in blogging superstar Tumblr, while at both Google and Yahoo, as well as Foursquare, the well-known location app. Of course, there is also the troubled gaming giant, Zynga.

All are very pricey and would face rival interest, but such a move would be akin to Facebook’s billion-dollar blockbuster purchase of Instagram. Many now think that was prescient and cheap, given how important mobile photos are to the current digital ecosystem.

The list of possible big deals goes on: Hulu (which needs a tasty content element to make sense) as a video play; Millennial Media or Jumptap for mobile advertising; Quora for social answers; Flipboard for social media consumption; Rubicon or PubMatic, for ad targeting; and many more.

But all of those begin at the billion-dollar or more range and I have checked with a number of these and come up peanuts. Still, there are a whole lot of choices for Mayer and Yahoo in the $200 million to $500 million price range.

Here, Yahoo has the financial strength to make at least two of these significant purchases that Reses mentioned, as well as developing a much better reputation for Yahoo to keep real talent interested.

As one prominent startup exec, who had told me he never would consider selling to Yahoo in the past, said recently: “They are no longer complete losers, although Facebook and Google and Apple and Amazon are still cooler.”

Hey, it’s a compliment, even if it’s a back-handed one, so it will be interesting to see who finds Yahoo cool enough.

At a Morgan Stanley investment conference today, the affable Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman put in an appearance to talk about life at Yahoo since he got there last fall.

Unfortunately, he said almost nothing new in an onstage interview and, more importantly, did not address the hot-button controversy around the work-from-home ban that CEO Marissa Mayer instituted last week.

To be fair, that’s because Goldman was not asked by anyone about the issue, which is perhaps not a surprise at these hand-holding investor events. But he did make a veiled reference when touting its “strong leadership” now.

“What gives people confidence is that we’re making decisions,” he said. “The worst thing to do in a company is to waffle.” But Goldman then added obliquely that some people like those decisions and “some people don’t.”

No, they don’t! Woo-hee, has this one blown up!

The work-from-home debate has certainly exploded across the landscape this week, after an edict to eliminate the long-time employee policy at Yahoo, especially since most other Internet companies tout flexible work arrangements.

But, apparently, Mayer thinks Yahoos have abused the privilege — she noted at an employee meeting last week that VPN logs showed work-at-home staff did not sign on enough — and a Yahoo internal memo said that working “physically together” was the way to reenergize the lagging fortunes at the company.

Opinions inside Yahoo about the topic have been mixed but heated, essentially pitting employees against each other in an awkward way. But the reaction from outside the company has been decidedly negative.

At the Morgan event in San Francisco, Goldman instead focused on the sunnier side of the street at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, noting the Mayer regime was focused on increasing user engagement, international presence and broadening its demographics.

“The thing that just struck me over and over is how much has been done by this company that is really new,” said Goldman, pointing inevitably to the new free food policy — which has long been common across Silicon Valley — as well as a quarterly goal system, employee reviews, weekly FYI meetings and more.

Referring to internal polls showing increased confidence among staff, he added: “What really strikes me is how much has been done to really improve the quality of life at Yahoo.”

Goldman also touched on the need to increase revenue, spur innovation and also some upgrades of core products such as Yahoo Mail and its famous homepage, although leaving out that this had been in the works before the new leadership team was in place.

He also talked, as Mayer has a lot, about the importance of mobile to the future there, noting that the mobile revenue was still “modest.” (Goldman declined to say just how modest, but I posted that depressing number here.)

“We just got into this is a major way,” he said, asking investors for patience to get up to mobile speed at Yahoo. “I think we have been clear it will take us some time, but we have taken some positive steps.”

In my own tests, sometimes the page would load, and other times I would simply get a “service unavailable” error.

Update: An Amazon spokesperson provided the following statement: “The gateway page of Amazon.com was offline to some customers for approximately 49 minutes. Other pages of the site were accessible and AWS was not impacted.” Sources close to the situation said the issues were internal and that the site was not hacked.

A homepage outage is truly very rare for the e-commerce giant.

A decade ago, when Amazon was less reliable, analysts would estimate how much the company was losing every second, or every minute. Now that the company’s sales total $61 billion a year, it must be even more significant.

Interesting to note that Amazon’s cloud is fully operational, according to Amazon’s status page.

Over the past year, there have been several instances where Amazon’s customers, such as Netflix and Instagram, have gone down due to Amazon server outages. This time, the problems seem to be restricted to Amazon’s own services, which either means the homepage operates on different servers, or it’s experiencing another problem entirely.

In case you desperately need to shop, get on your phone. The Verge is reporting that the outages are not affecting the company’s mobile applications.

On Wednesday, the San Jose-based company will report fourth-quarter and year-end earnings, and eBay is expecting the holidays to have treated it well.

For the fourth quarter, it is projecting earnings per share of up to 58 cents on revenue of up to $4 billion. For the full year, profits are expected to be as high as $1.99 a share on up to $14.1 billion in revenue.

Analysts are a little more cautious.

The consensus is calling for eBay to earn a profit of 61 cents in the fourth quarter and $2.05 a share for the full year. Those numbers are best compared to eBay’s non-GAAP projections, which exclude some items. On a non-GAAP basis, eBay is projecting to earn up to 69 cents a share for the quarter, and up to $2.35 a share for the year.

One analyst, however, recently revised his target, saying he expects eBay to now hit the projected 69 cents a share.

The rise in the stock price over the past year stems from the work eBay has done to overhaul its marketplace business.

The turnaround has included fixing back-end technology, like search algorithms, and revamping the design, including a new logo and homepage. Innovation is also occurring in delivery with programs testing same-day delivery and pickup services. As the transformation has started to take hold, eBay has started to attract new users to the site via TV commercials.

Operating alongside eBay is its buddy, PayPal, which also had a strong year. In the third quarter, the payment division saw revenue jump 23 percent compared to the year earlier.

One particular subject the company will be eager to talk about this quarter is how much growth it is seeing from consumers shopping on their phones and tablet computers. In the third quarter, it forecasted that eBay and PayPal would each transact $10 billion in volume this year over mobile, or more than twice what they recorded in 2011.

It will not be a surprise if eBay blows past these numbers, given the number of times it has revised its figures upward. Other third-party reports confirm what eBay is already witnessing.

For instance, last week, eMarketer reported that U.S. sales over mobile devices increased 81 percent, to nearly $25 billion, in 2012. At that level, it said, mobile devices accounted for 11 percent of total U.S. e-commerce sales. In comparison, I’ve been reporting for the past few months that eBay’s mobile revenue is closer to 16 percent of its total sales (but those figures have been based only on estimates).

Amazon is reportedly generating half as much, or around 8 percent to 10 percent of its revenue from mobile.

Finally, analysts won’t just be looking for a recap of the company’s 2012 accomplishments on Wednesday, but will also be looking for hints about the future.

The big question on everyone’s mind is whether eBay can maintain its growth for another year.

On the marketplace side of the business, eBay anticipates growing revenue by helping brick-and-mortar stores like Toys “R” Us and Macy’s compete online. Meanwhile, PayPal has been slowly expanding into in-store payments, with the hope that 2013 will be the first year it brings in revenue from the business (or at least that’s what eBay hopes).

