Media giant Hearst has hired two senior execs — Demand Media’s Joanne Bradford and former Los Angeles Times CEO Jeffrey Johnson — in a significant move to digitally turbocharge and jumpstart its flagship but long-suffering newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle and its SFGate.com website.

“They have deep publishing and new media experience and believe in the power of great content with a valued brand,” said Heart CEO Frank Bennack in a statement. “We are excited to work with them to redefine the choices for how and where readers can experience the trusted Chronicle content they depend on.”

In the new leadership, Johnson will be the publisher of the Chronicle, while Bradford will be its president. Both will report to Hearst Newspapers President Mark Aldam. Current publisher Frank Vega — an old-style publisher who has had a controversial tenure at the Chronicle — will retire, though Hearst said he will continue as chairman through the transition.

“The San Francisco Chronicle should be a shining star and use case of how to build a community and cover local news,” said Bradford in a text to me today.

Indeed. While the Chronicle and its website is the largest for local news in the Bay area, it has lagged a lot in aggressively covering key trends — such as tech — and the fast growth of the region. While the area has blossomed, the Chronicle, like many big-city newspapers, has suffered, as digital businesses of all kinds have made incursions on its business.

Its daily print circulation is now 265,000, and combined with its website it reaches close to two million people.

Getting all that a whole lot higher — and, perhaps more importantly, a lot more relevant — will be a tough job and will likely require a major reinvention of the Chronicle brand.

That is especially true since the San Francisco area, including Silicon Valley, is the world’s key digital hub, as well as a leader in a number of areas — from top-notch sports teams to having one of the most innovative food and indie cultures. After a few years of rough economic times, the city is on a bit of a roll, including being the location of some upcoming major events such as the Super Bowl and America’s Cup.

Bradford has a lot of experience in both old and new media and is well known in the online media advertising space, having had top sales and media jobs at BusinessWeek magazine, Microsoft, Yahoo and, now, Demand.

She has been at that content site, where she has been its chief revenue and marketing officer, since 2010. At Yahoo, previous to Demand, she was an SVP in charge of North American revenue and also worked on branded entertainment partnerships. At Microsoft, she was a corporate VP and chief media officer of MSN Media Network.

And, although I have known her well over many years — full disclosure: We are very good friends — I had no idea she had an undergraduate degree in journalism from San Diego State University.

Johnson is also a longtime media exec. He has recently been an operating partner at the Yucaipa Companies — owned by kingpin Ron Burkle — focusing on media investments since 2007. Previous to that, he was president, publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times for just a year, but had been its SVP and GM since 2000. At the Times, he was responsible for the newspaper’s digital and print operations including editorial, advertising, circulation, consumer sales and marketing, finance and technology. Johnson has also worked at the Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel and has an undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

The Chronicle is the largest newspaper in Northern California, founded in 1865 by Charles and Michael de Young. Its owner, the privately-held Hearst, is one of the nation’s largest media companies, with dozens of daily and weekly newspapers; has a huge group of television stations and cable network stakes, such as Lifetime, A&E and ESPN; hundreds of magazines, such as Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and Elle; and many other varied holdings.

Bradford will be replaced at Demand Media by Jeff Dossett.

Ben Ling, a longtime Silicon Valley angel investor and Internet exec, has joined Khosla Ventures as a venture partner.

Ling is the second hire of high-profile operating execs by Khosla. Former Square, Slide and PayPal exec Keith Rabois — who is a close friend of Ling’s — joined the firm in February.

In an interview today, Ling said he has been contemplating his next move, and the idea of becoming a VC after years of operations was appealing.

“I thought a lot about the ability to have impact across a broad set of companies, and was attracted to Khosla’s model of venture assistance,” said Ling, who added that he will focus a lot on the mobile ecosystem. “When I was younger, I thought it would be fascinating to be an investor, and here I can help a lot of companies grow and scale.”

Ling is a former Google and Facebook product exec, as well as an active investor in 80 startups, including such high-profile ones as Fab.com, Square and Quora. He was most recently COO at Badoo, but left the company last fall.

At Google, he worked on search, YouTube and local products, and was closely linked with former Googler Marissa Mayer, whom he followed internally when her responsibilities shifted there. Many thought he might next pop up at Yahoo, where she is now CEO.

Not so, but also not a surprise; Mayer provided Khosla with a lovely statement about Ling: “Ben is an amazing entrepreneurial leader and has a great eye as an investor for both talent and ideas. I’m excited to see him join Khosla Ventures to find and foster the next set of entrepreneurs who will define the technology world.”

In a key hire, Jawbone said today that it had hired Mindy Mount, a top corporate VP at Microsoft, as its president.

