Like political junkies waiting up for election returns (losers!), Silicon Valley folks, including tech journalists (losers!), are up this morning to await and then pounce on the long-expected IPO filing of Facebook.

But, several sources said, the social networking giant — as I have previously reported — will likely not file its copious documents until this afternoon, after the markets close, at the earliest.

In other words, my day is shot. Thanks, Dave Ebersman!

Sources said the filing could even possibly slip a day, as the company’s suits get busy with dotting all the I’s and crossing the T’s.

That’s unlikely, though — Facebook was actually founded the first Wednesday in February of 2004, like today eight years later.

Sentiment from the not-very-sentimental co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg? Awwwwwwww …

And, if those dudes rush, we might even see all the deets of the Silicon Valley darling’s finances and other info — including who’s got what shares and who doesn’t — earlier today. But don’t count on it.

That’s right — Facebook is sucking up even more of your precious time, and it is not even fun like beating your mother at Words With Friends or creepily poking old flames.

Facebook, Web 2.0′s most successful start-up, is expected to raise many billions of dollars on a valuation of tens of millions times that.

In other words, blah, blah, blah until we get the real numbers …

To send you off to IPO dreamland until then, here’s the genius viral video reading of the book “Go the F**k to Sleep,” read by Samuel L. Jackson:

MORE ON THE FACEBOOK IPO:

• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg Is the Billion-Share Man: Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
• Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money”
• Mobile Highlighted as Key Risk Factor (and Opportunity) in Facebook Filing
• Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Temporarily Crashes SEC Web Site
• Zynga Accounted for 12 Percent of Facebook’s Revenue in 2011
• Facebook Has 845 Million Users
• On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in Massive IPO (Get Your S-1 Here!)
• Go the F**k Back to Sleep, Silicon Valley: Facebook IPO Likely to File Later Today at Earliest
• Dude, Where’s My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton’s on Hold!)
• The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
• Facebook Board Meeting Today for Final IPO Okays
• Facebook (Eye)PO: Tracking the Truth of the Biggest Deal of Web 2.0
• Viral Graphic: Visualizing the Facebook IPO
• Is Facebook IPO on Track for Late May?
• IPO Watch: Facebook Hiring Brunswick to Help With Comms for Expected Public Offering
• Complete Facebook coverage

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo has instituted a hiring freeze across the company and is considering a reduction in force in support units of the company.

While the details of any layoffs — which are expected to be small and selective for now — are still being worked out, sources said that the stricture not to fill hundreds of open positions is the first step toward significant cost-cutting initiatives across the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in the wake of what it expects to be another weak quarterly report next week and a looming proxy fight.

Yahoo reports its fourth quarter earnings Tuesday. While the company has managed to improve the results in the last part of the quarter, sources said they will still show continued weakness in its key businesses and consumer usage.

That’s as competitors such as Google and Facebook have been showing significant growth, especially in the display advertising market.

Thus, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson appears to be zeroing in on costs and managing for margins, said multiple sources, much as his predecessor Carol Bartz did at the start of her tenure.

But many think Yahoo needs even more drastic changes, including massive cuts in staff and also product arenas, to give the company new life.

That includes shifts in leadership at the top levels too. In a major move this week, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the company’s board and all roles there. More directors are expected to leave soon, too.

That will likely come after negotiations to sell part of its lucrative stakes in both the Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan are successfully completed.

While not a certainty, Yahoo’s board hopes that will happen sometime before activist shareholder Daniel Loeb initiates a proxy battle against the company in the coming month.

Sound complex?

It is, and also troubling to Yahoo’s long beleaguered rank and file, who have been worried about more layoffs.

The Yahoo troops have been under intense pressure and have suffered from ongoing attrition. Just yesterday, for example, Yahoo lost one of its top advertising execs, Seth Dallaire, to Amazon.

The company can ill afford such departures of key talent, even as it seeks to pare employee numbers in other parts of its business.

At the end of its last quarter, Yahoo reported that it had 13,700 staffers, down from 14,100 in the previous year.

Yahoo, of course, declined comment.

