One of Microsoft’s top execs, Debra Chrapaty (pictured here), who heads its infrastructure business, is leaving the software giant to take a top job at Cisco (CSCO), sources said.

Chrapaty–whose title is corporate VP of Global Foundation Services–is also one of increasingly few top women tech execs at Microsoft (MSFT), where she has worked for seven years.

The job put her in charge of, as a Microsoft site notes, “strategy and delivery of the foundational platform for Microsoft Live, Cloud and Online Services worldwide including physical infrastructure, security, operational management, global delivery and environmental considerations. Her organization supports over 200 online services and web portals from Microsoft for consumers and businesses.”

In other words: A lot of plumbing.

She was featured onstage with other key execs at Microsoft’s Financial Analysts Meeting earlier this summer.

Sources said Chrapaty will now shift to products at Cisco, running the collaboration software group.

That unit’s former exec, Doug Dennerline, recently moved to Salesforce.com (CRM) to take a job as its EVP of sales for the Americas.

At Cisco, as had Dennerline, Chrapaty is likely to play a large role in forming the networking giant’s cloud computing and software-as-a-service strategies.

Chrapaty has worked at a lot of tech companies, including Organic, AllBusiness and Etrade Technologies. She was also CTO of the National Basketball Association.

Another high-ranking Yahoo exec is leaving–this time, Jim Schinella, the company’s SVP for corporate partnerships.

Sources said that Schinella (pictured here) announced the move internally recently, telling staff he would stay on until the end of the year.

Located in New York, he has been focused on big Yahoo (YHOO) partners such as big telecom firms like Verizon (VZ).

Schinella joined Yahoo in 2003 and left in 2005, after becoming its global VP of business development.

He returned in 2007, as Yahoo said at the time, to focus on “proactively identifying strategic partnership opportunities that align with Yahoo!’s brand and leverage the company’s broad product offerings.”

Former Bebo CEO Joanna Shields and Shine Group Chairman and CEO Elisabeth Murdoch have formed a content start-up to produce across media platforms, both online and offline, with a focus on social engagement, according to sources.

The new venture, which does not have a name, is being financially backed both by Shine and by Shields, who left AOL this summer after running its community and communications division.

Shields engineered the sale of social networking site Bebo to the Time Warner (TWX) online unit for $850 million in early 2008.

Sources said this new company, based in London, will invest, develop and partner to create a variety of content offerings that also incorporate interactive and social networking elements. It will also help the vast array of Shine content in interactive efforts.

Shields will be CEO of the start-up, which will operate under Shine, an independent and private television production company with programming in 24 countries.

In the U.S., for example, its Reveille unit is responsible for such shows as “Ugly Betty” and “The Biggest Loser.” (Both of which are BoomTown faves.)

Shine’s fast growth has been spearheaded by Murdoch, who is the daughter of News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch.

But Elisabeth Murdoch has struck out on her own in forming Shine, which already has shown a strong interactive bent for a television company.

The combination of television and Web content is an arena that many are once again jumping into, aiming at creating branded interactive content, fueled by advertising.

Former NBC Universal exec Ben Silverman–who sold Reveille to Murdoch, in fact–has recently left his programming job at the television network to start a similar kind of company with longtime entertainment and Internet kingpin Barry Diller of IAC/InteractiveCorp (IACI).

And former ABC programming and Yahoo exec Lloyd Braun also runs a television and Internet production company with longtime Hollywood player Gail Berman, including recently creating the Wonderwall celebrity news site for Microsoft (MSFT).

In addition, Yahoo (YHOO) and a spate of small content start-ups, as well as big media companies, are all trying to figure out how to create and monetize content online in a multimedia effort that bridges all kinds of distribution vehicles and more deeply involves viewers.

Bebo was actually trying to do that too. Under Shields, it had been a pioneer in creating a variety of innovative online original content, including “KateModern” and “Sofia’s Diary.”

But new management at AOL, now headed by former Google (GOOG) exec Tim Armstrong, has sidelined Bebo to its new ventures division and is likely to try to sell it. Company execs at both Time Warner and AOL now say the purchase was a costly mistake.

That might be true, but it was clearly a financial coup for Shields–who has worked at both Google and RealNetworks (RNWK)–and Bebo investors.

And, given the track record of both Shields and Murdoch, it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Armstrong, who took over the Time Warner (TWX) unit earlier this year and is prepping it for a spinoff that’s supposed to happen by the end of 2009, doesn’t plan on replacing either executive, say people familiar with the matter. Instead, their work will be divvied up among other Armstrong lieutenants.

Partoll’s mobile responsibilities, for instance, will be given to new hire and former Yahoo (YHOO) exec Brad Garlinghouse, while Kannapell’s responsibilities will be handed to newish hire and former Google (GOOG) exec Jeff Levick. Armstrong himself will handle international duties, previously assigned to Partoll.

Kannapell’s departure isn’t a total shock, since he was listed as “acting head” of local during a reorg that Armstrong oversaw in June. But Partoll is a head-scratcher, since she was promoted to her new/old position during that same exec shuffle.

And what about those layoffs? Armstrong is almost certain to make some cuts at some point–and has told employees as much. But people familiar with the company say he hasn’t been focused on cost structure (i.e., cuts) until recently.

That’s part of the pitch that Evercore Partners has been making to investors on behalf of McGraw-Hill (MHP), which wants to dump BusinessWeek.

The New York Times’s Stephanie Clifford gott her hands on the offering memo Evercore has been circulating to potential bidders, who are supposed to submit offers by today. Reportedly in the mix: Bloomberg; ZelnickMedia; New York Magazine owner Bruce Wasserstein; OpenGate Capital, which bought TV Guide last year for $1 plus debt; and Platinum Equity, which is bidding for the New York Times’s (NYT) Boston Globe.

In a story published yesterday, Clifford reviewed the magazine’s financials, which are miserable. Ditto for the magazine’s Web site. Today she points out Evercore’s plan to entice buyers: A ready-made layoff plan that would lop off 20 percent of the magazine’s staff.

The Evercore memo says the layoffs are actually “in process,” an assertion that seems to surprise BusinessWeek’s staff, which has seen no sign of layoffs. So best to interpret these numbers as suggestions, not plans. That said, here are Evercore’s suggestions:

In editorial, 55 of 217 positions are supposed to be eliminated. Of sales, 9 of 69. Of marketing, 6 of 26. Of technology, 8 of 33. Of circulation, just one of 19. And in the “other” category, 6 of 57. That’s a total of 85 eliminations among 421 jobs – about 20 percent – leaving 336 BusinessWeek employees.

“BusinessWeek will establish a leaner, entrepreneurial staff without affecting the brand, positioning of the franchise or revenue outlook. The eliminations of editorial staff are primarily in editorial support operations (makeup and copy desk), but also include a reduction in the number of journalists to reflect the smaller folio size of the publication. The positions eliminated in sales are primarily for sales support, but also include some consolidation of integrated sales account managers. The remaining positions eliminated are in other business support functions.”