The move by the San Francisco-based maker of wireless, music and wearable devices is part of what has been a major upgrading of its management and board. Recently, Jawbone added Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Rob Wiesenthal of Warner Music as directors.

Jawbone has also recently done a big acquisition — purchasing BodyMedia, a wearable health and fitness company, for $100 million. The move comes just a couple months after it bought data and digital-design companies Massive Health and Visere.

All this expansion requires tight organizational efforts and Mount has a lot of financial and operational experience, having held several key jobs at the software giant. She was most recently corporate VP and CFO at Microsoft’s Online Services Division, which includes Bing, MSN and Microsoft Advertising. Before that she held a similar job at the Entertainment and Devices Division, which has the Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone units.

Previous to that, Mount ran AOL’s U.K. unit, worked in strategy at Time Warner and also was an exec at Morgan Stanley. She has an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business and an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In an interview today, Mount said that what attracted her to Jawbone was the challenge of scaling the fast-growth company, which is helmed by CEO and co-founder Hosain Rahman.

“Right out of the block, I’ll be spending time on business operations, since the scale and scope and complexity of Jawbone has really increased,” she said. “What really attracted me to the role is that it is a really meaty one … It’s a company with great products, where I can come in and have real impact, because consumer electronics companies really have to execute.”

Jawbone products include Jawbone wireless headsets, Jambox speakers and the Up personal fitness wristbands. The company has raised a lot of funding, totaling about $210 million from such venture firms as Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, as well as Deutsche Telekom, investor Yuri Milner and others.

According to an internal memo and now on his LinkedIn profile, Yahoo has just hired longtime McKinsey exec John DeVine as SVP of global operations. He has worked in the marketing and sales practice at the consulting firm since 1999 and has been an advocate there of “how companies need to embrace the customer experience.”

Devine will report to COO Henrique De Castro — who also worked at McKinsey — and will be helming a wide swath of operations, such as advertising solutions. DeCastro has also been searching recently for a head of the key U.S. ad unit and has tried to hire former AOL sales chief Ned Brody. That hire is limbo now, due to Brody’s 14-month non-compete contract with AOL; CEO Tim Armstrong shows no signs of letting him leave sooner.

But DeVine is on board at Yahoo, so to speak. The former submarine officer in the U.S. Navy also has a masters degree in nuclear engineering — batten down the hatches for incoming at ATD HQ! — from the University of California Berkeley and did his undergraduate work at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Two senior execs have left Square, including a well-known former PayPal exec who had been announced but had not yet started at the high-profile payments company.

That was Alex Petrov, who Square announced just three weeks ago was supposed to be the startup’s new vice president of partnerships. But he actually never started working at Square and will not be joining the company, a spokesperson confirmed.

The other, Alyssa Cutright, who was the company’s vice president of international, actually left in March after one year on the job, a Square spokesperson also confirmed. She oversaw the company’s expansion into Canada after being poached from eBay’s PayPal unit, where she had spent 12 years. The reason for her departure isn’t clear, but the timing is a bit unusual as Square continues to build momentum and plans for further expansion.

Some of this might be related to another new hire of high-powered ex-Googler Francoise Brougher as business lead. Now, she will assume the duties of both Petrov and Cutright, the spokesperson said. At the search giant, the exec led a number of key initiatives globally.

There has been a lot of turnover in the top ranks of Square recently, most prominently the departure of its COO Keith Rabois. He left after allegations of personal misconduct, which he denied publicly. Rabois is now a venture capitalist at Khosla Partners.

Cutright and Petrov could not be reached for comment.

Chief among the exits is Chief Product Officer Kouji Kodera, with several others from the marketing and communications ranks also having recently left, including Eric Lin, who is now working for Microsoft’s Skype unit, and communications chief Jason Gordon, who left on Friday.

Kodera, a former head of products for Sony Ericsson, joined HTC in 2010.

“Kouji Kodera has left HTC to pursue other interests,” HTC said in a statement. “We appreciate his contributions and wish him all the best. Scott Croyle will take over his duties.”

Kodera declined to comment, as did Gordon.

Once a rapidly rising star in the phone world, HTC is struggling to reverse a steep sales slide. The company has pinned much of its hope on the HTC One. Though well regarded, the device finds itself competing not only against products from Samsung and Apple — but also the giant marketing budgets that accompany those devices.

HTC had hoped to also get a boost by being first with a device supporting Facebook’s Home software, but the HTC First has not fared well at AT&T, and it’s unclear whether a price cut has helped move the needle. Both HTC and AT&T have declined to comment on sales.

The staff departures were first reported earlier Tuesday by The Verge.