On Friday, eBay’s shares traded 1.3 percent higher to close at $53.70, which is just shy of its 52-week high of $54.20 a share.

This week in Las Vegas, the new management team running Yahoo — including CEO Marissa Mayer — is at International CES to schmooze with big advertisers and convince them that Yahoo is the place to put large chunks of their marketing budgets.

One of the longtime selling points of the company is the sheer size of its audience, especially for the key money-making parts of the site — the homepage, Yahoo Mail and search.

But private stats from comScore show that those three areas have continued their longtime decline over the last year, in some cases dropping significantly. In November and December, for example, compared to the same two months a year ago, U.S. search was down 28 percent and 24 percent respectively, while mail was down 16 percent and 12 percent.

This matters a great deal, since the troika of homepage, mail and search have been the critical driver of the Yahoo value ecosystem for advertisers.

The impact of those drops is felt all over Yahoo, whose music, movie, games and travel site have also seen massive drop-offs in traffic year over year in those same months.

Stopping the decline is critical for Yahoo, since Mayer herself has underscored the need for size in her pushing for new businesses at Yahoo that are 100 million users in size and/or have revenue prospects of at least $100 million.

While this is a lofty vision, the reality of traffic falloffs on key properties is a vexing issue, especially since they remain its main source of revenue and also an important element in launching future products Mayer is promising will turbocharge the company.

It’s not that Yahoo is not huge, especially compared to most sites on the Web.

As one of the top Internet brands, according to a recent Nielsen report, the average number of total monthly unique visitors for the longtime Silicon Valley Internet company in 2012 was 141.6 million, No. 3 behind Google and Facebook in the U.S. market. Similar rankings were reported by comScore, which placed Yahoo at the No. 2 spot after Google, with 171.4 million monthly visitors in November.

But, for many years, traffic to those important consumer destinations of Yahoo has been on a clear and unstopping decline, statistics (usually from comScore) that the company nonetheless always dutifully puts in its earnings slides — see below — for investors to get some idea of the major and vexing issues facing the company.

That was suddenly ended in the last quarter with the engagement slide removed from Yahoo’s public deck entirely. Not all companies include such stats, so when I inquired as to why the company had made the change, Yahoo PR never returned my phone call.

But it’s not hard to guess the reason for the shift — the numbers were not good and they called more attention to Yahoo’s glaring challenge, which is getting users reengaged with its products by creating what Mayer has dubbed several times “delightful” experiences.

According to numerous sources, that has also been the case within the company too, with the new regime restricting an internal transparency initiative pushed by former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving that shared product performance numbers with the top 100 leaders at Yahoo.

And while it’s an interesting strategic choice, several sources inside the company this week urged me to get ahold of increasingly worrisome numbers from comScore — available to its private clients — comparing November 2011 to November 2012 and also December 2011 to December 2012 at home and work in the U.S.

So I did, getting the same stats from numerous sources — numbers that a spokesman for comScore confirmed were correct.

And, as promised, they are worrisome indeed.

In November 2012, compared to November 2011, the monthly unique visitors to the homepage declined 17 percent to 91.8 million from 110.9 million; Yahoo Mail dropped 16 percent (from 92 million to 77.7 million); and Yahoo search dropped 28 percent (from 93.3 million to 66.9 million).

Also off significantly for all three areas, often by one-third, were a plethora of other stats: Percentage of reach, total minutes, total page views, total visits and more.

One of the only bright spots for Yahoo was the relatively small Flickr sites, which were up 37 percent — 26.7 million versus 19.4 million — in unique monthly visitors year over year. The photo-sharing site — which has been getting a much-needed refresh — was also up in all other stats.

But Flickr — which Mayer (pictured here) has laudably touted and supported after years of inexplicable neglect — is not a money-maker for Yahoo, even if its return does burnish the company’s tech and innovation cred.

In December 2011 to December 2012, the homepage was more stable, gaining four percent in monthly uniques from 109.4 million to 114.2 million, but with other key stats both rising and falling. Total visits were up 14 percent, for example, while average minutes per visit was down 13.6 percent.

But the trouble for mail or search continued, off 12 percent (89.9 million to 78.7 million) and 24 percent (88.7 million to 67.4 million) respectively in monthly uniques, with similarly major declines in all other stats.

Mail recently got a refresh too under Mayer, despite some recent security glitches, so new stats will show if that will help stem the declines. Search is another story all together, with Yahoo in what can only be described as a dysfunctional partnership with Microsoft that numerous sources tell me Mayer is seeking to end.

The homepage, too, is undergoing a redo, with a design that has a decidedly more mobile and social feel, and pushing an ethos of Yahoo becoming a hub for content discovery. It is hoped the new look will boost traffic relatively quickly from its current downward trajectory.

To be fair, there can be lots and lots of reasons for these declines, although most of Yahoo’s competitors are, at worse, seeing a flattening of growth and not outright declines.

And sometimes Internet sites complain that services like comScore undercount, although Yahoo had previously used the firm in its public documents. More to the point, as multiple sources within the company note, the stats are directionally correct in that they closely track with internal Yahoo numbers.

Which is to say, traffic is going down rather than growing. That is clearly why Mayer has loudly stressed mobile since arriving at Yahoo, an area not included in these numbers that many sources said has strong growth to about 70 million monthly unique visitors via its apps and mobile-enabled Web offerings.

But unlike the homepage, mail and search — which push and pull traffic all over Yahoo and are responsible for most of its current monetization — mobile also makes very little money now. And Yahoo — unlike Facebook, which recently did — does not break out mobile results.

So, it will be interesting to see if the company does so when it reports fourth-quarter earnings on January 28 and also if it says anything about continued traffic declines of its traditional Web business in the period and the impact on revenue.

Still, there are lots of ways to counter declining or flat revenues, even with declining traffic — via cost cuts, efficiencies, charging more and selling assets (as Yahoo did in the last quarter). And Yahoo has ably managed to keep its operating margins growing over the years, despite both the declines in traffic and moribund growth in its revenue.

But the real and only fix is the drastic fix to existing tentpoles Yahoo has and the creation or acquisition of products that excite consumers and, therefore, advertisers.

It’s not an easy thing, of course, as well-known venture capitalist Ben Horowitz recently wrote in his blog about the need to focus on products over building and improving culture — one of Mayer’s other big initiatives at Yahoo.

Wrote Horowitz in what I consider one of the clearest articulations of what it takes to win for startups, as well as big companies like Yahoo:

“The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least 10 times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter. The second thing that any technology startup must do is to take the market. If it’s possible to do something 10X better, it’s also possible that you won’t be the only company to figure that out. Therefore, you must take the market before somebody else does.”

If you want to take a gander, here are some more of those old Yahoo quarterly engagement slides, which were recently eliminated from its presentations:

(Note: I reached out to Yahoo’s outside PR firm — since they do respond to queries — and also some company execs to get a comment on this story, but so far there has been none.)

Yahoo appears to be rolling out the newest version of the redesign of its homepage even more extensively across several major browsers, including Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox.