The stock market is closed today, as part of the Christmas holiday. But it is doubtful — barring any major announcements — that the vastly different performances seen by a range of tech companies will change much.

Which is to say, some companies — such as eBay and Google — did well, although only Apple shares rose significantly enough to cause festive feelings.

As of Friday, Google rose almost 7 percent for the year to date, eBay rose 10.8 percent and Apple was up almost 26 percent.

As for all the others in tech? Lumps of coal for investors of varying size.

Let’s start with the better negative performances: Amazon was down 1.95 percent, Yahoo was down 2.7 percent and Microsoft was down 6.7 percent.

Not exactly anything to wassail about. And Yahoo shares were only down a little, since the recent swirl around its possible sale gave its stock a recent bump, or the performance would have been worse, based on its financial results.

And the oft-troubled AOL? Down 35.3 percent.

The crop of new Internet companies was also not doing so great. The latest, Zynga was down only 1.2 percent, Groupon down 12.5 percent and LinkedIn down 32.3 percent. Pandora truly tanked, with a 42.5 decline in share price. Only Russia’s Yandex bested that, with a 48.6 percent drop.

Enterprise-focused companies also had a lackluster year. While recently public Jive Software was up 9.2 percent, Cisco was down 8.7 percent and Hewlett-Packard was down 38.5 percent. Juniper got truly socked, with a 43.6 percent decline.

The music you are looking for right about now is “(Hey, Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” by B.J.Thomas, which you can enjoy here in this timely video:

Earlier this week, Google and Mozilla said they had struck a deal to renew their search royalty agreement for another three years.

What the pair declined to add: The search giant will pay just under $300 million per year to be the default choice in Mozilla’s Firefox browser, a huge jump from its previous arrangement, due to competing interest from both Yahoo and Microsoft.

Sources said this total amount — just under $1 billion — was the minimum revenue guarantee for delivering search queries garnered from consumers using Firefox.

Google’s main rival in the bid, sources said, was Microsoft’s Bing search service, which was aggressively trying to hip-check it from the main search spot on the browser.

That’s because the software giant has been spending a lot of money in efforts to grow Bing’s market share in the search market.

Microsoft, of course, also owns the still-dominant Internet Explorer browser, but Google’s Chrome has recently been making major gains over both IE and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Still, Mozilla’s recent negotiations with both companies was about search market share.

Yahoo was also in the mix, even though Microsoft powers its search technology, because a hookup with Firefox was considered a plus in holding on to its declining search market share.

But the deal, which was being pushed hard by Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving and its search head Shashi Seth, was determined to be too costly for Yahoo.

Costly indeed, since the new price is much higher than Google had previously ponied up to Mozilla. In 2010, Google contributed 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue.

A previous version of the partnership had expired at the end of November, and the new talks were done against a backdrop of simmering tension between Google and Mozilla over Chrome.

As Liz Gannes wrote earlier this week:

Since the first search royalty deal was signed in 2008, Google’s own Chrome browser has become a significant competitor. Just last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in global usage for the first time, according to StatCounter. Both browsers — software which is used to navigate the Internet — have about 25 percent market share.

Even with the new default deal with Google, Mozilla still also has partnerships with other search providers, including Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.

Of course, everybody declined to comment on my queries to hand over all the financial deets stat.

But Google’s SVP of Search, Alan Eustace, said in a statement: “Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come.”

Great, perhaps, but also much more expensive — so presumably Firefox is worth it.

Mozilla is set to announce that it has signed a new three-year agreement for Google to be the default search option in its Firefox browser.

It’s a critical renewal for the Silicon Valley software maker, since its earlier deal with the search giant has been a major source of revenue to date.

The companies said the specific terms of the commercial agreement are not being released. But, in 2010, Google contributed 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue.

A previous version of the arrangement had expired at the end of November. Mozilla said at the time that it was in “active negotiations” with Google.

The relationship has not been without some tension of late. Since the first search royalty deal was signed in 2008, Google’s own Chrome browser has become a significant competitor. Just last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in global usage for the first time, according to StatCounter. Both browsers — software which is used to navigate the Internet — have about 25 percent market share.