Though hardly alone in scaling back its presence at CTIA, HTC was much less visible at the show than in past years. The company opted to skip the show floor entirely, and instead had a small booth at the MobileFocus press event on Tuesday night, where it showed the HTC One and the intricate manufacturing process that goes into its unibody aluminum casing.

Shashi Seth, former top product exec at Yahoo, has joined the Tribune Company as president of Tribune Digital Ventures, according to sources.

He will be reporting to CEO Peter Liguori and based in Silicon Valley, apparently to set up a brand new digital arm of the Chicago-based media company.

Sources said TDV would seek to invest in, buy and partner with innovative startups, not unlike the Comcast Ventures unit of the cable giant, which is run by Amy Banse.

Seth ran a wide variety of product groups for Yahoo — the last as SVP of its Connections division — and left in January, some months after new CEO Marissa Mayer took over.

Seth had been in charge of a swath of key products at Yahoo including Yahoo Mail, the Flickr photo-sharing service and many others.

Previous to Yahoo, Seth also worked at Google and AOL.

Gregory, who most recently was VP of revenue at Spotify, also previously worked at Google.

Among Quixey’s recent projects is an app for Microsoft that lets potential Windows Phone converts see which of their Android apps are available on Redmond’s phone software.

In addition to Gregory, Quixey earlier this year hired former Zynga executive Guru Gowrappan to serve as executive VP of products. Over the past two years, the company has gone from five employees to 70, and is now handling 100 million queries per month.

We can at least agree on this, though: HBO and Netflix are both very interested in figuring out the best way to deliver TV-quality video over the Internet, and both have around 30 million subscribers in the U.S.

Which gives this personnel move a little bit of zing: Rob Caruso, an HBO engineer who had been working on the cable channel’s HBO Go service, has taken a job at Netflix.

No word on what Caruso’s new title or job description will be; his LinkedIn profile describes his HBO post as “Vice President, Digital Products.”

HBO confirmed Caruso’s move but didn’t offer any other comment; no comment from Netflix.

Earlier this year, HBO began re-orging its technical team, and longtime strategy and development exec Hans Deutmeyer headed out. In a memo announcing the changes, new tech head Otto Berkes also announced that Caruso would be moving around:

“Rob’s new charter is to build software engineering capabilities to optimize digital asset creation, management, and security, and to create technologies that unlock the full potential of software in the digital content area. Rob and his team will collaborate closely with Digital Products to ensure that our digital content technologies and our consumer-facing products inform each other to enable unique and innovative content-driven user experiences. This new role and group will be critical to achieving end-to-end software technology excellence.”

Last month, in his own memo laying out his vision for video’s future, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said his company was spending $350 million a year improving its core service and app, not counting content spending.

Update 9:29 am PT: And Casey has confirmed his new job via Twitter: “It’s official, I’m a Yahoo! Excited and honored to join @marissamayer and @yahoo,” he wrote, attaching a Path picture (appropriate!) of Yahoo’s welcome sign.

For the past year and a half he has been at Path, Casey was responsible for recruiting the product management team, managing Path’s product road map process — including the most recent introduction of Path’s messaging feature — and developing product strategies to increase growth, retention and revenue, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Before Path, Casey spent the better part of a decade at Google in various roles, first beginning in marketing and then moving over to product management roles via special products. He led and developed Google’s real-time search team, and also worked to drive growth on the Google+ social product. (He also happens to be a former professional cyclist, riding alongside Lance Armstrong before retiring in 2003, when he subsequently joined Google.)

The move over to Yahoo makes sense, as Casey worked closely with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer during their shared tenures at Google. It is not clear what he will be doing in his new position, but Mayer has been looking hard for good product leads, and has been trying to recruit Casey over to Yahoo for some time. One source said that Casey could be heading to Yahoo’s “Platforms” division, where he would report to SVP Jay Rossiter.

Update 10:17 a.m. PT: And confirmed again! A Yahoo spokeswoman told AllThingsD that Casey starts today as a senior director in the platform organization.

Path did not respond to emails and phone requests for comment late Sunday evening.

Facebook’s top lawyer Ted Ullyot is leaving the social networking giant, apparently to take some time off.

Facebook disclosed the departure today. Ullyot, 45, will be officially gone in July; the search for his replacement will include internal and external candidates.

As general counsel, Ullyot has presided over a myriad of new, unusual and sometimes controversial legal issues, including managing high-stakes and complex litigation that ranged from Facebook’s battle with the Winklevoss twins, to a patent fight with Yahoo to investor disgruntlement around its initial public offering.