As AllThingsD has previously reported several times, the Silicon Valley Internet giant has been working on a new homepage look, designed to improve its declining consumer usage.

The latest look has been present on all my browsers all day, rather than cycling off to the old version as before. The design is cleaner, with a more touchscreen tablet approach, new icons, and a scrolling news feature. With a more mobile feel, it’s slightly different than previous new versions that Yahoo has been testing over the last few months.

After redoing its Yahoo Mail and Flickr photo-sharing service, sources inside the company said that Yahoo is now close to launching the new homepage. It’s part of an effort called Project Homerun and also a larger effort called Project Zed, which will also include more personalization and a focus on bringing in a range of third-party content.

More on what that means soon …

Until then, here are three different screenshots from tonight from Chrome, Safari and Firefox:

So far in the six-month reign of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, there has been a pile of attention paid to the flashy cultural changes (free food!), much-needed rehauls of key mainstays (Flickr, Yahoo! Mail, homepage), a focus on attracting entrepreneurial talent (Hey, we got Max Levchin to join the board!) and, of course, the frequent mention of mobilemobilemobile by the former Google product exec.

But on the topic of where the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s search and display advertising business is headed — which is, of course, its key revenue and profit generator — it’s pretty much been crickets.

No longer, it seems, according to multiple sources inside and outside Yahoo. Mayer is planning a series of appearances at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show — which is taking place in Las Vegas in less than two weeks.

That includes sitting for a high-profile fireside chat with Starcom MediaVest Group Global CEO Laura Desmond in front of several hundred ad clients on Wednesday, January 9; organizing a plethora of one-on-one meetings; and throwing a Yahoo dinner party, as well as angling for invites to key parties thrown by others, such as MediaLink’s power player dinner on Tuesday, January 8.

As I previously reported, the company is planning on having this much more prominent presence there in order to reset its sometime rocky relationship with advertisers.

And, not surprisingly, its big weapon at the giant annual confab will apparently be Mayer, who has not yet interfaced significantly with the company’s big ad clients since taking the top job in July. At CES, sources said, Yahoo is hoping the “Marissa Halo” — i.e. the excitement around the decidedly telegenic exec — will help boost its business.

It’s important, since big agencies and advertisers have privately been grumbling about the lack of outreach by Yahoo and also how much more active execs at rivals such as Facebook, Google and AOL have been.

More than one source close to Yahoo said the dissatisfaction was being heard loud and clear at the company. “[Everyone will] take it as an opportunity to vent (again), while Yahoo promises a new beginning,” said one exec.

New beginnings will again be the case, though, with new COO Henrique De Castro also in place. He’s been making a series of moves to rejigger the ad business at Yahoo since he got there earlier in the fall, also from Google, including shifting its sales process to a category model.

In addition, Yahoo execs have continued their noodling on whether or not to make significant ad tech purchases — with no major deals in place yet — along with improving the creaky performance of the company’s own owned-and-operated offerings.

It’s all in the hope that advertisers and agencies will reconnect with Yahoo after the nearly consistent CEO changes over the last year. For those keeping score, after Carol Bartz was fired in the fall of 2011, CEO Scott Thompson made his debut at CES in early 2012, touting Yahoo’s data prowess before being ousted only months later. He was followed by renewed efforts toward marketers by interim CEO Ross Levinsohn.

And now there’s Mayer.

Interestingly, while many major ad players are looking for more specifics about how Yahoo will improve its mobile, search and data products to give better insights to advertisers, they also are simply wanting to hear Mayer’s plans for Yahoo.

“What I don’t see yet is what the vision for Yahoo is, articulating the bigger ideas than just presenting an assemblage of products,” said Rob Norman, chief digital officer of GroupM Global. “And what everyone would still like to see is what is the escape route from being a portal or even reemerging from what that means, so I am really interested in what she has to say.”

Added another top ad exec: “She really has not said anything yet about how she plans to capitalize on Yahoo’s strengths over the next year in the ad space. People are genuinely excited about Mayer, but the stakes are still high for her since everyone feels as if they have already given Yahoo a lot of extra chances.”

High stakes, indeed. But, then again, it is Vegas.

In the last week, Yahoo has redone its powerful Yahoo Mail, refreshed its Flickr photo-sharing service and is also set to release a spanking new homepage design.

It’s part of a series of changes made since new CEO Marissa Mayer arrived this summer from Google, including detailed employee performance reviews, free food, new smartphones and a hunt for innovative mobile properties to scoop up to improve Yahoo’s creaky Silicon Valley reputation.

Now, according to sources close to the situation, that rejiggering will extend to Yahoo’s board too, with an effort to add more Internet savvy members as directors.

That’s actually be an aim for a while, including a board appointment for longtime entrepreneur Max Levchin, which sources said will occur soon.

In fact, Levchin has been mulling the Yahoo board job for a while, having long been intrigued by the company’s troubles and seeing it as an opportunity rather than a liability.

The wooing of Levchin is also not new. As I wrote in February, he had been pegged for a board seat by then-activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point — who is now on the board after winning his fight with Yahoo and ousted former CEO Scott Thompson. But Levchin, as well as SurveyMonkey CEO David Goldberg, did not want to be part of a dissident slate against Yahoo co-founder and then-board member Jerry Yang.

I had written in September that the board was again looking at Levchin, for a seat designated under an agreement Yahoo had made with Loeb.

The hedge fund investor, who owns a large chunk of Yahoo, had the right to nominate a mutually agreed-upon fourth director after the company settled the proxy fight with him earlier this year. The other directors he nominated previously were Michael Wolf and Harry Wilson.

The thoughtful and cerebral Levchin (pictured here) is best known as a top exec at PayPal. He then founded Slide, a then-hot start-up that made apps — then called “widgets” — for Facebook, including some that let you toss sheep (remember SuperPoke!?!).

(I had been hard on Slide back then, noting that the idea of a “Widget IPO” was ludicrous: “It’s a sign to me that suddenly makes the scene feel very bubbly, given that Slide certainly has traffic, but no proven track record to continually make money.”)

But Slide, which Levchin considered a disappointment despite a huge funding valuing the company at $550 million, was sold to Google for $180 million in mid-2010.

Levchin quickly chafed at the search giant, after working on a variety of social efforts there, including clashing with Google+ leader Vic Gundotra. Levchin did not work that closely with Mayer while at Google, although they are friendly.

He eventually left the company in mid-2011, with Google shuttering Slide, and has since been working on a new start-up in San Francisco.

An active angel investor, he’s one of many entrepreneurs in the Web arena that young start-ups look up to, which is the presumable reason for bringing him onto the Yahoo board. Once added, he’d easily be the hippest director in the group.

The Yahoo board changes will also include the departure of some board members, including Weather Channel CEO David Kenny, who had once been considered as a possible CEO of Yahoo. Other rumors that had been raised included a change in chairman, but sources said that this is not the case for now.

When I emailed and texted him yesterday afternoon about the board changes I had heard were coming, Yahoo Chairman Fred Amoroso wrote me: “As a matter of policy, I don’t comment on rumors.”

Kenny also declined to comment yesterday, noting he was on a plane and was not reachable.

Presumbly, he was returning east from the Yahoo board meeting that was held earlier this week in Silicon Valley.