A logical question: If these cuts are so easy to make, why hasn’t McGraw-Hill made them? I know that this strategy isn’t uncommon in auctions: Many moons ago, Time Warner (TWX) held off making cuts at its music unit so that a new buyer could do it itself, and that’s exactly what Edgar Bronfman Jr. and crew did once they got their hands on Warner Music Group (WMG). But the practice still baffles me. Anyone?

Eric Boyd (pictured here), a high-profile techie from Yahoo who left the company for a start-up last year, is now headed to Microsoft to work for its digital group, now run by another ex-Yahoo, Qi Lu.

UPDATE: Microsoft confirmed the hiring, although declined to provide further details.

Boyd, who is well-known for his card-counting team exploits while at MIT (which were later made into the movie, “21”) had been VP of platform engineering at Yahoo (YHOO) and worked on a variety of projects there.

With the addition of Boyd, sources said, Microsoft has acquired a huge swath of the top tech talent of Yahoo, many of whom came to the software giant because of Lu and to escape the turmoil at Yahoo.

At a recent tech offsite at Microsoft held by Satya Nadella, SVP of Research and Development at its Online Services division, in fact, one person remarked that a full 10 percent of the techies were former Yahoo execs.

There will be more to come, up to 400 or more, if the search partnership the pair recently struck passes regulatory muster, although Boyd is not part of that deal.

He had worked at Yahoo for a decade, but left last spring to take over as VP of engineering at Mochi Media, a San Francisco-based gaming-related start-up backed $14 million in funding by Shasta Ventures and Accel Partners.

He will be working for Microsoft (MSFT) in Silicon Valley, in its group related to search and advertising, sources said.

Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today as its new communications czar is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.

Garlinghouse came to the Time Warner (TWX) online unit after a year-long break, preceded by six years at Yahoo (YHOO).

As anyone who watches the digital space knows by now, this kind of management musical chairs is common and never-ending.

In fact, borrowing a quote by IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) CEO and chairman Barry Diller from an onstage interview I did with him at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference and switching out Hollywood for Silicon Valley: “[It] is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”

But, given all the movement of late, this insider seat-switching seems more frantic than ever, as allegiances shift, competitors become friends and colleagues become rivals faster than you can tweet.

When he left Yahoo last summer, in fact, the digital chatter was that Garlinghouse would take a job either as a venture capitalist (he had been one once) or helming a start-up (that too, at Dialpad.com).

In fact, sources said, Garlinghouse had been considering two mobile gigs, but opted for helping to try to overhaul a troubled Web giant.

Fixing messes was the impetus of Owen Van Natta, who left a top job at social networking giant Facebook in early 2008 and by the end of the year, headed over to run Project Playlist, a controversial online music-sharing service.

But then he had hightailed it by spring to try his hand at reviving MySpace, as its CEO.

His boss, News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller, did the same, getting the hook (unfairly to my mind) at AOL several years ago and then creating an investment firm with former MySpace head Ross Levinsohn.

The pair considered being part of a bid to oust Yahoo management in 2008.

Miller’s freedom lasted only until he got an offer that he presumably could not refuse from News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch recently. (Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

The list goes on, chock full of ex-Yahoos, in fact.

Its one-time COO, Dan Rosensweig, left the company in 2006, for example, and joined the well-known private-equity firm, Quadrangle Group.

But, soon enough, he was scooped up by Activision Blizzard (ATVI) to run its Guitar Hero division.

Yahoo Network head Jeff Weiner also departed from the Internet giant, in mid-2008, for a stint at two VC firms.

He landed at LinkedIn, the business-networking service where he was named CEO in late June.

Greg Coleman ran Yahoo ad sales until mid-2007 before taking a job at AOL earlier this year, which he lost after it got new management soon after.

At Yahoo, Coleman sparked with former advertising sales head Wenda Harris Millard, whom he ousted. She went onto Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) and left there this spring for the Media Link consultancy.

Presto! She is now helping MySpace’s Van Natta fix the social networking site’s ad business.

Current Yahoo U.S. advertising head Joanne Bradford actually came from Microsoft last summer, via her own short visit to the troubled ad start-up SpotRunner.

Former Yahoo search techie Qi Lu now runs digital for Microsoft (MSFT), along with a big gang of ex-Yahoo techies he has recruited.

And Scott Moore is even better at the switcheroo. He was at Microsoft running MSN U.S. content, switched to Yahoo as its media poobah, left last year to consider a start-up and then headed back to Microsoft as head of U.S. content this year.

But former Google (GOOG) execs have also been busy shuttling hither and yon, mostly to innovative start-ups.

Of course, many find refuge at Facebook (COO Sheryl Sandberg, PR major domo Elliot Schrage and many more) and Twitter (GC Alexander Macgillivray and COO Dick Costolo).

Recent departures–such as Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who landed at Accel Partners for now–are also likely to find new homes soon enough.

And, of course, there’s always Garlinghouse’s new boss, former Google ad head Tim Armstrong, who took over at AOL earlier this year.

We’ll skip former Joost CEO and former Cisco (CSCO) exec Mike Volpi (who is now a VC); former Netscape Communications/short-term VC/ex-banker/current-for-now CBS (CBS) digital head Quincy Smith; and Joanna Shields, who has worked at Real Networks (RNWK), Google and Bebo (which was bought by AOL)–for now.

Because, around and around and around it always goes, as you can see in this funny video below, which I posted previously:

[Musical Chair designed by Jacob Mathew.]

In the ongoing game of musical chairs among top managers at Internet companies, former Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse–famous for his controversial “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which correctly chided the Internet giant for becoming so lugubrious several years ago–is taking a job at AOL very similar to the one he left at Yahoo last year.

Garlinghouse, 38, has been named president of Internet and mobile communications at AOL, putting him in charge of the New York-based Time Warner (TWX) online unit’s powerful email and instant-messaging properties, including ICQ and AIM.

He has only been in talks with AOL–which used Spencer Stuart’s Internet-top-exec-finder-in-chief Jim Citrin–for a few weeks, in a deal that came together quickly, he and the company said.

Garlinghouse, a longtime Web entrepreneur and exec, had reportedly been considering a number of start-up and venture-related jobs since he left Yahoo last summer after six years there.

Sources said he was seriously considering becoming the CEO of a mobile firm.

He was most recently at Silver Lake Partners, as an “in-house senior advisor,” the private equity firm that recently bought the Skype Internet telephony firm for $1.9 billion. Garlinghouse also reportedly helped work on that deal.

“It’s really exciting to be to able to rebuild and revitalize an industry giant,” said Garlinghouse in an interview with BoomTown earlier today. “I make no bones that these [properties] are in need of that…but there is also a huge opportunity to do something cool.”

Garlinghouse has to hurry. Despite being among the top communications players online–a group that also includes Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) and, more recently, Google (GOOG)–AOL has lost relevance with key audiences, even as social networking properties like Facebook and the microblogging service, Twitter, have innovated in the communications space.

The hiring of Garlinghouse, well known in Silicon Valley circles, is meant to counter that.

He will head up AOL’s operations from its Mountain View, Calif., campus–which is also the former HQ of AOL-acquired Netscape Communications–where, said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Garlinghouse will “be CEO of Silicon Valley for us.”

Between all its various properties, AOL has several hundred employees in the Northern California area.