And, of course, over privacy issues. In many ways, given the Silicon Valley company’s pioneering role in social networking, Ullyot has had to work in a relatively undiscovered landscape, which has also attracted a great deal of scrutiny from consumers, regulators and investors.

He started in the fall of 2008, and has managed all the legal aspects of the company and built up the team from 10 when Facebook was a startup to more than 70 as a public company. In that time, Facebook has grown from 500 people to 5,000 and from 100 million to over one billion active users.

It has certainly been a ride for him, from beating back the Winklevii over their allegations related to the founding of Facebook to settling the patent dispute with Yahoo to handling the Federal Trade Commission investigation and more.

It is not clear what he will do next, but sources said he does not have another job lined up as of yet.

He’ll be made general partner and managing director at his new gig at DFJ, where he’ll spot new companies for investment potential and advise the firm’s existing portfolio companies.

“Bubba has deep experience with building teams and delivering a product vision, which is important perspective for emerging tech companies,” Andreas Stavropoulos, DFJ managing director, said in a statement. “He has expertise in scaling teams, working through complex partnership negotiations and designing creative experiences.”

Murarka has been with Facebook since 2008, when he joined the company in a more biz-dev-focused role, where he worked on M&A teams and made deals with companies like Microsoft, Netflix and Yahoo.

Later in his time at Facebook, he switched over to product management, where he scaled the Android team up to 50-plus members and helped make the switch from HTML5-based apps over to native Android code. (Basically, it’s the reason your Facebook app is a whole lot faster today.)

Before his time at Facebook, Murarka spent the better part of a decade at Microsoft in a number of different product and tech positions.

Wiseman joined the company in 2007, straight out of Stanford’s computer science program and following in the footsteps of a number of his classmates who joined the social giant in 2006. Working at Facebook was his first full-time professional gig, having previously held only internships at tech companies like Apple and Pixar.

While Wiseman, a classic “under-the-radar” type, hasn’t surfaced much at public-facing company events or in the press, he has played a role in launching some of Facebook’s pivotal products over the six years he worked there.

He was the engineering manager on about a dozen projects, including Photos, Video, Groups, Pages, Chat, Privacy and Profile improvements. He led engineering for Timeline last year, and was one of the first engineers to work on Facebook Chat, now seen as one of Facebook’s biggest priorities for the future of the company.

“I love Facebook and am still very excited about it,” Wiseman said in an interview. “But I’ve sort of developed a desire to work on a more tangible social problem — like the health care industry — that I don’t think Facebook necessarily plans to tackle in the near term.”

In the meantime, Wiseman will join Social+Capital as an engineer in residence, meeting different companies and figuring out exactly what he wants to do next. His last day at Facebook was Friday, and he begins his new gig tomorrow.

Robison, already a director at Fusion, was also named its chairman. Rick White, the company’s chief marketing officer, also resigned.

Flynn, the company’s statement said, is resigning in order to pursue “entrepreneurial investment opportunities,” and White will be joining him.

Fusion shares are trading down by 16 percent in premarket trading. As of 8:43 am ET, the quoted price was $14.99, down more than $3 from Tuesday’s closing price of $18.

At HP, Robison was chief strategy officer, in charge of most of that company’s mergers and acquisition strategy. He led numerous deals, including, but not limited to, its 2002 acquisition of Compaq, as well as deals for Mercury Interactive, Opsware, EDS and 3Com.

But since he was the first senior exec to depart HP after Meg Whitman took over in the fall of 2011, Robison, along with former CEO Léo Apotheker, was seen as the one who took a fair amount of the blame for the ill-advised 2011 acquisition of the British software firm Autonomy. Some would argue, however, that HP chose to throw Robison under the bus.

Update: The fall in Fusion shares is continuing. With a minute to go before the opening of markets in New York, Fusion-io shares are indicating lower by nearly 25 percent. The current price quoted as of 9:29 am ET was $13.52.

Here’s the company’s press release:

Shane Robison Named Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

SALT LAKE CITY — May 8, 2013 — Fusion-io, Inc. (NYSE: FIO) today announced that Shane Robison has been named Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, effective immediately. Mr. Robison, who is a director of the Fusion-io Board of Directors, succeeds David Flynn, who has resigned as CEO and President to pursue entrepreneurial investing activities.

The company also announced that co-founder, Rick White, has resigned as Chief Marketing Officer to join Mr. Flynn in early stage investing activities. Messrs. Flynn and White will both remain members of the Board and will serve in advisory roles to the company for the next 12 months.

Mr. Robison, 59, has more than 30 years of experience in senior business management and product development roles with some of the world’s leading technology companies, including AT&T Labs, Cadence Design Systems and Apple. He most recently served as Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer of Hewlett-Packard Company from May 2002 until November 1, 2011.