The Yahoo board moves echo similar changes that were made when former CEO Carol Bartz came into office.

The New York Times also posted on the changes, noting Intuit CEO Brad Smith was also leaving the board. Last year, Smith had become a very active board member, especially after Bartz and then Thompson were ousted, but his own board at the financial software company had been asking him to cut back.

Sources said other new directors might also be named to replace him, but that this was not going to be announced by Yahoo at this time.

Until the inevitable board news, here’s a video of one of many interviews I did with Levchin — this back in 2009 — to give you an idea of his stylings:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121213/along-with-flickr-mail-and-homepage-yahoos-board-will-also-get-a-refresh/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121211/yahoo-updates-mail-adding-native-iphone-and-windows-8-apps-like-we-said/ http://allthingsd.com/20121211/yahoo-updates-mail-adding-native-iphone-and-windows-8-apps-like-we-said/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:25:41 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=276768

As AllThingsD previously reported it would, Yahoo has released a new version of its Yahoo Mail offering, updating its Web offering and also adding native mobile apps for Apple iPhone and Microsoft’s Windows 8. It also updated its Google Android app.

The new Web mail has a decidedly cleaner design and improved search, part of an effort to better compete with Google’s Gmail, which has taken major share from Yahoo in the arena in recent years.

In fact, one source told me that the aim was to be “more Gmail-like.” And, indeed, it looks like it is. Yahoo is also working on a radical rehaul of its homepage, which is set to debut in the coming weeks, although the Silicon Valley Internet giant has been rolling it out in testing for months now.

Redoing Yahoo’s flagship properties — especially to focus on mobile — is a key priority at the company under new CEO Marissa Mayer. She said in a blog post that the new Yahoo Mail will be rolled out to most users soon.

It’s an important step, as I noted in my post about the impending changes to Yahoo Mail, which got its last refresh a year ago:

At the time, the first change in five years got good reviews, with a cleaner design, Twitter and Facebook integration, improved spam filters and speedier delivery.

Unfortunately, since then, Google’s Gmail has become the most popular email service in the world, passing Microsoft’s Hotmail (which is now called Outlook.com after a recent rejiggering), according to recent stats from comScore. That has added up to Gmail’s 287.9 million monthly unique visitors worldwide, 286.2 million for Microsoft’s email product and 281.7 million for Yahoo Mail.

Still, in the U.S. at least, Yahoo is holding onto its longtime — though dwindling — lead, with 76.7 million using Google’s email product and 35.5 million using Microsoft’s.

It’s an important spot to maintain for Yahoo, since many of the users of its products now come to the site to access email and it has been a key driver to its content properties.

But to keep mindshare, Yahoo faces increasingly strong competition. Google’s Gmail released a series of solid improvements last fall. In addition, along with the positively reviewed Microsoft Outlook.com redo, AOL has just announced a new email product called Alto. While it is in beta to a small audience, it is aiming to help users with multiple email accounts organize them better.

In others words, the mail business — especially using it via smartphones and tablets — is another place Yahoo has to make sure it remains innovative.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121211/yahoo-updates-mail-adding-native-iphone-and-windows-8-apps-like-we-said/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121203/new-yahoo-homepage-nears-launch-heres-the-latest-version/ http://allthingsd.com/20121203/new-yahoo-homepage-nears-launch-heres-the-latest-version/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2012 02:54:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=274681 As I previously reported, the Yahoo homepage — which is a mix of mobile-friendly online styles from Microsoft’s Windows 8 to Flipboard to Pinterest — is close to its official launch, perhaps as early as this week, according to sources close to the situation.

Here is the latest version that is appearing in some browsers — this one in Mozilla’s Firefox, for example — that looks a lot like previous versions I have posted.

The touchscreen-tiled approach seems to be the favored design, which seems to be aimed at being consumed on touch-responsive, non-PC devices. Also part of the look, which is still being tweaked, as I have previously written: More simplified icons for various Yahoo properties, fewer text links, additional social and personalization aspects.

The latest redo is now being iterated under the regime of new CEO Marissa Mayer, under the code name Project Homerun.

Mayer declared in a recent earnings call — articulating what many desktop-trapped Silicon Valley Internet giants have also done recently — that Yahoo was going to veer toward a “mobile first” sensibility.

“Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said.

Indeed, judging by the looks of what’s going on below, which seems to have no advertising at the top part of the screen.

Sources tell me that ads could be integrated into the tiled module — it’s an important element of the redo, since the “front door” of Yahoo is its most important monetizable page.

Speaking of which, I also included below the new homepage look a recent “push-down” ad on the homepage, which took over the entire top and did all kinds of interactive dancing with Apple products. It is more intrusive than usual, and an interesting development for Yahoo.

Take a look:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121203/new-yahoo-homepage-nears-launch-heres-the-latest-version/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121115/goodbye-to-daily-deals-groupon-emphasizes-always-on-deals/ http://allthingsd.com/20121115/goodbye-to-daily-deals-groupon-emphasizes-always-on-deals/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:21:43 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=270124 Groupon is rolling out a new deal structure and homepage redesign today that will allow consumers to search and find offers for things they are immediately interested in buying, instead of having to wait for a coupon to arrive in their in-box.

In an interview today, Jeff Holden, the company’s SVP of Product, explained that Groupon has mastered serendipity, but it has not always been good at giving people a place to shop for things they are already looking to buy.

“Groupon was the ultimate place where people would buy things that they didn’t know they were going to buy when they woke in the morning,” he said. “Our model was about talking to merchants, agreeing on a deal, then running the deal. Then it would disappear and be gone.”

Today, in New York and Chicago, consumers will start seeing a new homepage, where offers will be browsable and searchable — and won’t disappear. Instead, there will be a catalog of offers spanning categories such as food, spas, health, fitness, home and auto. So far, Groupon has amassed 27,000 deals in North America as part of the new direction for the company.

While this launch may seem like a relatively small move, it is just one aspect of the business that the company must nail if it wants to continue growing its traditional daily deals business. If Groupon is extremely successful in this endeavor, these deals will start appearing in search results on Google or Bing, much like a Yelp page or other local listings site. That does not happen today because of the temporary nature of Groupon’s current deals.

The evolution started about 18 months ago with the creation of Groupon Now, which got merchants to offer deals that could be used immediately. However, with the move being announced today, the Groupon Now category will go away. At first, consumers may not notice a drastic difference because they will continue getting emails, but when they visit the site, there will be a new layout. In the first image below, you’ll notice the new search bar and location field.

New Groupon homepage

When searching for “car,” more than a dozen offers are returned for auto detailing, car washes and repairs.

In the old format, which still exists for most cities in the U.S., there was no search bar, and when a consumer clicked on “all deals,” they would only surface a few options — not the entire database. Holden said merchants have not been nervous about adopting this format, even though it seems like surfacing the same deals every day would eventually hurt a merchant’s brand. “They’d much rather have a unit sold through Groupon than a seat go empty,” he said. “It makes perfect economic sense. The vast majority have participated immediately, and we aren’t hearing concerns from merchants over that.” He said merchants will also have the option of capping how many times a consumer can redeem a particular offer.