Mozilla also has partnerships with other search providers, including Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.

Here’s the full announcement Mozilla will soon put out:

Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement for Default Search in Firefox

We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.

“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.

“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.

The specific terms of the commercial agreement are confidential and are not being released.

Houzz has brought home $11.6 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital and other investors, including earlier-stage investors Don Katz, Gary Ginsberg, Oren Zeev and Amos Wilnai. Alfred Lin, a VC at Sequoia and former top executive at Zappos, will join Zeev and others on Houzz’s board of directors.

Co-founder Adi Tatarko said Houzz has increased its traffic tenfold since its last funding round of $2 million in 2010, the site has also introduced e-commerce features to drive purchases of home goods.

Houzz first launched in early 2009, a few years after Tatarko and her husband, Alon Cohen, purchased a home and had a hard time finding the right contractors for home renovations, even with friends’ referrals. (Despite the wealth of options now at their fingertips through their own site, Tatarko says they haven’t yet completed the renovation of their own home.)

Tatarko and Cohen eventually quit their full-time jobs and focused on building up the site to what it is today — a fast-growing (and slightly addictive) home renovation Web site that consumers can browse to create idea books and where designers, contractors and renovation experts can upload their portfolios to in order to attract more clients.

There are now 30,000 professional profiles on the site, Tatarko says, spanning 50 metro areas in the U.S.; Houzz sees more than 50 million page views a month and 2.5 million uniques. Users of the Houzz iPad app, which has been downloaded a million times, browse for one hour on average.

The site also now offers more options for sharing through social media, as well as virtual price tags on certain items — a lamp, for example, or a love seat in a living-room setting — that will direct a user to a place where those items can be purchased.

Houzz is currently free for consumers and professionals using the site; Tatarko says they plan to keep it that way, generating revenue through a direct-advertising model. Houzz, she adds, is on track to become profitable in the next year.

Houzz’s growth comes as the U.S. home remodeling market is seeing signs of recovery. This follows a 12 percent drop in spending between 2007 and 2009, due to the financial crisis, according to a report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. Home remodeling fared relatively well compared to new construction in 2009, with remodeling climbing to more than two-thirds of total residential investment; the market for renovations in the U.S. was said to have approached $300 billion in 2010. (The Harvard report does note, though, that all homeowners aren’t kitchen-gutting and paint-slapping-happy: Housing prices are depressed, and a record number of home owners are late on mortgage payments.)

Tatarko says she and Cohen will use the funding to invest in more engineers to continue to build out Houzz.

“Let’s go. Yes, let’s go.” [They do not move.]

– Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot”

In Internet terms, the removal of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz happened a dog’s age ago.

In fact, it was September 6.

Since then, it has felt like a slow slog, especially contrasting the situation with that of another troubled Silicon Valley giant, Hewlett-Packard, which fired its CEO Léo Apotheker and appointed a new one, Meg Whitman on September 22.

Since then, in comparison, the former eBay CEO has been like the Energizer Bunny, making a series of major and often difficult decisions, including: Holding onto its PC unit; reaffirming its controversial deal to buy Autonomy; promising a decision on the fate of its webOS unit within the next two weeks; appointing new execs; and even buying a company.

To be fair, Yahoo did acquire advertising start-up Interclick.

Otherwise, still no sale or investment deal. No new CEO. No Asia resolution. And, perhaps most importantly, no clearly articulated strategy going forward.

It’s not that Yahoo’s leadership isn’t working at it.

Some fervently insist to me that there is a “plan,” as if there is some clever game of Internet Stratego going on that I cannot possibly grok.

Mebbe — but of this I have no doubt: The Yahoo board has indeed been huffing and puffing away, weighing and measuring, considering and debating.

A lot.

Maybe I’m just too impatient. I am (ask my kids).

Or maybe Yahoo’s beleaguered employees are, one of whom just wrote me plaintively, “unreal how they can drag this out,” in what has become a common refrain up and down the ranks.