“Shane Robison is a proven executive with the experience and expertise to lead Fusion-io as we enter our next phase of growth and development,” said Scott Sandell, lead independent director of the Fusion-io Board. “Over the course of his career, Shane has demonstrated an ability to develop the critical corporate strategies to help innovative companies scale and grow globally. Shane’s understanding of our business, significant international experience, and deep industry and partner relationships make him ideally suited to lead Fusion-io as we seek to accelerate the company’s strategic and financial goals to enhance shareholder value.”

“I am honored to lead Fusion-io through its next chapter of growth,” said Mr. Robison. “Fusion-io has long been recognized for its visionary technology, and I look forward to working closely with the company’s talented team as we continue to develop the critical technology that we all rely on to deliver the world’s data faster. As the use of data grows, IT professionals need more effective and efficient ways to power their business-critical applications. Fusion-io has an incredible opportunity to continue to transform the software defined storage industry. Our customer relationships are strong, and working with the company’s exceptional management team, I am excited to lead Fusion-io.”

“On behalf of the Board and entire Fusion-io team, I want to thank David and Rick for their significant contributions to the creation, development and growth of the company,” said Mr. Sandell. “David and Rick’s vision as co-founders has redefined memory technology and had a profound impact on our industry. Under their leadership, Fusion-io has developed into one of the world’s leading technology companies, helping businesses increase datacenter efficiency. They played an important role in taking the company public and developing a strong framework from which Fusion-io can grow to the next level.”

Fusion-io noted that today’s announcements are not related to any issues regarding the integrity of the company’s financial statements or accounting policies and practices.

Business Outlook
Fusion-io reaffirmed the financial outlook it provided on April 24, 2013 for the fiscal fourth quarter of 2013, before giving effect to any costs associated with the departures of Messrs. Flynn and White.

The following statements are based on current expectations. These statements are forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially.

Fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013:

· Revenue is expected to be approximately $110 million.

· Non-GAAP gross margin is expected to be 56 to 58%.

· Non-GAAP operating loss of approximately $5 million.

· Diluted shares outstanding are expected to be approximately 98 million shares.

Fiscal Year 2013 guidance:

· Revenue is expected to be approximately $435 million.

· Non-GAAP gross margin is expected to be in the range of 58 to 60%.

· Non-GAAP operating margin is expected to be approximately 9.5%.

· Diluted shares outstanding are expected to be approximately 109 million shares.

About Shane Robison
Shane Robison, 59, has served as a director of Fusion-io since December 2011. Mr. Robison served as Chief Strategy & Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Hewlett-Packard Company from May 2002 to November 2011. From 2000 to May 2002, Mr. Robison served as Senior Vice President, Technology and Chief Technology Officer of Strategy and Technology of Compaq Computer Corporation. Prior to joining Compaq, Mr. Robison served as the President of Internet Technology and Development at AT&T Labs. Prior to AT&T Labs, Mr. Robison was Executive Vice President, Research and Development, and then served as President of the Design Productivity Group at Cadence Design Systems. Mr. Robison also spent seven years at Apple Inc., where he held a series of executive-level positions, leaving the company as Vice President and General Manager of the Personal interactive Electronics Division. Mr. Robison’s experience includes work at Schlumberger’s research groups in Silicon Valley, at Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation and consulting for the University of Utah in the area of database systems architecture. Mr. Robison also serves as a director of Altera Corporation. Mr. Robison holds a B.S. and a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.

Kreiz, formerly the CEO of TV production studio Endemol, joined Maker as an investor and its chairman last year.

Asked to explain the change, Kreiz described it as standard operating procedure for a startup that needed more professional help as it matured; Zappin will become a “special adviser” to Kreiz, and will stay on the company’s board. COO Courtney Holt will continue in his position.

“I’m not the first professional help that’s coming on board,” Kreiz said. “It became more obvious that we had to run Maker in sync with the potential in terms of where it can go.”

Maker is one of YouTube’s biggest content hubs, and boasts more than three billion views a month. The majority of those come from video makers the startup represents via its distribution network, but it is increasingly focused on creating stuff for itself.

Late last year, as Maker was closing a $36 million round led by Time Warner, the company got involved in an ugly spat with Ray William Johnson, one of its former stars, who has since left the channel for a deal with Blip. Johnson and Zappin engaged in a weird public back-and-forth, which eventually prompted Zappin to write a companywide memo acknowledging a former conviction for felony drug possession.

I’m told the spat did worry both Maker and its investors, but not enough to scotch the deal. But Kreiz says Zappin’s move isn’t related to the incident.