So far, Holden says, the new format is performing well. “We are seeing a significant lift from people who experience the ‘pull’ experience,” he said. “It will take time for people to discover it and for it to ramp up, but the immediate embracing of this shows that people were hungry for capability.”

For comparison, here’s a look at the Seattle homepage, which still has the old format:

Old Groupon Homepage

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121115/goodbye-to-daily-deals-groupon-emphasizes-always-on-deals/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121112/along-with-new-homepage-yahoo-also-set-to-launch-a-gmail-like-email-reboot-to-slow-gmail-gains/ http://allthingsd.com/20121112/along-with-new-homepage-yahoo-also-set-to-launch-a-gmail-like-email-reboot-to-slow-gmail-gains/#comments Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:11:49 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=268389

According to sources close to the company, Yahoo is prepping to launch a major overhaul of Yahoo Mail — which sources said has a cleaner, “more Gmail-like” look.

I am not clear exactly what that means in terms of features and design. But sources said the goal of the redo — which has been initiated by new CEO Marissa Mayer, who is also pushing ahead with a new homepage design — is to better compete with the fast-growing mail offering from Google.

“Marissa thinks Yahoo Mail has been a big missed opportunity for the company and she wants to fix that,” said one person with knowledge of the effort, which had also been mulled by previous CEO Scott Thompson.

Sources said the latest iteration of Yahoo Mail will be released in early December, just after the new homepage is rolled out widely.

That’s a lot of change at a critical money-making time for Yahoo, but Mayer — a former top Google product exec — has publicly committed the company to releasing innovative and mobile-focused products as a key differentiator.

It’s a good idea when it comes to Yahoo Mail, even though it got a major refresh just about a year ago. At the time, the first change in five years got good reviews, with a cleaner design, Twitter and Facebook integration, improved spam filters and speedier delivery.

Unfortunately, since then, Google’s Gmail has become the most popular email service in the world, passing Microsoft’s Hotmail (which is now called Outlook.com after a recent rejiggering), according to recent stats from comScore. That has added up to Gmail’s 287.9 million monthly unique visitors worldwide, 286.2 million for Microsoft’s email product and 281.7 million for Yahoo Mail.

Still, in the U.S. at least, Yahoo is holding onto its longtime — though dwindling — lead, with 76.7 million using Google’s email product and 35.5 million using Microsoft’s.

It’s an important spot to maintain for Yahoo, since many of the users of its products now come to the site to access email and it has been a key driver to its content properties.

But to keep mindshare, Yahoo faces increasingly strong competition. Google’s Gmail released a series of solid improvements last fall. In addition, along with the positively reviewed Microsoft Outlook.com redo, AOL has just announced a new email product called Alto. While it is in beta to a small audience, it is aiming to help users with multiple email accounts organize them better.

In others words, the mail business — especially using it via smartphones and tablets — is another place Yahoo has to make sure it remains innovative.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121112/along-with-new-homepage-yahoo-also-set-to-launch-a-gmail-like-email-reboot-to-slow-gmail-gains/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121111/as-fantasy-football-servers-fumble-on-game-day-yahoo-rolls-out-more-homepage-tests-ahead-of-december-launch/ http://allthingsd.com/20121111/as-fantasy-football-servers-fumble-on-game-day-yahoo-rolls-out-more-homepage-tests-ahead-of-december-launch/#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2012 01:35:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=268350 Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer is continuing her tweaking of the critical homepage of the Silicon Valley Internet giant. “Bucket tests” of new iterations are rolling out today to small sets of users across the service, as the company zeros in on launching it widely in the first week of December.

This is a massive move and also a risky one. Yahoo’s homepage sees about 170 million daily users who click in to do a variety of things. That huge traffic means that advertising placements earn big bucks from marketers — which inside sources said is typically upwards of $350,000 for a prime placement for a day, rising in price depending on complexity.

Thus, making any dramatic change to the powerful homepage is a big deal for Yahoo’s bottom line, especially in the important fourth quarter, when big advertisers spend a lot of money online and expect big results.

And the latest versions are certainly a major shift from Yahoo’s older look, with the latest using an interactive tiled approach at the very top that suggests the design spawn of Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Flipboard’s elegant social reading app.

As I noted last week, along with experiments in infinite scrolling, a simplified logo and giving search more prominence, Yahoo’s homepage change seems to be aimed at being consumed on touch-responsive, non-PC devices.

That’s no surprise, since Mayer declared in a recent earnings call that Yahoo was going to veer toward a “mobile first” sensibility. “Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said.

She also has to aim at being a reliable digital company, it seems. In a bit of unlucky timing — even as Yahoo prepped the home page redo, as well as major overhauls of other products — its hugely popular Fantasy Football offering went down right as eight games were about to start at 10 am PT.

Yahoo acknowledged the slowness in its servers on Twitter, noting: “We’re still working to fix fantasy server issue & will update ASAP. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience & appreciate your patience.”

Fantasy Football fans were livid, although this has happened before, especially to those who waited to do their lineup. But some were also funny about the screw-up, as you can see below:

Yahoo Fantasy Football site is down. The Republicans were right; America has officially collapsed. The apocalypse is upon us.

— Steve Fuller (@fullsteve) November 11, 2012

 

Dear Google, please develop a fantasy football platform. That will end Yahoo! as we know it. Love, Long Suffering Yahoo! Fantasy users.

— WFAN Audio Clips (@WFANAudio) November 11, 2012

 

As of two hours ago, Yahoo said it was still working on the problem. Presumably, it will be the first fix-it challenge for new COO Henrique De Castro, who starts this week.

Hopefully, Yahoo will not have such problems with the homepage rollout, once the final version is selected.

Until then, please check out two images of yet another version, which is similar — although not the same — as the one I posted last week. In the latest design, for example, the swooshy scroll at the top is smaller and a 300 by 250-sized ad unit is back in place at the top. Overall, it is a little bit more conservative, although still streamlined.

Here they are, along with a more dramatic one from last week and also a recent Yahoo homepage:

.

(Mark Sanchez photo: Debby Wong / Shutterstock.com)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121111/as-fantasy-football-servers-fumble-on-game-day-yahoo-rolls-out-more-homepage-tests-ahead-of-december-launch/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121109/touch-a-touch-a-touch-me-yahoos-latest-new-homepage-redesign-tries-interactive-tile-look/ http://allthingsd.com/20121109/touch-a-touch-a-touch-me-yahoos-latest-new-homepage-redesign-tries-interactive-tile-look/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:01:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=268080

Another week and yet another new design for the Yahoo homepage is being tested out on users — this time, it appears to be one (which you can see below) that looks a lot like Microsoft Windows 8’s touchscreen tiled approach (which is here).

After already putting out tests in the field with infinite scrolling, a simplified logo and giving search more prominence, the Silicon Valley Internet giant is apparently testing an even more drastically different redesign of its key landing page — one that seems to be aimed at being consumed on touch-responsive, non-PC devices.

As you can see from the screenshots below — which a user sent me, and which look exactly like what many Yahoo sources have described to me recently — the design uses big photos tiled across the top of the page. It suggests an ethos that is reminiscent of the new approach by Microsoft, as well as many others, such as Flipboard and Pinterest.