Or maybe it’s the Asian partners, Alibaba Group and SoftBank, who are antsy and have considered a variety of nuclear options in order to get back stakes Yahoo holds in them. Said one: “The strategy seems to be to frustrate and exhaust us into submission.”

Or, finally, maybe it’s the newly frustrated recent bidders for a partial stake in Yahoo, Silver Lake and TPG Capital. Declared one to me after I warned that Yahoo might, in fact, drag the proceedings out longer than you might expect: “I thought you were kidding.”

Nope, welcome to the Yahoo waiting game, PE guys!

So, to help us all get through it, here’s a quick update primer on what’s what on the various fronts:

Who’s in Charge Here?

Technically, it is the Yahoo board, which is aided by interim CEO Tim Morse.

First, a word about Morse: By all accounts, he is doing a very good job as temporary head honcho — calming the troubled company, making swift decisions about daily operating issues and being a generally nice dude to deal with.

“He’s Yahoo’s no-drama Obama, in comparison to what was happening before,” said one exec, in reference to the more volatile regime under Bartz.

Still, despite his very pleasant all-hands meetings, such as one earlier this week, Morse had previously been Yahoo’s CFO and not an Internet-savvy visionary to give the company inspiration. No insult intended, but he’s the accountant guy.

To be fair, he is not meant to be the visionary, but many at the company are yearning for exactly that.

A role that is now being taken up again by co-founder, former CEO and director Jerry Yang, who dozens of employees tell me is unusually involved in operational details these days for a board member.

I get reports of sightings of him all the livelong day: Jerry in demand-side advertising confab! Jerry chitchatting with entrepreneurs from a possible start-up acquisition! Jerry weighing in on a variety of products. Look, over in the cubicle, it’s Jerry!

This is seen by Yahoo employees as a good thing and also a bad thing, since it’s hard to be running your little divisional show at Yahoo with the dude who invented it all looking over your shoulder, even if he means well. People naturally defer to Yang, the 800-pound Web icon in the room.

But, given the overwhelming state of stasis at Yahoo now — “No one can do anything until we find out how the story ends,” said one staffer — and employees eying the exits, no power at Yahoo really matters but the board.

You know, the board that has gotten the company to this moment of crisis and profound ennui, which is its own particularly ironic irony.

To better understand the power dynamics on the board, above is a little chart for you to peruse to give you an idea of which independent board member is running what key committee.

The only truly important one is the Transactions and Strategic Planning committee, which is headed by Intuit President and CEO Brad Smith and includes former Akamai President (and former Yahoo CEO candidate) David Kenny, top HP exec Vyomesh Joshi and other guy Gary Wilson.

And, in completely visible shadow form, Yang. Multiple sources close to the situation said he has been a key force in the strategery around a possible sale or investment.

This has caused not more than a little tension among board members, but everyone seems to like the much described nicest-man-in-the-room, Smith, and hopes his cool head will prevail.

Another important part of the board is the Nominating and Corporate Governance committee run by Patti Hart, who is energetically and simultaneously — if pointlessly — in search of a capable new Yahoo CEO.

Or, as I like to call this mythical person: The Unicorn.

The Deal

As I and many others have previously reported, there are bids on the table for partial investments in Yahoo by two very powerful private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital.

It’s a PE rumble, with a side of Microsoft financial backing! (I think Silver Lake’s Egon Durban makes a very nice Riff, while Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is the perfect Officer Krupke.)

My fervent wishes for some figurative and dance-accompanied knife-play aside, the bids are essentially the same in general and different in particular. Silver Lake is offering about $16.50 a share, while TPG is dangling a tiny bit more. Silver Lake has power entrepreneur and VC Marc Andreessen on its side, while TPG is trying to get Silicon Valley fave investor and start-up whisperer Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners and LinkedIn on its team. Both have ideas on CEOs, strategy and what to do about the Asian assets.

This type of deal could happen suddenly and you’ll hear about it quick, since the losing side will immediately trash it to the media.

As you might expect, each director has their favorite PE firm, with some not liking Andreessen, some thinking the TPG bid is a little light, some for a whole-company deal and some wanting Yahoo to hire its own CEO and run the place itself.