Here’s the memo Zappin is sending to Maker employees today:

Hey Everyone,
I have some important and exciting news I want to share with all of you.
First off, I would like to thank everyone for being part of this amazing journey of building Maker Studios. It’s been quite a ride and I feel very proud of what we’ve all accomplished together!
I founded Maker with Lisa and Ben because we were passionate about creating content and making things verses pitching and auditioning. Youtube gave us a platform as content creators to do just that. We were able to reach a world wide audience and actually make a living doing what we loved, being creative.
The vision for Maker was to create a company that would provide resources, knowledge, and monetization opportunities for content creators around the world so they too could make a living doing what they love.
We have now grown from a small production studio with offices above a Campos Tacos in Venice to being a global media company with a Network of more than 50,000 individual partners in less than 2 years. The rapid evolution of this organization has been an incredible thing to witness.
Being the CEO of Maker Studios has been the single most challenging and rewarding experience of my life. I’ve learned more and accomplished more than I could have ever imagined. The amazing people I’ve shared this journey with will always be loved. Despite all odds Lisa, Ben and I have successfully led and navigated a rapidly growing company that has become the market leader in the space, despite having very little or no business background. No one thought it was possible. I know I could not have done it alone.
It is the very unique partnership between the 3 of us that made it work. While challenging and full of complexity there is no doubt that what we have is special and rare. The success is unquestionable. I feel honored to work along side my cofounders Lisa and Ben. I’m happy to be sharing this journey with them and with all of you at Maker Studios.
As we’ve grown, we’ve added many other remarkably talented people who I also feel privileged to work alongside. From Shay, Kassem, Alex, Christina, Matt, Glasgow and Paul in the early days to our current executives Courtney, Chris, Ryan, Karen, Amy and Sam. It’s a privilege to work with all of you. To all my friends and family, thank you for joining me in this unique opportunity and journey. Working along side so many people that you love has been a rewarding and unique experience that I am extremely grateful for. Mike.D. Without you none of this would be possible. Thank you.
So back to the exciting news!
A little over a year ago I had the privilege of meeting Ynon Kreiz. We both shared a great passion for Youtube and the new media space. He was very excited about what were doing at Maker and believed in our vision of what it could become. We connected immediately and developed a friendship over the next few months. About a year ago I asked Ynon to join Maker’s board of directors as the Chairman.
Since then Ynon has been an advisor, mentor, and sounding board for me. We have spoken almost daily for the past year. We could not have navigated the company through the past year without his help and support. Not only has he helped advise me, he has also learned a lot from his relationship with, Lisa, Ben and I. We have all grown close and have a lot of trust and mutual respect.
As we now prepare to move into the next phase of growth for Maker Studios, I felt it was the right time to make a significant transition. As the former CEO and Chairman of Endemol, the worlds largest independent production company, and as the co-founder and CEO of Fox kids, Ynon has the specific media exec experience that we need to take Maker to the next level. After much thought and discussion with Ynon, my co-founders and the board, I am happy to announce that I will be stepping down as the Maker Studios CEO. Ynon, our Executive Chairman will now be taking over my responsibilities and operational oversight of Maker.
While I won’t be responsible for day to day operations, I will remain on the board of directors and will serve in an advisor role to Ynon and the company. I will work very closely with Ynon during this transition phase to make sure everything goes smoothly.
I love this company and all of you. I’ve always been committed to do what I feel is best for the company and that will never change. This transition is what is best for the company right now. I am confident in my decision. I’m very fortunate to have had the experience of being the CEO of Maker Studios. I also feel lucky to now have the opportunity to hand over the keys to Ynon after a proper amount of time to build a solid relationship, trust, and mutual respect. I feel fortunate to have Ynon join the team. I’m very excited about the future of Maker Studios.
Thank you all,

Danny

According to sources close to the situation, well-known tech exec Jon Rubinstein will be joining the board of Qualcomm, the San Diego-based chipmaker that has gotten a big boost of late for its role in the explosion of mobile devices.

Rubinstein is an interesting and logical choice for Qualcomm, having been a high-profile player for a long time in the mobile space, beginning with his work on the iPod while at Apple. After he left his last job at Hewlett-Packard last year, though, he has been very low-key.

(Update: Qualcomm confirmed the appointment in a press release.)

For Qualcomm, the selection of Rubinstein to join the board is something to watch, as he is the second exec from Silicon Valley to be tapped by the company recently. In March, Qualcomm hired tech investor Laurie Yoler as SVP of business development, making her “responsible for augmenting existing business relationships in Silicon Valley, as well as developing new strategic business opportunities for Qualcomm in the region.”