All of these encourage users to reach out and touch, scroll and swoosh. In fact, there are side-swiping arrows on the new Yahoo design.

Also part of the look, which is still being tweaked: More simplified icons for various Yahoo properties, fewer text links, additional social and personalization aspects and — perhaps most importantly — no advertising module at the very top.

That’s interesting, since Yahoo’s homepage is a big moneymaker for the company, because of its huge daily traffic. Thus, any new homepage design will have both massive consumer and financial impact on the company.

Sources said that one possible plan is to move from several 300 by 250-sized ad units to a single 300 by 600, which other sites like AOL have shifted toward. Such a change will not be without controversy for marketers.

It will also present a fresh selling challenge for new COO Henrique De Castro, who arrives at Yahoo from Google next week, and who will be helming sales efforts. (Hey, Henrique — get ready for my upcoming 360-degree profile of you!)

The latest redo is now being iterated under the regime of new CEO Marissa Mayer, under an awfully confident codename, Project Homerun. We’ll see if it is San Francisco Giant’s Panda-worthy, but sources said it is set to be released widely within the next two months.

But, while some new designs that have surfaced have been closer to the current version of Yahoo, the latest design is a more significant shift that would clearly lend itself well to mobile touchscreens, especially on increasingly popular tablets.

Along with Pinterest, Flipboard and Windows 8, other sites have done this, of course, most particularly pioneering content design done several years ago by BermanBraun’s Wonderwall for Microsoft’s MSN portal.

That’s no surprise, since Mayer declared in a recent earnings call — articulating what many desktop-trapped Silicon Valley Internet giants have also done recently — that Yahoo was going to also veer toward a “mobile first” sensibility.

“Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said in the third-quarter earnings call.

Here’s what that seems to mean for Yahoo, with the new homepage images, as well as one of the current one to compare:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121109/touch-a-touch-a-touch-me-yahoos-latest-new-homepage-redesign-tries-interactive-tile-look/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121020/10-q-watch-ebay-receives-145-million-check-for-rent-com/ http://allthingsd.com/20121020/10-q-watch-ebay-receives-145-million-check-for-rent-com/#comments Sat, 20 Oct 2012 23:30:27 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=261994 EBay has disclosed how much it made from the sale of its Rent.com subsidiary after closing the deal months ago.

According to a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission on Friday, proceeds from the sale of Rent.com totaled $145 million, which resulted in the online retailer recording a gain of $118 million.

Atlanta-based Primedia purchased the apartment listing service back in March.

EBay had previously said that Rent.com was instrumental in helping build its eBay Motors division, but now the division is better off with Primedia’s other properties, including ApartmentGuide.com, Rentals.com and RentalHouses.com. EBay originally acquired Rent.com seven years ago for $435 million in cash.

Coincidentally, eBay spent about the same amount of money that it made on the Rent.com sale on three acquisitions during the quarter. The company did not name the parties involved, but said two were for their marketplaces business, while a third was for PayPal. The total spent was $149 million, primarily in cash.

One of those acquisitions is likely Svpply, a social commerce site it disclosed buying earlier this month as part of its new homepage unveiling. In general, these acquisitions are drops in the bucket. Over the past two years, the company has spent billions on acquiring other companies, including roughly $3 billion on GSI, and several other smaller acquisitions, including Red Laser, Milo and Zong.

The purchases have helped transform the company from strictly a payments- and marketplaces-driven business to one that offers services to other retailers, like Toys “R” Us. In July, the company raised $3 billion in debt, but said it wasn’t expecting any “meaningful mergers and acquisitions activity in the near term.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121020/10-q-watch-ebay-receives-145-million-check-for-rent-com/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121012/what-is-mobile-commerce-ebay-takes-a-stab-with-its-new-site-redesign/ http://allthingsd.com/20121012/what-is-mobile-commerce-ebay-takes-a-stab-with-its-new-site-redesign/#comments Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:30:44 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=258892 EBay just took the wraps off a completely redesigned homepage, its first major change for the online marketplace in 17 years. The new look allows consumers to browse rather than having to know exactly what they’re search for.

As part of the unveiling, eBay CTO Mark Carges provided a glimpse of how the company plans to make the shopping experience more social.

“It’s a no-brainer, in terms of where we go next,” he said in an interview.

After it was announced on Wednesday, the new homepage slowly started rolling out to consumers in the U.S. What they will notice first is a more contemporary feel that looks more like a mobile application than it does an e-commerce site. Recommendations will appear based on your past searches, and the algorithms will change as you interact with the feed. In the end, consumers will have ultimate control, so even if you buy razor blades and coffee filters on eBay, you don’t necessarily have to see them in your feed.

Next, Carges said, eBay will be adding a community layer for consumers. Users will be able to share their feeds, or follow other feeds. A good example would be an eBay seller who has created a collection of goods he or she is selling and makes that feed available to others to follow. Motifs could form round comic books, coffee or shoes, for example.

“I’ve been here for four years, and have focused most of my time on making search better,” Carges said. “But shoppers have also said they need browsing and inspiration capabilities. We felt now was a time to bring out a way to personalize passions, whether it is their hobbies or things they like to buy — and bring it to life in the feed.”

The comparison to Pinterest is already worn out, but the personal and social features only accentuate the overlap. Pinterest has done an excellent job in creating a huge community that refers ideas to one another. The commonalities between its homepage and Pinterest are not lost on Carges, but you could nearly see him wincing through the telephone line each time they came up. “It’s also very unique in a couple of ways,” he said. “One is that it’s instantly shoppable. Other sites have highly visual metaphors, but the difference is that we have done it in the context of shopping.”

That is true of “other sites.” In many cases on Pinterest, the item that someone is recommending could be sold out or be three or four clicks deep — which can be way beyond a consumer’s tolerance level. In contrast, eBay wants buying to be insanely easy. As part of the homepage redesign, it narrowed down the number it clicks to make a purchase from four to one.

EBay’s move to a more social and browsable model is part of a broader trend of e-commerce companies trying to become more social. To date, retailers efforts in the space haven’t produced much. Most experiments have revolved around using Facebook to create a more personalized experience. For instance, people who logged into retail sites with their Facebook credentials would, in theory, see recommendations based on their stated interests. And other retailers have come up with nifty ways for purchases to occur directly on a Facebook feed. Even Facebook is trying to figure out commerce, with its recent launch of Facebook Gifts.

Over the past two years, eBay has been investing heavily in social. Last year, it hired Don Bradford as VP of social, and made it one of its four priorities, along with local, mobile and digital payments. Before joining eBay, Bradford worked at Microsoft Live Search communities and MSN Hotmail, and worked shortly at Yahoo, where he was VP of Communities.

Previous social experiments for eBay have included things like group gifts, which allow multiple people to chip in to buy a present. The company has also enabled users to log in to their Facebook account on eBay’s homepage to get product recommendations on past purchasing habits and things you have “liked” on your Facebook page, such as movies, books and music.

An eBay spokesperson confirmed that the social features are separate from what Bradford has been working on  – which means even more is coming. New iterations of the feed are expected to be managed by a small team of people from eBay and recent acquisitions, including Milo and Hunch.