Armstrong said AOL–which was founded 25 years ago on the East Coast and has tried and failed many times to get a true foothold in the West–thinks having an important player at the center of the tech industry is critical as it moves to spin off as an independent company by the end of the year.

“We have a triple play in getting a great executive, who is a master in the communications on the Web and who is well known out there,” said Armstrong. “Brad is our senior AOL manager there.”

Along with running all of AOL’s communications properties, Garlinghouse will inherit some of its community properties, although AOL’s Bebo social networking unit–now considered to be an overpriced acquisition error–now resides in its ventures unit, headed by Jon Brod.

Garlinghouse will also be aiding Brod, said Armstrong, with AOL on the lookout for acquisition opportunities in communications and other arenas.

While Garlinghouse declined to be specific about what would pique his buying interest, he was responsible for such big Yahoo deals as its $350 million purchase of Zimbra in the fall of 2007.

He was also key to bringing both Oddpost, which is at the heart of Yahoo’s email offering, and the popular Flickr photosharing service to Yahoo.

Garlinghouse said he has admired what Twitter and Facebook have done, but that they were not destroying traditional online communications, pioneered by AOL, as some assert.

“It’s a vibrant segment and this just means there are a lot of opportunities to enable integration,” he said. “I think of it as an expansion of online communications and I hope AOL can do more collaboration and partnerships.”

Garlinghouse also has to watch AOL’s basic products like email, which was recently passed by Google’s Gmail as the No. 3 email service in the U.S. Yahoo Mail is the top email, while Microsoft’s Hotmail is second.

How much Garlinghouse can do will depend on the future financial strength of AOL. Its advertising business has been hit hard in the econalpyse, with hopes it will return before its money-generating access business continues its slow decline.

Armstrong is now in the midst of looking over AOL’s cost structure and employee base, which most expect will eventually result in another round of layoffs and cuts.

He has been busy creating a different strategy for the company since he arrived earlier this year, as well as hiring (and firing) top execs to create a new management structure.

Now, that includes Garlinghouse.

So, for a look-see at AOL’s latest talent acquisition, here’s a video interview I did with him, just after Yahoo bought Zimbra:

And here’s the full press release from AOL about the hiring of Garlinghouse:

AOL NAMES BRAD GARLINGHOUSE AS PRESIDENT, INTERNET AND MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS

NEW YORK, N.Y.–September 8, 2009–AOL today named Brad Garlinghouse as President of Internet and Mobile Communications, spearheading AOL’s global efforts to expand the reach of its e-mail and instant messaging. Garlinghouse will also take on an expanded leadership position for the company, heading up AOL’s Silicon Valley operations from its Mountain View campus and serving as the West Coast lead for AOL Ventures, the company’s venture capital arm headed globally by Jon Brod. Garlinghouse was most recently at Silver Lake Partners as an in-house Senior Advisor.

Prior to Silver Lake, Garlinghouse spent nearly six years at Yahoo!, where he led that company’s communications and community products. Garlinghouse will report directly to AOL’s Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong.

” Brad Garlinghouse is an all-star in the Internet industry with an unparalleled background and proven track record, having led Yahoo’s communications products to unprecedented growth,” said Armstrong. “In addition to leading our efforts to grow our communications products, Brad will be bringing his global leadership and business experience as a key member of our company’s executive leadership team. He will also be a major force for AOL in Silicon Valley, working to expand our presence there and in the tech community in general. We’re delighted to have Brad on board and know he’ll do great things for AOL.”

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to join AOL at this pivotal moment in its history,” Garlinghouse said. “Tim has set out a clear strategy and vision for where he is taking this company as it becomes independent again. I’m looking forward to working with him and the rest of the team to realize that vision.”

Armstrong, who joined AOL in April, identified Communications as one of the five key areas of strategic focus for AOL after an extensive 100-day review of the company’s business. Other focus areas include Content, Advertising, Local & Mapping and AOL Ventures.

Garlinghouse spent nearly six years at Yahoo! where he most recently served as SVP of Communications and Communities. Prior to that he served as SVP of Communications, Communities and Front Doors, which included the Yahoo! home page. He came to Yahoo in 2003 as VP, Communication Products. During his time there, Yahoo! Mail went from No. 3 to leading all competitors by a wide margin, and the company’s instant messaging service rose to become the leader in that market as well. Garlinghouse also oversaw the company’s Flickr photo-sharing service and Yahoo! Groups.

Prior to Yahoo!, Garlinghouse was CEO of Dialpad.com Inc., responsible for all aspects of the company’s operations, finance, sales and marketing. He was also General Partner at @Ventures, Category Manager of Media Development for the @Home Network, Inc., and Manager at SBC Communications.

Garlinghouse, 38, received his BA in economics from the University of Kansas and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

We’re seeing lots of that as the last bubble shakes out (see: MySpace and iLike, Facebook and FriendFeed). But that strategy also raises plenty of eyebrows from other buyers, who figure that they’re happy to let a struggling company fold, then pick up the talent piece by piece.

Did that just happen with Joost and Time Warner Cable (TWC)? Looks like it.

The cable provider has snapped up former Joost CTO Jason Gaedtke. The company tells Cable Digital News that Gaedtke will report to Mike Hayashi, the multiple system operator’s executive vice president of advanced engineering.

The assumption is that Gaedtke will be helping the company build out its own version of “TV Everywhere,” the Web-video-for-subscribers scheme that everyone from Comcast (CMCSA) to AT&T (T) is trying out.

Not an earth-shattering hire, but I’m noting it here because prior to Joost’s decision to all-but-pull-the-plug, the start-up was trying to peddle itself to buyers like…Time Warner Cable.

The theory: The Web video company hadn’t been able to generate much business, but it had a lot of smart people who could help, say, a cable company build out its own Web video strategy.

So, given that the Web video industry is in the midst of a long-awaited contraction, is Gaedtke’s hire the kind of thing that could undermine other potential deals? We’ll see.

In a risky but interesting move that has some at the company nervous and others excited, Yahoo is in the process of moving key development responsibility for its juggernaut Yahoo News unit to Taiwan.

Under the new system, product management, engineering and user interface design for the powerful Yahoo (YHOO) property will become the responsibility of staffers there.

Editorial employees for Yahoo News–which is the No. 1 news site on the Web with 48.4 unique monthly visitors, according to comScore data (SCOR)–will remain in the U.S., largely located at its Santa Monica, Calif., office.

Sources had alerted BoomTown to the change at Yahoo’s flagship content offering this week and many I spoke to about it were deeply worried about further separating key functions in the creation of Yahoo News.

“We are losing more and more of our ability to make quick changes and react to new technologies, which has worked pretty well so far, since we are #1,” said one staffer. “First, we all worked together across a room, then hundreds of miles away and now it is thousands.”

Previously, as was first reported here in February, the distributed and regional method of developing content was shifted to a central global product development organization, with product management, engineering and UI design centered at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ under CTO Ari Balogh.

The argument for the shift posits that centralizing the product development of a Yahoo media offering drives efficiencies, saves money, eliminates redundancies and accelerates growth across the world.

Those who do not like the idea think it is wrong to separate the development of a product from the programming because the two are intricately dependent and need to be tweaked delicately.

In addition, they argue, it makes Yahoo media offerings, which have been largely successful, less unique and more dull.