Rubinstein has even more experience here and is also familiar with a range of mobile efforts over the years, some of which were successful and others not so much, from his work at Apple, Palm and then HP. He is also a board member of Amazon.

Aside from CEO and Chairman Paul Jacobs, Rubinstein — who has degrees in electrical engineering and computer science — will be the most technically experienced director on the 11-person board.

Qualcomm declined to comment.

Here’s a nice primer on Rubinstein by Arik Hesseldahl, in a report on his leaving HP early last year:

Best known for his work on Apple’s iconic iPod music player, Rubinstein left Apple in 2006 and joined Roger McNamee as a partner in the private equity firm Elevation Partners, following its 2007 investments in Palm.

In 2009 he replaced longtime Palm executive Ed Colligan as its CEO, and oversaw a dramatic restructuring of the company’s products, including a significant rebuild of its smartphone operating system. Gone was the legacy PalmOS that had been used in so many popular devices like the Treo that for a time competed seriously against Research In Motion’s BlackBerry.

PalmOS was replaced by WebOS, which first appeared on the Pre smartphone, then later on the Pixi and Veer devices. After HP acquired Palm, WebOS was also used on the abandoned TouchPad tablet, and is now an open-source operating system overseen by HP.

Rubinstein’s departure is no big surprise. Sources said he hadn’t been seen at HP’s offices following the decision by former CEO Léo Apotheker to get out of the business of making WebOS-based hardware. His future plans have been the subject of speculation for some time.

After HP decided to exit the WebOS hardware business, Rubinstein was assigned to a vaguely described “product innovation role” within HP’s Personal Systems Group during a management shakeup last July. It was an unusual move and one made with little explanation at the time. But sources say it was a preface to Rubinstein’s departure, one intended to lessen its PR impact when he finally left. “That ‘innovation’ gig he was given in July was his first step toward the exit,” said one source, a former Palm exec with close ties to Rubinstein.

The company announced today that Prashant Gandhi, a senior director at Cisco who led development of its own SDN efforts, will join Big Switch as vice president of product management, starting today.

It’s an important hire for Big Switch because there are few people who have as much history in the world of traditional enterprise networking who also have as much history working on efforts to remake it with software. Gandhi worked on some of Cisco’s most important mainstream switching products, like the Cisco Nexus 7000. But he also worked on Cisco’s Nexus 1000v virtual switch and its Cisco One software controller.

His move is occurring at a crucial moment. In recent weeks Cisco has been talking a lot about its interest in contributing to the OpenDaylight project, an open-source SDN consortium. Cisco has contributed code from the CiscoOne product to the project, and Gandhi would have been intimately familiar with the substance of its effort. BigSwitch is a member of OpenDaylight, too.

Big Switch, on the other hand, hails directly out of OpenFlow, another open-source networking project that was born at Stanford University.

I talked with Jason Matlof, Big Switch’s marketing VP, who described Gandhi’s move as a big vote in favor of Big Switch’s approach over Cisco’s. “No one is better qualified to make a judgement on Cisco’s contribution to OpenDaylight versus ours. He has worked on Cisco’s contribution and he is voting with his feet to come to Big Switch.”

Big Switch, you’ll recall, came out of stealth mode last year, backed by $37 million in combined funding from investors including Redpoint Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures and Goldman Sachs. Its plan is basically to turn networks into a software platform around which companies can build their own applications.

And yes, SDN technology is still new, and most of the battles now are about building foundations for future business that lie years down the road. Indeed, companies like Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and Juniper still sell a great deal of old-school non-SDN networking gear, though HP in particular has been going to a lot of trouble to call attention to its shift in favor of SDN-ready gear.

Gandhi is a Cisco veteran, having joined that company first in 1999 in a technical marketing role that lasted six years. He then went on to start Rohati Networks, which Cisco snapped up during an acquisition spurt in 2009.

Big Switch didn’t make Gandhi available for an interview, but in a statement announcing his hiring, he alluded to Rohati and called Big Switch a “unique opportunity:”

“Since the successful completion of the integration of Rohati technologies within Cisco’s Data Center Group, I have been searching for a unique opportunity in the rapidly forming software-defined networking market. … Big Switch Networks is the leader in SDN with the best team, the best technology and the best customer traction, so the choice was clear. Customers are very eager to bring commercial-grade SDN solutions into their networks, and I look forward to helping this market move quickly to maturity.”

Brown’s new fund has raised $33 million, and says it will concentrate on business-to-business startups. At AOL, Brown helped place the company in a wide range of investments, so he’ll be a bit more focused here. Brown is bringing AOL vets Nic Poulos and Keegan Forte along with him.