Of course, the last one shows a disturbing level of denial and should be a nonstarter, given the board’s abysmal record on CEO choice and its riding of Yahoo to this sad point in its storied history.

Here’s what to expect on the PE front: A lot of wrangling behind the scenes with frequent leaks to the media about what each side wants and will not yield on.

CEO choice or no CEO choice, that is the question!

Also a big factor are Yahoo’s major shareholders, few of whom like the partial investment deal, which is known as a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity), because of the insiderness of it all and because they prefer a whole-company sale at a higher price.

There is also pressure from activist shareholders like Daniel Loeb of Third Point, who has attacked Yang and others on the board and is ready to pounce with a proxy fight if Yahoo tries to override shareholders too egregiously. And, of course, the inevitable lawsuits over any arrangement that seems to block a whole-company bid.

That said, such a mega-deal seems unlikely, since it is too pricey and despite a lot of noise that Yahoo’s Asian partners were ready to strike with a takeover in order to get back Yahoo’s big stakes in their companies.

That’s kind of like buying a store to get back the cool pair of shoes you sold, but bankers love to scheme up this stuff. While it certainly could happen, it would be a bear of a deal.

Perhaps more like Yogi Bear, hopelessly angling for a tasty pic-a-nik basket — but grrrr anyway.

But perhaps the biggest factor in all of this mishegas is time. There is none on a lot of levels, most especially the increasing level of brain drain and drift at Yahoo. After the New Year dawns, this is going to spin right out of control and amount to the biggest internal challenge Yahoo faces.

An Asian Solution

As I and others have reported, Yahoo is entertaining yet another proposal to sell all or part of its Asian assets back to the companies, which make up a bulk of its market valuation.

The relationship between Yahoo and its Asian partners has long been fraught, and today the difficulty of reaching an agreement remains a vexing issue. That’s because it is hard and complex and because no one wants to do what the other side wants.

I am no tax attorney, but it seems as if Yahoo will ultimately come to some deal with China’s Alibaba and Japan’s SoftBank, which could include big investors like Russia’s DST Global.

And, as I reported last week, the Asian partners want to strike a deal with the current board rather than lose leverage with a much cannier new owner.

It’s a tough decision in all aspects to strike, but would remove the focus on the fact that Yahoo’s most valuable asset is something it is not running and simply holds due to a good stock trade in years past.

Years past should be the operative thought here, since the Asian assets have nothing to do with what Yahoo needs to do with its core U.S. and global brand.

You know, the thing that allowed them to buy those lucrative Asian assets in the first place?

Strategery

And that’s the crux of all this, isn’t it? Yahoo needs a new strategy and fast.

Or it needs to clarify and hone its current strategies around advertising and media and define itself once and for all. While it often touts itself as a premier digital media company, it’s still not clear exactly what Yahoo is saying by that.

In fact, incredibly, sources told me that the board was still wrangling over the tired issue of what Yahoo is at its most recent meeting — essentially, is it a products company or a media company?

If I had to listen to that who-am-I-anyway debate again, I think I would scream, given how many important Web trends that Yahoo has whiffed in recent years, many of which were right in its own wheelhouse.

How much damage this has caused to Yahoo’s core business is a critical one to determine, with many feeling the situation is too far gone to revive it and others confident that this is simply an issue of poor execution.

I am in the middle on this one, but all the indicators of Yahoo’s business have long been heading in the wrong direction, and results in the next quarter are expected to underline this even more.

Thus, the board’s navel-gazing at this point is untoward, considering that it is presiding over the possibility of a sale that should not have had to happen in the first place. While it is not quite a fire sale, it’s no cause for celebration at all the attention, either.

In fact, it’s also pointless, since — if this all resolves as it should — the current Yahoo board will not be the one determining the company’s future any longer. Remember that: This group should and will be gone for the most part.

Yahoo shareholders and employees can hope, at least.

Then, it will be up to the next group of leaders to make the very hard choices — including what are likely to be massive layoffs and radical surgery on its offerings — for what’s to come next.