Well, tough tomatoes, because Yahoo confirmed the transition to me when I inquired about it. It was announced internally several weeks ago.

In an interview I did yesterday afternoon with Jeff Kinder, SVP of media products and solutions, who is spearheading the change, he said it was key that Yahoo News streamline how it makes its products in order to be more innovative and responsive on a global basis.

Before the shift to a global system, he pointed out that Yahoo had 26 different news products worldwide, using nine content management systems.

“This is part of building a global media platform,” said Kinder, who leads development of Yahoo’s anchor media properties, as well as its listings and regional products around the world.

Kinder said the staff in Taiwan was selected to take on Yahoo News because it had been creating top-level news products and was passionate about the arena.

Nonetheless, similar functions for other major Yahoo content categories–Sports, Finance and Entertainment–will remain in the United States.

In addition, he noted, with employees in Taiwan taking over these functions at Yahoo News, it would “free up some of the talent” in Silicon Valley to work on other critical content projects.

Kinder dismissed worries about any logjams in the ability of U.S.-based Yahoo News staffers to make changes to offerings, either for consumers or advertising partners, noting there were weekly calls between the teams and plenty of ways to communicate online.

But those worried about the change said the reason for the move was more to cut costs in the content arena, which–like many parts of Yahoo–has undergone layoffs and expense reductions.

Countered Kinder: “We are all driving to the same goal….This is not about cost savings, but about accelerating change and leveraging a global team.”

In a memo first published by Silicon Alley Insider, newish sales boss Nikesh Arora says he hasn’t found a successor for Fischer and will step into his shoes in the meantime.

There has been a steady stream of Googlers heading out of the company’s sales group. But while Fischer isn’t technically leaving, his move is still a big one: He was a well-regarded executive in a high-profile spot, formerly occupied by Sheryl Sandberg, who is now Facebook’s COO.

Quite a bit!

Job One has been overhauling MySpace, which is still very much a work in progress. But Miller’s full plate includes lots of other tasks too. Like trying to convince Google (GOOG) or Microsoft (MSFT) to pony up for a big search deal to replace the Google/MySpace deal that expires next year.

Equally difficult job: Trying to figure how to get consumers to pay for some of the content News Corp. currently provides for free on the Web.

The Los Angeles Times advances that part of the story this morning with a report that Miller is “believed to have met” with rival publishers–including those from the New York Times (NYT), Washington Post Co. (WPO), Hearst and Tribune Co.–about creating a consortium to charge for online news.

I believe it. My understanding is that while Murdoch has been vocal about his intent to start charging consumers to read his stuff, the more sober assessment within News Corp. (which owns this Web site) is that charging for news will only work if there is a critical mass of publishers trying to do it together. How many would that be? “Enough people so that it matters,” a News Corp. exec tells me.

Whether you could actually get enough big publishers to work together (something that start-up Journalism Online is trying to do, in its own way; so for that matter, is the Associated Press) is an open question, of course. And then there are the inevitable antitrust issues.

But I think the most practical problem for News Corp., and everyone else who works in the news business, is that from the consumer’s perspective, very little of the stuff we produce is worth paying for. That doesn’t mean you can’t figure out how to sell specialized bits of content (a la The Wall Street Journal or Consumer Reports). But a great deal of the stuff we make can be found all over the Web, with little to distinguish it, and the model that used to support this content–near-monopolies on eyeballs and ad dollars–has disappeared. Pay wall or no, that’s going to have change going forward.

Yahoo is closer to naming a new international head, according to sources, the last big slot left in the top management structure of CEO Carol Bartz.

While BoomTown is endeavoring to get the name of this international man of mystery, several sources said the company has come close to settling on a London-based media exec, who will move to and operate out of its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ in Silicon Valley.

But it is unclear if or when a final appointment will be made.

That exec could be a lot of people, since Yahoo’s headhunter for the job–Heidrick & Struggles–has pretty much talked to the gamut of international Web muckety-mucks since the search started six months ago.

The many chatted up include: Former Bebo head Joanna Shields (nope, she has a noncompete from AOL); former Joost CEO Mike Volpi (nope, he just landed as a VC at Index Ventures), Microsoft (MSFT) consumer and online man in Britain Ashley Highfield (hmm, would he move so quickly after jumping from Project Kangaroo and the BBC?) and Gavin Patterson, head of the BT Retail unit.

But Yahoo could also opt for a more traditional media exec, said some sources.

In a memo to Yahoo staff after her reorganization in February, Bartz said that “international growth is critical for Yahoo!, which has become too reliant on its U.S. business over the years.”

Still, that key job remains unfilled, in an arena Yahoo has dropped the ball in recently, even as more nimble competitors like Google (GOOG) and Facebook thrive.

In the Yahoo (YHOO) management chart posted below, Bartz has filled the CFO role with Tim Morse and the customer advocacy slot with Jeff Russakow.

Without an international head, the three regional heads worldwide–Rose Tsou (Asia), Rich Riley (Europe) and Keith Nilsson (Emerging Markets)–have continued to report to Bartz. The U.S. region–Yahoo’s most significant market–is headed by Hilary Schneider.

Here is the Yahoo top management org chart, released back in February (click on it to make it larger):

After a while–in a BoomTown mangling of the old cliché–if you are a nail, everything begins to look like a hammer.

So, it is probably inevitable that the next thing for much-beleaguered AOL staffers to start rumbling about is 2,000 people getting laid off next week, as was reported earlier this week by Silicon Alley Insider.

After all, the Time Warner (TWX) unit has a long history of whacking employees. So, it is easier to assume things will not be different under the regime of the latest CEO Tim Armstrong.

Except it’s not actually true that such massive cuts are in the offing, since–as many sources I spoke to said–Armstrong is only in the early part of figuring out what to do about the cost structure of AOL, after laying out a company strategy and rejiggering management recently.

While the end result of the cost-to-benefit analysis might, in all likelihood, mean layoffs of a chunk of its 7,000 employees–a larger number for its smaller operations.

And, after all, staff costs are one of the biggest line items in AOL’s budget–sources at the company said Armstrong will not rely on simply cutting jobs to craft a more attractive budget for its upcoming spinoff.

Still, there is obviously a lot of pressure on Armstrong to get the financials–which are still largely dependent on AOL’s declining, but money-generating, access business–looking pretty.

That access business did almost $2 billion in revenue last year–about half its sales–and it represented almost all its profits.

In contrast, AOL’s advertising business lagged, dropping hugely over the last several quarters.

Still, Armstrong has laid out a strategy that has included, in part:

Being a new kind of content giant, via a series of branded niche media sites, with about 500 full-time writers and editors and 1,500 freelancers; selling premium display advertising on these sites and strengthening its third-party self-service ad network business; finding a way to use its communications properties to redistribute traffic to other properties in a kind of virtuous circle.

There are also local, analytical and venture elements. But–for all intents and purposes–Armstrong’s plan is a content-and-advertising model, supported for now by the dwindling piles of cash from the access business.

That’s why, of course, costs are the next item on Armstrong’s to-do list.

“The cost structure is the last part of what was going to be dealt with, as Tim has told everyone,” said one person close to the situation about the former Google (GOOG) exec. “But, if it is slash-and-burn only, that would be pretty short-sighted.”