While this week’s homepage design isn’t the largest project the company has undertaken over past few years, “it’s the most visible,” Carges said. “The thing we’ve been focused on in the turnaround was under the covers and deep in the tech, search and algorithms. These are things that buyers see.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121012/what-is-mobile-commerce-ebay-takes-a-stab-with-its-new-site-redesign/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120903/after-eastwooding-exits-dems-take-their-seat-at-the-social-table/ http://allthingsd.com/20120903/after-eastwooding-exits-dems-take-their-seat-at-the-social-table/#comments Mon, 03 Sep 2012 23:13:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=247162

Last week’s Republican Convention provided perhaps the most entertaining — albeit, not on purpose — political social meme on the Web, with Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood’s odd performance with an empty chair.

That quickly set off an instant flood of pictures posted on Twitter of people chastising their chairs — dubbed, of course, #Eastwooding.

And also the very funny Twitter account @invisibleobama, who had a nice Labor Day tip for us all:

On this Labor Day, take a moment to remember that today is the last day it’s appropriate to wear invisible seersucker anything.

— Invisible Obama (@InvisibleObama) September 3, 2012

Even President Barack Obama’s tweet-staff got into it by posting the photo below, with the caption: “This seat’s taken.”

This seat’s taken. OFA.BO/c2gbfi, twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 31, 2012

Now that we are done making fun of inanimate objects, it will be interesting to see what pops up online this coming week at the Democratic Convention, which officially starts tomorrow in Charlotte, N.C.

Obviously, there are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr links from the main convention homepage, but there is also a share page in which users are being asked to fill-in-the-tweet: “I nominate Barack Obama Because …”

No surprise, the tweets are uniformly upbeat — and likely vetted — which is what you get with socially engineered social media.

Which is why what happens without the manipulations of the message-makers and political pros — that unexpected moment of reality just made for the medium — will be much more interesting to see as the week goes on.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120903/after-eastwooding-exits-dems-take-their-seat-at-the-social-table/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120403/breaking-facebook-smacks-at-yahoo-with-patent-claims-of-its-own/ http://allthingsd.com/20120403/breaking-facebook-smacks-at-yahoo-with-patent-claims-of-its-own/#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:13:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=192686

Facebook has just taken strong aim back at Yahoo’s patent lawsuit with an answer and counter-claim filing of its own, alleging infringement over a number of issues.

“From the outset, we said we would defend ourselves vigorously against Yahoo’s lawsuit, and today we filed our answer as well as counter-claims against Yahoo for infringing ten of Facebook’s patents,” said Ted Ullyot, general counsel of Facebook. “While we are asserting patent claims of our own, we do so in response to Yahoo’s short-sighted decision to attack one of its partners and prioritize litigation over innovation.”

In its counter-claim filing involving 10 patents held by Facebook, the social networking giant said that Yahoo is infringing via a wide range of its offerings, including its homepage, content optimization, relevance engine, Flickr photo-sharing service and advertising throughout its huge site.

You know: The ads that make up most of Yahoo’s revenue.

In other words, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg does not like being poked by new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson, especially on the eve of a $100 billion IPO.

You might have heard that Facebook is going public and it’s a big deal around Silicon Valley, which is why no one much liked Yahoo’s skunk-at-a-garden-party legal move two weeks ago.

Yahoo fired back at Facebook’s firing back, in a statement:

“We have only just received Facebook’s answer and counterclaims, but on their face we believe they are without merit and nothing more than a cynical attempt to distract from the weakness of its defense. As we have made clear from the outset, the unauthorized use of our patented technology is unacceptable and must be resolved appropriately. Other leading companies license these technologies, and Facebook must do the same or change the way it operates. We have proposed that Facebook join us in discussions to resolve the matter, but our overtures have been rejected. As a result, we are prepared to continue to seek redress through the courts.”

The new filing could not come at a worse time for Yahoo, which will announce thousands of layoffs of employees tomorrow morning, in a wrenching restructuring to revive its lackluster business.

In its legal filing, Facebook also pushed back on assertions in Yahoo’s initial patent lawsuit, noting that it denies that “[w]ithout Yahoo!’s achievements, websites such as Facebook would not enjoy repeat visitors or substantial advertising revenue.”

I think Facebook — which is sure to try to drag this thing out for a long, long time — just called Yahoo a tech loser.

Here is the full document:

FB_ANSWER_AND_COUNTERCLAIMS

More to come, obvi.

Here I am talking about the whole enchilada on WSJ Live’s News Hub.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120403/breaking-facebook-smacks-at-yahoo-with-patent-claims-of-its-own/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120315/ceo-thompson-tells-yahoos-real-change-is-coming-its-exclusive-internal-memo-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20120315/ceo-thompson-tells-yahoos-real-change-is-coming-its-exclusive-internal-memo-time/#comments Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:06:10 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=186523

It began: “Yahoos: A lot has happened since I last talked to you.”

You can say that again!

Yesterday, Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson sent out an email to the troops in what appears to be an attempt to soothe the company, which has been under a lot of stress, including more high-level exec departures, board changes and more. More importantly, the Silicon Valley Internet giant is nervously waiting for a restructuring expected to hit within weeks, and also has been unnnerved by Thompson’s aggressive legal attack on one of its key partners, social networking site Facebook.

Unfortunately, the memo didn’t say much, except vaguely but definitively referencing that even more tumult was coming.

After noting that he had been making a “deep dive” into the company after getting there at the beginning of the year, Thompson said that he was focused on “what makes Yahoo special and what doesn’t work.”

The plan then? To get the company to be “aggressive and lean forward,” because “real change is coming.”

Rut-roh.

(In a related move, but not noted in the memo — which several sources said was linked to all the uncertainty around the expected restructuring and also high costs — Thompson also cancelled Yahoo’s annual global sales meeting, which was to be held for about 1,300 advertising staffers in Florida later in the month.)

“We are moving as fast with real urgency to move back to Yahoo playing offense once again,” said the Thompson memo, which was read to me by several sources, because of increased worries about the company once again hunting for leakers.

(Apparently, like his predecessor before him did unsuccessfully early in her tenure, Thompson is on a yet another pointless hunt for those who talk to outsiders. Memo to Scott: Yahoo is an online media company and not a pay-for-that-used-iPad-on-eBay outfit and the peeps there like to share.)

Back to the memo action. “Were are fundamentally rethinking every part of our business and looking at all options to put maximum effort where we can succeed,” wrote Thompson. “I’m putting tons of pressure on my leadership team … so we can move faster and more deliberately.”

He added — and the bolding is his — “the changes we make will not be incremental ones. We will make bold, fundamental changes to what we do and how we do it.”

After properly freaking the Yahoo staff out — with everyone trying to grok exactly what that meant in terms of their jobs — Thompson then went into three core things the company was going to focus on under his rule (more bolding!):

“1) Focusing intently on those parts of the business that have a competitive advantage.

2) Liberating all of us to work faster and make better decisions.

3) Thinking really creatively about how to build new businesses that leverage our trusted relationships with users.”