In the end, that is all that will matter. Until then, as usual, you’ll have to sit tight.

Last night, Yahoo’s board gathered for a pre-meeting dinner, a precursor to a day-long meeting today to weigh several bids from private equity firms to buy part of the Silicon Valley Internet giant, including Silver Lake and TPG Capital.

Among the thorniest of issues will be the low price that the firms want to pay for a 19.9 percent stake in the company. Silver Lake has offered $16.50 and TPG a dollar more.

In the past year, Yahoo share prices have seen a low of $11.09 and a high of almost $19. It closed yesterday at $15.70 — a price that is mostly due to sale rumors — making the offers not much of a gain on current market valuation.

The transaction type being contemplated is called a PIPE — or a Private Investment in Public Equity — with the investment below 20 percent, which allows Yahoo to avoid a shareholder vote on the issue.

While the Yahoo board had hoped for bids above $20, they are not expected to be forthcoming, considering the weakness in its business over recent years and the difficulty of returning it to health and growth.

Results in its upcoming quarter, for example, are expected to be weak again, with trouble in its advertising business, largely due to uncertainty around the business.

The low price, along with the attempt to bypass shareholder approval, is sure to infuriate Yahoo’s major investors, given they have watched the value of their stakes wilt over the years under current board management.

In the last five years, due to continually muddled leadership and the missing of key Internet trends, Yahoo shares have dropped 44 percent in value, which compares with huge gains from companies like Amazon and others.

Major Yahoo stakeholders are already irked by the PIPE idea itself, which could transfer power to private equity firms at preferential terms.

Another possible bone of contention will be the preservation of at least some parts of Yahoo’s current board.

Under a plan by Silver Lake, for example, it would get three board seats, as well as another one for a CEO of its choosing. Another seat will go to Yahoo co-founder and current board member Jerry Yang. There will be six independent board members, but it is not clear if they would be new or include some current directors.

One of the Silver Lake choices would be well-known Silicon Valley legend Marc Andreessen, who is now a powerful VC. The appeal of Andreessen is important to some major shareholders who have turned sour on Yang.

Who will be CEO of the rejiggered entity will also be discussed at the meeting. Sources said Silver Lake and TPG have definite candidates in mind and Yahoo has also been conducting an official search.

In other words, there’s a lot on the plate of Yahoo’s board today, which also needs to revisit continued proposals from its Asian partners — China’s Alibaba Group and SoftBank of Japan — to sell back its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan in various tax-free schemes.

Sources said Yahoo — which has thus far rejected such efforts — might now consider selling a part of their shares back, up to half. This would allow the company to give a cash dividend to its disgruntled shareholders.

If thwarted, as has been previously reported ad nauseum, Alibaba and SoftBank are considering their own bid with the help of other U.S. private equity firms, such as Blackstone.

Other PE firms — especially ones who have not signed Yahoo’s non-disclosure agreement related to any deal — are also hanging under the hoop, so to speak, to see what happens. At least one firm hopes the Yahoo board will reject the low-priced partial bids, leaving the court wide open again.

“It’s still anyone’s game,” said one possible bidder.

Except for Yahoo’s put-upon employees and shareholders, this is anything but fun. More on that soon.

According to sources close to the situation, neither CEO Mark Pincus nor one of its principal venture shareholders, Kleiner Perkins, will be selling any shares in its upcoming initial public offering.

While big investors often divest stock in IPOs, not all do. It is a carefully watched number by investors, who are always wary of insiders who unload a lot of shares in an offering.

But such activity by the fast-growing San Francisco online gaming company will be watched carefully since Pincus has recently been painted in a number of press reports as the greedy Mr. Potter of Silicon Valley.

Among the allegations is that he runs a poisonously tough culture that tracks its employees’ output and performance via elaborate data models that require extraordinary amounts of work, along with nefarious list-making of who’s naughty and who’s not.

That big-brother behavior has reportedly included taking away high-ranking jobs and the sweet stock options that go along with them from those execs found wanting.