Perhaps, except that it is that exact tactic that has been business-as-usual at AOL for far too long.

Spanfeller’s departure comes amid a flurry of bad news for finance publications. In April, Condé Nast pulled the plug on Portfolio, its business magazine and Web site, after a very expensive two-year run. Earlier this week, publisher McGraw-Hill (MHP) announced that it was shopping BusinessWeek, and observers are floating the notion that the company may end up giving the magazine away to anyone who wants to take on its annual losses.

Time Warner’s (TWX) Fortune magazine has also been battered by the recession, which has been particularly hard on the finance, auto and luxury-good companies that business publications have traditionally relied upon. And Forbes itself has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs since last fall.

In a memo to the company’s employees, Forbes CEO Steve Forbes praised Spanfeller for building out the company’s Web property, which says it receives 18 million unique visitors a month.In the aftermath of the dot.com crash, Spanfeller helped turn Forbes.com, which the family-owned company was close to shutting down, into a powerhouse.

But Forbes’s plan to take the Web property public earlier in the decade never panned out. And once Forbes sold a 40 percent stake to private equity investors Elevation Partners three years ago, plenty of Forbes employees, including me, had speculated that Spanfeller would look for a job that promised a big payout. That said, it wasn’t that long ago that Spanfeller was the victor in a power struggle with Jim Berrien, the former publisher of the Forbes print edition.

The news was first reported by AOL’s Daily Finance. Here’s the company memo from CEO Steve Forbes:

To: All Hands

From Steve Forbes

July 16, 2009

Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO of Forbes.com has decided to step down from leading our website after nine years. In the entrepreneurial spirit that Forbes has always championed, Jim will be setting up his own media management company.

Describing his future plans Jim said, “The world of media has changed rapidly in the past 10 years and the velocity of the change promises only to increase going forward. I’ve had a great run at Forbes and have been deeply involved in the breakthroughs and transformations between traditional and digital media.  Now I see a huge opportunity to have my own media management business that will help other traditional media companies make the most of their enormous prospects in digital venues, taking all I have learned here in the past decade and applying on a wider horizon. Forbes.com has truly been a truly wonderful ride and I am deeply in debt to the Forbes family for letting me be a part of it.”

Jim has done a monumental job of bringing Forbes.com to the lead position in business websites, and secured Forbes.com as the must visit site for not only global business leaders but also anyone interested in the finest business reporting and analysis available. At present Forbes.com has 18 million unique visitors a month.

Along the way, Jim has overseen the development and growth of Forbes Digital, which includes Forbes.com, ForbesTraveler.com, Investopedia.com, RealClearPolitics.com, RealClearMarkets.com, Real Clear Sports, and Forbes Business and Finance Blog Network, which together reach 40 million unique visitors a month.

This immense growth on the digital side of the business was spearheaded, pursed, and led by Jim with enormous success. The digital world is still uncharted with few rules, and Jim’s intellect, creativity, and business acumen helped bring us our number one position. For this the Forbes family is very grateful and we wish him all the success in his future plans.

Since Elevation Partners partnered with Forbes three years ago, Jim has worked very closely with them on the growth and development and vision for Forbes.com.  Commenting on Jim’s departure, Roger McNamee of Elevation said, “Jim did a fantastic job leading Forbes.com. In an era when competitors feared it, Jim embraced and evangelized the internet, with huge benefits to Forbes and its audiences. We are grateful for his contributions over the past nine years.”

Jim will be staying through a transition period at least through Labor Day. Please join me and my brothers in wishing Jim all the best in the future, which he deserves.

Two years ago, Index Ventures was part of a group that invested $45 million in Joost, the then-hot-and-hyped online video service, while bringing on well-known tech exec Mike Volpi (pictured here) as CEO.

Now, he is headed to Index as a partner at the venture firm, in what some might think is an ironic move.

That’s because last week, after much effort to get traction for Joost, Volpi announced that the service was undergoing a major shakeout–drastically cutting staff and shifting its business model and strategy.

Volpi also stepped down as it top exec, although he will stay on as chairman of Joost.

The development for the much-hyped Joost caused a small hubbub across the Internet, with much second guessing over could-have, would-have and should-haves about its strategies and product.

At Index, according to the press release, Volpi will be “based in the London office as part of the venture team where he will lead early stage investments in the Internet, telecom/networking and media sectors and contribute to the firm’s later stage growth fund.”

BoomTown talked with Volpi by phone from London about the move, which will be announced today, and about what happened at Joost.

Taking a job at Index, which is also located in London, was a natural one, said Volpi, who made a $10 million investment in Index’s first fund while an exec at Cisco (CSCO).

Over the years, he has gotten to know its partners well, including Danny Rimer.

Volpi also said he thinks it is a great time to be a VC, a new job for him. “In a market downturn, it is a good time to invest,” said Volpi. “There are a lot of great opportunities out there now.”

Currently, he is very interested in Web companies built around transactional business models rather than ad-supported ones, which he thinks need a lot more development to become significant.

Volpi should know, given his recent experience at Joost, which relied on the still nascent advertising business for online video.

“At the end of the day, the consumer offering we had was not working, a lot because we did not have enough access to content we needed to build traffic,” said Volpi.

Joost was competing with outfits like Hulu, which is joint venture of two major media companies, News Corp. (NWS) and GE (GE) unit NBC Universal, as well as Google (GOOG) video unit YouTube.

The video service was started by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, whom Volpi met when he served on the board of their last hit, Skype.

Volpi said that to keep competing, it needed more funding. And, since no online video service was making money, he said it was decided a change was needed instead of just keeping on the same path.

Thus, the shift to a white-label video service, becoming a back end for other video players, which is still putting Joost into what is still a very competitive business.

Volpi acknowledged this, although he noted: “It is better to be competing in sector that has profitable rivals than one that does not.”

Discussions with possible acquirers of Joost also did not pan out, due mostly to price issues. But, said Volpi, it yielded some insight about Joost’s future direction.

“Not everyone wanted to pay a lot to own Joost, but a lot of people wanted to rent it,” said Volpi.

Volpi called his time at Joost “a fantastic experience,” which he also hopes will be the case at Index.

In addition, here’s a video interview I did with Volpi when I was in London last year:

And here is the official press release on the move of Volpi to Index:

MICHELANGELO VOLPI JOINS INDEX VENTURES AS PARTNER

Technology Executive to Invest in the Internet, Telecoms, Networking and Media Industries

LONDON, GENEVA and JERSEY, 6 July 2009–Index Ventures today announced that Mike Volpi, a renowned technology industry veteran, joined the firm as a partner. Volpi is based in the London office as part of the venture team where he will lead early stage investments in the Internet, telecom/networking and media sectors and contribute to the firm’s later stage growth fund.

During his 13 year career at Cisco, Volpi acquired more than 75 companies and served as Chief Strategy Officer responsible for corporate strategy, business development, strategic alliances, and advanced Internet projects. Volpi then led Cisco’s billion dollar routing and service provider business. For the past two years, Volpi was CEO of Joost, an Internet startup focused on online broadcast TV, and recently transitioned into the role of Chairman. Volpi started his career at HP in 1989.