Dan Primack at Fortune has most of Brown’s story and pitch. The only thing that’s not in there is the fact that Brown has been itching to do this for at least a year, and has gone back and forth with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong about whether or not he would be doing it with AOL’s participation.

(Update: Brown says AOL has invested in his new fund; he’ll also help manage the AOL investments he made over the last three years.)

(Update 2: Here’s comment from AOL Ventures President Jon Brod: “AOL Ventures, which Mike and I started in 2010, has a high performing portfolio of 27 tech start-ups and remains an important part of AOL. We wish Mike well in his new position and are pleased he will continue to help manage the AOL Ventures fund.”)

The question for Armstrong is whether it makes sense for the company to have a venture arm at all, since the work it does doesn’t seem core to AOL’s mission, and having AOL as a corporate backer seems to be a double-edged sword for a venture fund: Sometimes AOL’s brand helps open doors to pitch meetings, other times it has seemed like an encumbrance.

In November, when Paul Otellini announced his surprise retirement, I pointed out in a piece covering all the major contenders to succeed him, that every Intel CEO since Andy Grove was COO first. Krzanich will be Intel’s sixth CEO.

And while a lot was made of the fact that Intel’s board of directors was willing to look outside the company, and a lot of people rooted for Intel to name an outsider to run it, the board, led by its chairman, longtime Intel CFO Andy Bryant, decided to stick with established practice.

It’s not as though outsiders were not considered. I’ve heard reliable chatter that the headhunter Intel hired reached out to several people who turned the opportunity down. They include: Oracle President Mark Hurd; VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, an Intel veteran once considered a likely successor to Otellini, but who was recruited away by EMC CEO Joe Tucci; and Michael Daniels, the former head of IBM’s services business, who retired on March 31.

Krzanich was promoted to the COO job in a surprise shake-up last January. He had run worldwide manufacturing, and as COO he took over some IT and human resources functions that had previously belonged to chairman Bryant. He joined Intel in 1982, and has been an on-the-ground plant manager at Intel’s complex in Arizona. During 2001-2003, he oversaw a complex transition in Intel’s manufacturing technology across its entire global footprint of factories.

Patrick Moorhead, head of research firm MoorInsights, said Krzanich’s naming is a deliberate signal that at a high level much of its strategy will remain the same: “The strategy that has kept Intel running for the last 20 years will remain unchanged: Fab first.”

That means that Intel’s factories — the sprawling multibillion-dollar facilities known in chip industry lingo as “fabs” — will continue to be filled in the most efficient way possible. Intel is at its core a manufacturing company, and is indeed one of the few major chip suppliers left — Samsung is another — that owns its own fabs.

Since they’re so expensive to build, and equally expensive to equip, and since they need to be retooled every few years, Intel’s business model is probably one of the biggest exercises in managing depreciation over time.

The move is also a signal that pushes back against the people who have argued that Intel needs a strategic shake-up. At a moment when PC sales are sliding at a historic rate in favor of tablets and smartphones, Intel has largely been absent from those markets. So it’s no surprise that Intel’s earnings results have suffered in recent quarters.

Meanwhile, phone makers and tablet makers have been using chips from companies like Qualcomm, Broadcom and Nvidia that use designs licensed from the British firm ARM Holdings. ARM-based chips are in practically all the world’s smartphones. Apple uses them in the iPhone and iPad, and they appear in most Android-based phones and tablets, as well.

As Mike Bell, head of Intel’s mobile chip operations, told me in an interview at D: Dive Into Mobile in New York last month, the company has made some strides in the mobile space, landing its chips in some phones and tablets, but they haven’t caught on in huge numbers yet.

There’s another important signal to consider. Renée James, the head of Intel’s software business, was named president. She has been chairman of the McAfee division that Intel acquired when it bought out that security software company last year, as well as of Wind River Systems, another software acquisition. For several years she has also been Intel’s point person in its dealings with Microsoft. While she was officially mentioned as a contender to be CEO, she is, at 48, still in contention for the post. She also sits on the boards of Vodafone and VMware, and for a time was Andy Grove’s chief of staff. (And, as I like to point out for fun, like me, she’s a University of Oregon graduate, and finished her MBA there the same year I was wrapping up my BA.)

But James’s elevation to president also sends an important signal about the rising importance of software at Intel. While Intel is at its core a manufacturing company, it has recognized the importance of software and acted accordingly. As Moorhead put it: “Intel once said it is the third-largest software company in the world, and I can’t prove, but I believe it. Intel is sending a really important message here. It sees software as where the puck is going.”