Those will be applied, wrote Thompson, to five key parts of Yahoo: Its core business (such as the homepage and news); platforms (such as its cloud services and Yahoo Publishing Platform); data (which Thompson said was the “single most underrated, underappreciated and underused asset, also calling it a “cornerstone for the next generation” of Yahoo); international; and an amorphous thing he called “our future.”

About that, Thompson said Yahoo would “go beyond simply protecting our core assets … we will more than just tweak what we have today … to innovate, acquire and disrupt outside our core.”

Then, without giving any specifics at all, he noted that it’s as “important to know what we’ll do as how,” before launching into three “core principles” for the company, which were all in bold caps (this dude loves punctuating, which I can appreciate!).

They are:

“LISTEN, UNDERSTAND AND PUT THE CUSTOMER FIRST.

MOVE WITH SPEED IN EVERYTHING WE DO.

GET STUFF DONE.”

(Thompson also underlined “listen,” as well as bolding it, in an orgy of key-shifting.)

“I learned early in my career that innovative concepts without execution are of no value,” he then said, in a classic business-bromide tone. “The Yahoo of the future has to be the organization that consistently surprises the world by how much we get done and deliver to our customers.”

The letter did reference the patent-infringement lawsuit with Facebook at the very end.

“I want to point out that this lawsuit has one simple purpose: Protecting valuable assets of the company and its shareholders,” Thompson wrote. “Others have respected and have licensed our valuable innovations and Facebook must too.”

Thompson ended by noting that “my door is open.” It will be interesting to see who has the guts to walk through it today.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120315/ceo-thompson-tells-yahoos-real-change-is-coming-its-exclusive-internal-memo-time/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111123/for-yahoo-and-me-too-time-is-brain/ http://allthingsd.com/20111123/for-yahoo-and-me-too-time-is-brain/#comments Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:38:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=147167

I hate to use a personal story to make a professional point — but when I was in the hospital recently, after suffering from a mini-stroke, I got an important piece of health advice that, oddly enough, applies perfectly to Yahoo, the Silicon Valley Internet icon I cover very closely.

I know, I know, but listen up …

When I was close to going home, one of my doctors told me I had to make sure I paid attention to any signs that might indicate a recurrence. The issue around any possible future ischemic attack taking place, he said, is speed in getting critical care once any unusual symptoms become apparent, such as numbness, tingling, confusion and cognitive difficulty.

That’s because every second of delay translates to increased damage to cerebral cells that could badly impact speech, movement and worse.

“Remember,” the doctor intoned with great and very appropriate gravity. “Time is brain.”

Yes, indeed it is — for me, and also very much so for Yahoo these days.

Leaving aside my own mortality, one of the most important issues going forward for Yahoo’s long-hoped-for revival will be how quickly the company moves in the next month, in what has so far been a lugubrious and rumor-heavy process to figure out its strategic plan in the wake of the firing of CEO Carol Bartz in early September.

That means — going into a major holiday season — Yahoo has about 30 working days to make what has to be a complex and multiparty deal. It is likely to include private equity firms, big companies, Asian partners, investment bankers, major shareholders and scrutiny from the media, in an effort that is approximately akin to herding cats.

This from a board that has often moved with snail-like reflexes in the midst of much more minors crises, and has shown a talent for disaster.

So, while speed is sometimes the enemy of reason, in this case, it is now more necessary than ever before.

There are three key reasons why Yahoo’s leaders have to perform quickly now, each of which could spell even more turmoil for the long-troubled company, if botched.

The first is the possibility — actually, the probability — of a proxy fight that might begin informally just after the new year.

That’s when you could start hearing from someone like activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point — who has been vocal about ousting Yahoo board members, including co-founder Jerry Yang. Yahoo directors are fully aware that he is eyeing this ugly option, which will include readying an alternate slate of directors.

According to a Yahoo spokeswoman, the earliest nominations for directors can be submitted is February 24 for those “shareholder proposals not intended for inclusion in proxy materials and for nomination of director candidates.”

But while there is a formal process, you will hear it coming long before that, unless Yahoo gives Loeb board seats to quiet him down — which is unlikely but possible.

Such a noisy fight is not one Yahoo can afford to have, and it has already shown some cloddish sensibilities in its response to a recent letter by Loeb — who has many more shares than Yang, and should still be accorded a certain amount of respect, no matter what he says.

Given how badly the last Yahoo shareholder tussle with Carl Icahn went, another proxy battle could be deadly, and might drag on through the first half of 2012. In his Yahoo tussle, Icahn ultimately got three seats on the Yahoo board, but eventually went away with everyone the poorer.

Second, Yahoo will report its fourth-quarter earnings in late January, which will likely continue to show weakness in key sectors of its business. While interim CEO Tim Morse is doing a laudable job given the shaky circumstances, drops in advertising revenue growth, engagement and search are not anything Yahoo can keep making excuses for.

While it is likely the company’s beleaguered operating execs will pull out the stops to make the numbers look better — a new game I like to play is “how many homepage ads can they jam in there at the quarter’s end?” — it’s no panacea for the kinds of dramatic and even drastic changes that new ownership will have to make, sooner than later.

And, speaking of beleaguered, perhaps the most important reason that Yahoo has to get the lead out and clarify its situation is due to one consistent thing about the company: Talent attrition and employee fatigue.

Speaking to one exec after another in recent weeks, it is dead clear that Yahoo is increasingly hard-pressed to hold on to the best of its current employees, or to attract any terrific new ones.

The impact on product innovation, morale and more is obvious.

One exec who has long been one of the more cheerleader types for Yahoo — often calling me out in the past for being too negative on the company’s prospects — has recently turned weary, cynical and even depressed about the future — so much so that I now find myself bucking up the worker.

“You can’t hire anyone, since you can’t tell them honestly who their bosses might be in three months,” said the staffer. “And you can’t look anyone who works for you now in the eye and tell them it will turn out right in the end, either, given the track record so far.”

Indeed. And, more than any other factor that could hurt Yahoo in the competitive tech sector, brain drain is what will always get you in the end.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111123/for-yahoo-and-me-too-time-is-brain/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110406/twitters-newest-homepage-goes-tweetless/ http://allthingsd.com/20110406/twitters-newest-homepage-goes-tweetless/#comments Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:52:34 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=31487 Twitter is rolling out a new homepage design, which is pretty much standard operating procedure for the service. See, for instance, last year’s homepage redesign. Or the one that came a year before that.

All of the overhauls are aimed at explaining the service to new users. And in the past, Twitter has tried to do that by showing off examples of what it actually does.

No more. Instead of displaying sample Tweets, or trending topics, the new page simply invites users to “Follow your interests: Instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what’s happening around the world,” followed by a search box.

This is a simple switch, but the symbolism seems important for the service, which is still trying to make itself relevant to the mainstream: There’s no point in showing new users Tweets about people and topics they don’t care about.

This is presumably part of what new/old product head Jack Dorsey was talking about last week, when he discussed Twitter’s need to create “better lines around the products, so it’s more approachable, so that people can get into it immediately, and it’s extremely relevant right away.”

Here’s the new home page that some users are seeing (via Mashable):

And the old one:

And, for old time’s sake, the one before that:

And the one before that:

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