“Mike has been a close advisor to the Index family for more than 10 years. He has worked closely with several of our portfolio companies such as Skype, TrialPay, Joost, FON and Telegent, even serving on some of their boards, so it’s a natural progression to have him officially join our team,” said Giuseppe Zocco, partner and co-founder, Index Ventures. “Mike’s world-class leadership qualities, transaction experience, and network make him a great addition to our partnership and will enhance our ability to serve our portfolio companies.”

“Venture has become a global business and I’ve watched Index take their place as a marquee name by investing in industry-altering businesses such as Betfair, MySQL and Skype,’ said Volpi. “I’m excited to become part of this team and look forward to helping Index partner with the next generation of great entrepreneurs.”

“Index companies have benefited from Mike’s wide ranging experience and his perspective will be invaluable as we continue to identify disruptive companies to invest in,” said Danny Rimer, Index partner.

“Mike has been a great source of strategic advice and has opened many doors for Telegent ever since Index invested in the company,” said Weijie Yun, CEO of Telegent Systems. “We highly value his perspective and we look forward to working with him even more closely now that he is a permanent member of the Index Ventures team.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090706/mike-volpi-jumps-from-joost-to-index-a-boomtown-interview-and-full-press-release/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090630/here-comes-the-video-shakeout-joost-scales-down-ceo-mike-volpi-steps-out/ http://allthingsd.com/20090630/here-comes-the-video-shakeout-joost-scales-down-ceo-mike-volpi-steps-out/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:49:51 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=8803 Here’s the beginning of the inevitable online video shakeout: Joost, the once-hyped video service that was supposed to rival Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, is restructuring to focus on “white label” services, i.e., a back end for other video players.

The service is laying off the majority of its employees, and CEO Mike Volpi (pictured right) is out, replaced by Matt Zelesko, who had been SVP of engineering. The Joost.com portal site will stay open, but best to think of it as an ad for the company’s hosting and distribution services, which it will try to sell to cable companies and the like.

A Joost spokesperson declined to say how deep the layoffs will be; but I’m told that the company, which had more than 100 employees last fall, will be down to a couple dozen after the cuts are done. In a post on Joost’s Web site, Volpi said the company “will say goodbye to many of our colleagues and friends.”

This isn’t a shock: Joost’s fate has been the subject of whisper and rumors for the last year or more. The service made an initial splash in 2007 by raising $45 million from the founders of Skype and an array of high-profile investors and media companies, including Sequoia Capital and Viacom (VIA), and was initially supposed to deliver copyrighted content via a peer-to-peer distribution system and a player that users downloaded to their desktops.

But YouTube, and later Hulu, conditioned users to watch video via their browsers, and Joost’s software never caught on. By last fall, the company had retooled and began offering video via the browser like everyone else, but it has never been able to generate a significant audience. In November, a month after the company launched its Web browser, it said it was attracting 2.1 million unique users world-wide, a fraction of YouTube’s audience, and well behind rivals like Hulu, MetaCafe, Veoh and DailyMotion.

Here’s the service’s unique visitor count, per Comscore (SCOR); Joost’s unique viewer count, which is the more relevant metric for video sites, is considerably smaller (click to enlarge):

Joost has been a frequent candidate for buyout rumors, and the company hasn’t gone out of its way to deny them. The supposed buyers would be cable companies like Comcast (CMCSA) Time Warner Cable (TWC) or telcos like AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ), which would presumably use Joost’s technical team to help build out their own Web video plays.

But some of the cable guys and telcos insist that they’re fine with the people they have. And if they do want to buy a video player, they have plenty of options: Just about all of Joost’s peers have been on the block, formally or informally, for the past few months.

JOOST TO PROVIDE WHITE LABEL ONLINE VIDEO PLATFORM

NEW YORK AND LONDON – June 30, 2009 – Joost, the online video startup, announced today that, along with Joost.com, it will focus on providing white label online video platforms for media companies, including cable and satellite providers, broadcasters and video aggregators. This technology and service offering will support content owners’ efforts to build comprehensive branded environments online.

Media companies around the world are embracing internet-based video portals as a key path to distribute their premium video, but building a world-class video portal is increasingly difficult and expensive. Joost will focus on this issue and provide the market with a cost-effective, end-to-end solution for media companies to publish video under their own brands.

As a part of this new direction, Joost will reorganize and restructure its business. A core team in New York and London will work on providing these solutions, as well as operating and supporting Joost.com and its associated video applications. Joost also will wind down operations in its Leiden development center.

Matt Zelesko, currently SVP of Engineering at Joost, will take over as CEO while continuing to lead the engineering organization. Stacey Seltzer, currently SVP of international business development and content acquisition at Joost, will run the business operations. Mike Volpi has stepped down as CEO of Joost but will remain actively involved as Chairman of the Board.

Joost plans to make its white label video platform commercially available to media companies around the world. This offering will provide a solution for companies looking to build a branded experience for their content on their own site as well as other sites and platforms in their distribution networks.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090630/here-comes-the-video-shakeout-joost-scales-down-ceo-mike-volpi-steps-out/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090622/another-top-exec-gone-from-fim-as-it-readies-a-name-and-structure-change/ http://allthingsd.com/20090622/another-top-exec-gone-from-fim-as-it-readies-a-name-and-structure-change/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:00:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14816

Mike Angus, EVP and General Counsel of Fox Interactive Media, is departing that job for another in New Corp. (NWS), as new digital head Jon Miller continues to reshape the division.

Last week, BoomTown reported that FIM CFO Ed McKenna was leaving his post and also the company, part of many changes taking place related to News Corp.’s digital properties. (News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

It’s all part of a major rejiggering of FIM, which came into being almost four years ago, although not an elimination of the unit, as has been reported.

More likely, it will include a name change–perhaps to the Digital Media Group–as well as a much streamlined organization that gives more autonomy to FIM’s Web, online advertising and publishing technology units.

The largest of those Internet sites in FIM is, of course, MySpace.

Since Miller arrived in the early spring, he has focused on fixing the troubled, but still huge, social-networking site.

He quickly replaced its co-founder and CEO, Chris DeWolfe, with new managers.

Those execs, led by former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta, have done massive layoffs at MySpace recently and are now beginning a major overhaul of its product, which needs to innovate after a fall-off of growth and engagement.

“In a lot of ways, FIM has become an artificial construct and a lot of the infrastructure it has created should be out in the individual businesses,” said one person close to the situation. “So, since it is not really an operating unit, it will be taken down to the minimal size to make it work.”

That apparently means it does not need a separate CFO or even a general counsel.

Currently, there are about 100 FIM-only employees, mostly in human resources, accounting and legal. Some of those will likely be farmed out to the units they primarily service or be let go if those units decide they do not need the staff.

The original idea of FIM was to create a unit to house most of News Corp.’s standalone digital units, including MySpace and IGN videogame and entertainment sites, and to have common financial, legal and even ad sales execs to serve them.

The concept is that they all had tech, legal, policy and synergistic reasons for being together.

Said a News Corp. press release from July 2005, which announced both the Angus and McKenna hires:

“News Corporation today announced the formation of Fox Interactive Media (FIM), a new unit that will leverage the strength of Fox’s distinctive entertainment, news and sports brands across the Internet to offer a richer online experience to its millions of users.”

That construct, said many people I interviewed inside and outside News Corp., was built to accommodate a much larger unit, with additional large acquisitions after the MySpace one.

Those never happened, although News Corp. was in many such talks with giants such as Yahoo (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and Microsoft (MSFT) about trading assets.

“Over time, FIM became more like a shadow government,” said one person familiar with the situation. “Now, it makes sense for the properties to govern themselves, with a lot less meddling and let them rise and fall on their own.”

Many News Corp. sources point to the success of premium video service Hulu, which is run as a joint venture with GE (GE) unit NBC Universal, as being managed relatively autonomously by experienced Internet execs with less corporate involvement.

The result has been a popular and fast-growing site, which has gotten kudos for its innovative consumer offering (although it is still working on finding a highly lucrative business model).

Does that mean that some units, such as MySpace, could even be spun out again?

Doubtful for now, said several sources, but still a possibility.

In any case, the idea of a corporate layer over corporate units within a larger corporation does seem less than fleet in the faster-moving Web 2.0 world.

As to the new name of the unit, besides the chief digital officer title, Miller also was given the title of chairman and CEO of the newly created News Digital Media group.

Therefore, several sources said that the units could be under a simpler and lighter Digital Media Group umbrella.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090622/another-top-exec-gone-from-fim-as-it-readies-a-name-and-structure-change/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090619/viral-video-watch-the-bouncing-web-execs-play-digital-musical-chairs/ http://allthingsd.com/20090619/viral-video-watch-the-bouncing-web-execs-play-digital-musical-chairs/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:32:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14684

Here’s a very funny video, called “Digital Media Musical Chairs,” from a Wall Street type who goes by the codename L. McDuff.

(He also did “Mad Avenue Blues” and two years of “Wall Street Meltdown,” which is also embedded below.)

It’s about the many switcheroos in recent years among the execs at the big Web outfits like Google (GOOG), Time Warner (TWX) unit AOL, Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT).

And when you look at it from a “Hollywood Squares” point of view–oh, how I desperately miss Paul Lynde–it’s kind of is amazing to realize that there are only about a dozen Internet execs moving in and out of the various jobs.

Some of the faces in the video include Greg Coleman (Yahoo/AOL), Sheryl Sandberg (Google/Facebook), Tim Armstrong (Google/AOL) and Joanne Bradford (Microsoft/Yahoo). It’s a wonder the video leaves out Scott Moore (Microsoft/Yahoo/Microsoft).

Here are the videos:

Digital Media Musical Chairs:

Mad Avenue Blues:

Wall Street Meltdown:

Wall Street Meltdown–Redux:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090619/viral-video-watch-the-bouncing-web-execs-play-digital-musical-chairs/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090617/myspace-after-the-layoffs-heres-whats-what-and-whats-next/ http://allthingsd.com/20090617/myspace-after-the-layoffs-heres-whats-what-and-whats-next/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:30:13 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14631

Now what?

The party-all-night social-networking site that has been MySpace so far got a massive morning-after shock yesterday when 30 percent of its workforce–or 420 employees–was laid off.

And today, MySpace, which is still 1,000-strong, and its leaders have to face the cold, harsh light of day in the aftermath of the restructuring and get busy quickly figuring out a way to reinvigorate a brand that has suffered after a stunning rocket of a start many years ago.

That’s especially true since a report also just came out by market research outfit comScore (SCOR) showing that Facebook has surpassed MySpace in the key U.S. market as the top social-networking site.

So, based on many sources I have spoken to over the last week, here’s a rundown of the next steps MySpace will likely be taking and who’ll be making them.

MORE LAYOFFS?

“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said new CEO Owen Van Natta in a statement about the layoffs.

What he did not say was that cost-cutting via layoffs is almost always the first move in a turnaround.

These cuts have actually been long in coming, but it’s promising that they finally happened so quickly after Van Natta–along with COO Michael Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn–were brought in by News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller to replace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe.

(News Corp. owns MySpace, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

“The layoffs were a total reset,” said one source, who noted that unless MySpace’s advertising business falls off a cliff, which it is unlikely to do in the short term, more cuts in the U.S. will not be needed for now. That might not be true internationally, where MySpace has not performed as strongly.

At this point, MySpace is now about the same size as chief rival Facebook’s staff, which has been growing much more quickly (you can see my video tour of its new Silicon Valley HQ here).

Except for not making the move to new offices in Los Angeles, the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace is also not going to be closing offices elsewhere, as has been reported, most especially its San Francisco one.

In fact, Van Natta is traveling to visit all of them, his memo said, over the next several days.

LEADERSHIP

Despite the large number of layoffs and the departure of DeWolfe, most expect there to be very little change in the top ranks of MySpace leadership for the time being.

While Jeff Berman, MySpace’s president of sales and marketing, has been rumored to be on the bubble, multiple sources said he would be staying in his job.

He’ll continue to be aided by Angela Courtin, SVP of marketing, who is well-regarded.

The same is true of the other major question mark, co-founder Tom Anderson (pictured here), who has held the president title at the company and was in charge of its products.

Anderson does not have a new title yet and will no longer be in a key operational role, but many sources said his historical knowledge and his tight relationship with the MySpace community make it important that he remain at the company.

“Tom is clearly in touch with what has made MySpace special,” said one source. “And it is important that he remain to keep the culture alive.”

Also staying for now is Tom Andrus, who has been SVP of product management under Anderson and is now reporting to Hirschhorn. While initially upset by being supplanted so quickly by new execs, most sources told me that he is a solid and well-liked exec.

The same is said of Jason Oberfest, SVP of business development, who is also staying. So too, CTO Aber Whitcomb, whom many thought would be leaving.

The only major exec departure I could confirm was Fox Interactive Media CFO Ed McKenna, who was in charge of MySpace too. Sources said will be leaving the company as his function gets consolidated into higher corporate units at News Corp.

PRODUCT REHAUL

Lastly, most noted that MySpace cannot cut its way back to health, which is why sources said its execs are now beginning to engage in a major overhaul of the product itself.

While leadership had considered bringing in a separate new skunkworks-type team to do that, it has been decided that the current staff–helped by some outside consultants–will be doing a top-to-bottom redo of MySpace.

MySpace could use it. As you can see from the charts below from a poll that we did for the seventh D: All Things Digital conference recently–and where Walt Mossberg and I interviewed Van Natta and Miller onstage (see the highlights video below)–it has a lot to fix, including reengaging users, improving technology and differentiating itself from Facebook.

And, in fact, carving itself out as a different product than Facebook is one major aim because the offerings–while both are social networks–are quite different in approach. Facebook has evolved into more of a utility, while MySpace has made better inroads as an entertainment hub.

Whatever changes are made, most sources note that MySpace needs to try to remain true to its original frisky and fun start-up core, while innovating a next-generation product and continuing to goose its advertising business.

That also includes starting up renegotiations with Google (GOOG) about its search-advertising partnership, talks that are just getting started now (more on that soon).

Most of all, said one person, pointing to the long and painfully public struggle at Yahoo (YHOO), leadership has to stop the focus on MySpace being broken as soon as possible.

“MySpace needed to be shaken up, but it is still a very powerful brand and has huge traffic,” said the source. “Its management has to project a sense inside and outside that it is not only fixable, but also can lead again.”

As with Yahoo, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and many others before it, that’s no easy task for MySpace, starting today.

In any case, here’s the highlights video of the Miller/Van Natta interview at D7:

And here are three not-so-upbeat poll charts about MySpace and how users think about it (click on them to make them larger):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090617/myspace-after-the-layoffs-heres-whats-what-and-whats-next/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20090526/people-networks-president-joanna-shields-leaving-aol/ http://allthingsd.com/20090526/people-networks-president-joanna-shields-leaving-aol/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 16:20:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=13880

According to an internal memo obtained by BoomTown, Joanna Shields, who came to AOL via its troubled acquisition of the Bebo social-networking site, will be returning to London to spend more time with her family and to “pursue entrepreneurial interests.”

(She is pictured here with former AOL CEO Randy Falco and former AOL President Ron Grant after Bebo was bought in 2008.)

Until recently, People Networks has been the third leg of the Time Warner (TWX) online site’s businesses, which also include advertising and content.

But under new CEO Tim Armstrong, who was one of the top sales execs at Google (GOOG), AOL is largely abandoning its business-unit approach for a more functional and centralized structure.

Armstrong is prepping AOL to be spun off, and has been trying to shape it into a more streamlined organization focused on core assets but run in a more top-down fashion.

Bebo has always been a thorn at AOL, since it was acquired for $850 million last March. It was a huge price for the social-networking site, which was much smaller than leaders Facebook and MySpace.

Ironically, Shields, who negotiated the deal, got a lot of internal flak for getting that much for Bebo. That doubtlessly got worse after both top AOL execs who bought it from her, Falco and Grant, got pushed out in favor of Armstrong.

Under Shields, People Networks–which also includes AOL’s AIM and ICQ instant messenger services–has been introducing a variety of social products and updated offerings.

It is now poised, as you can read in Shields’s memo below, to release a new version of AIM and ICQ.

Here’s Armstrong’s full memo to the AOL troops below, as well as Shields’s memo to her staff:

Team -

We’re now near the half-way mark of our 100 Day Plan, and we’re making good progress in putting together the details behind the strategic priorities I talked with you about two weeks ago. I’m looking forward to speaking to you more about this later this week at a company All-Hands on Friday.

In the meantime, I want to update you on some organizational news. Joanna Shields has decided to step down from her role as President of People Networks/EVP of AOL and return to London to reunite her family and explore her entrepreneurial interests. At her core, Joanna is a start-up executive, having taken numerous companies through the process of rapid growth and acquisition.

Following the company’s acquisition of Bebo last year, where Joanna served as chief executive, she moved to New York to help AOL unlock the value of our social assets and re-establish AOL as a leader and innovator in the area of social networking and communications–two areas this company pioneered. The result was numerous innovations in AIM and ICQ, the launch of Socialthing, along with continued upgrades to Bebo. I’m happy to say that Joanna will continue to serve as an advisor to the company working with our acquisitions and new ventures, so while we won’t be seeing her on a daily basis, she will remain an important member of the AOL family.

Joanna is a very strong and well-known entrepreneur and has been a very valuable member of our executive team. Please join me in thanking Joanna for her many contributions and wishing her safe travels as she moves her family back to London–TA

Dear Team,

I wanted to let you know that after much deliberation and with a heavy heart I have decided to move on from AOL. I am returning home to London to reunite with my family and pursue my entrepreneurial interests.

It has been a remarkable year and I feel incredibly lucky to have spent this time with you. I have been blessed to be part of many success stories in the past from RealNetworks and Google through to Bebo and my time with you at AOL will go down as one of my proudest.

People Networks was born a year ago to solve some of the toughest problems facing online consumers today. Despite (and perhaps because of) all the innovation we’ve seen in the last few years there are too many online services to monitor, too many profiles to manage and too many “social graphs” to maintain. The web is an amazing platform for content, community and communications, but these three rarely happen in one place, resulting in online conversations that are fragmented and disconnected. Our vision was to connect people with everyone and everything they care about and through a combination of great talent, hard work and brilliant assets we managed to create some amazing experiences to do just that.

We started with our industry-leading products AIM and ICQ and are now just about ready to re-invent instant messaging as the world knows it to become the default product for both private and public conversations and social and status updates. We leveraged the incredible passion and talent at Bebo, launching numerous innovations and expanding into 7 new countries while maintaining our leadership in user engagement and innovative monetization. And finally, we assembled a small, yet powerful group of entrepreneurs, to build a platform for socializing the web in record time, receiving rave reviews from publishers and partners working with the Socialthing team. I can’t wait for the world to get a glimpse of our new client this summer combined with the evolution of Socialthing as it finally creates a way for conversations and social interactions to happen anywhere on the web.

You should all feel proud of your role in our success.

I wanted to say thank you for everything I’ve learned from you this past year. I loved the fact that we challenged each other every day, from our offsites and product summits to our Thinktanks and day-to-day meetings. In the end we came up with phenomenal products that will make a lasting impact–and we are just on the verge of revealing these plans. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to think with all of you, to break down the barriers of the old ways, to innovate again and to re-invigorate this company. I believe in you and I am so very proud of you all. Don’t let the constant swirl of changes around you take you off course. Feel confident about the decisions we have made and the path we are on. Stay focused on delivering the products you believe in and I know you will win.

I leave you in capable hands with Tim and I know he will continue to support you. I remain, as always your friend.

Joanna

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090526/people-networks-president-joanna-shields-leaving-aol/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090521/aol-lands-another-media-refugee-portfoliocoms-bercovici-to/ http://allthingsd.com/20090521/aol-lands-another-media-refugee-portfoliocoms-bercovici-to/#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 23:20:26 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=7604 I don’t usually write about writers landing jobs, but I did want to point out that Jeff Bercovici, last seen writing the Mixed Media blog for Portfolio.com, has landed at DailyFinance, a site run by Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL.

Why do I care?

• Because his hire is yet another indicator that AOL is continuing to hire experienced writers and reporters–often from ailing publications–to build up its own sites, a strategy championed by content czar Bill Wilson’s MediaGlow. AOL has been steadily hiring journalism vets and using them to reinvigorate existing sites like its FanHouse sports hub and to launch new ones like PoliticsDaily. Other recent hires include Mitch Lipka, a consumer finance writer for the Boston Globe who will join AOL’s Walletpop, and David Wood, a longtime national security writer for the Baltimore Sun,  who is joining PoliticsDaily.
• Because it means that the not-going-to-shut-down-after-all Portoflio.com won’t feature its two marquee bloggers. Felix Salmon, Bercovici’s former colleague at the Condé Nast site, had already left for Reuters to start a finance blog earlier this year.
• Because Bercovici is damned good at the media beat, so I’m going to need to bookmark his page and add his RSS feed into my reader.
• And because I’ve been writing about layoffs since I started this column in October, and this is a nice change of pace.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090521/aol-lands-another-media-refugee-portfoliocoms-bercovici-to/feed/ 0