While there is no doubt Pincus is a hard-charging personality, his defenders note that it’s due to a belief that life at Zynga is a meritocracy and that his practices are not any more heavy-handed than those at other firms.

Indeed, Pincus has a lot of competition in the tough-guy tech CEO category from longtime legends such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who set the gold standard for mean, as well as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and now Google CEO Larry Page.

Pincus does not even rate in this pantheon, which is more typical of tech companies than anyone would care to admit or, to be fair, care to care about. With big benefits, vast wealth and much latitude, many in tech don’t mind the grueling work schedules.

After all, it’s not exactly ditch-digging, now is it?

In any case, sources said the coverage has hit Zynga staff hard, as well as Pincus, who has not responded due to the IPO’s quiet period. That’s in contrast to Groupon, the daily-deals site whose own rough process was rife with highly negative stories about the company’s prospects.

While those media accounts were more aimed at the business itself and less personal, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason vociferously defended the company in a controversial letter that was then leaked and published (to me and by me!).

Pincus will doubtlessly have a lot to say to investors who ask about the company’s culture and its possible negative impact on attrition, as some stories have charged.

His decision not to sell, sources said, was inspired by Zynga investor and close friend Reid Hoffman, who has sold very little of the stock of LinkedIn, where he serves as chairman.

The action all begins next week, according to multiple reports, when Zynga takes its show on the road in preparation for an IPO that is expected to value the company at $15 to $20 billion and will take place before the new year.

It will debut under the ZNGA ticker on the Nasdaq market.

While some have been worried about Zynga’s future growth, its past performance has been a lot stronger than other Internet offerings. In the first nine months of the year, the company posted $828.9 million in revenue, double the amount from a year ago, with net income of $30.7 million.

Pincus’s holding onto shares will be seen as a plus, of course, although he has sold a large amount of stock in Zynga’s history.

According to its S-1 filing:

“From our inception in October 2007 to date, Mr. Pincus, our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Product Officer and the Chairman of our Board of Directors, has purchased an aggregate of 149,197,328 shares of our common stock. To date, Mr. Pincus has sold an aggregate of 43,629,310 shares of our common stock at prices ranging from $0.42 to $13.96.”

Pincus now holds 91.4 million of Class B shares, 16 percent of the total, as well as 20.5 million of Class C shares, 38 percent of that group. Kleiner holds 65.2 million shares, or 11.2 percent, of Class B shares.

Other big Zynga owners, who might or might not sell at the IPO, include Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures.

In a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning its upcoming IPO, Zynga is expected to unveil two key management and board changes at the online gaming phenom:

Chief Business Officer Owen Van Natta — who came to the San Francisco-based start-up several years ago to help CEO Mark Pincus grow it and develop it — will step down from his job and become a strategic adviser focusing on major partnerships. He’ll still remain board member at Zynga, but will give up millions of pre-IPO shares by moving out of his operational role.

And director and venture investor Brad Feld will leave the the board, which VCs sometime do as companies move to a public offering and add members with more specific business experience.

In his place, longtime entrepreneur and investor Sunil Paul, who founded a company called FreeLoader with Pincus many moons ago, will join the board.

Zynga confirmed the changes to me in a statement by Pincus:

“Owen is a valuable business partner. He’s made great contributions to Zynga and continues to be an important part of our team.”

Sources said the changes related to Van Natta around are not part of a recent controversy around a Wall Street Journal story about clawing back of some share options grants of early Zynga employees who had become less involved in the company. While the company cannot actually take back already vested shares owned by those staffers, the article has put a lot of scrutiny on Zynga and raised questions about how to cope with the kind of hyper-growth some Internet firms experience.

That’s certainly been the kind of rocket ride Zynga has been on, as it has grown from a small social gaming company on Facebook to a high-profile public company.

Zynga is in the final stages of its IPO process, answering questions from the SEC that are typical. If all goes well, Zynga execs are expected to go on a road show after the Thanksgiving and go public by the end of the year at a market valuation of close to $20 billion.

That was different from when Van Natta officially got to Zynga in the spring of last year — after a rocky experience running the doomed Myspace. At the time, he told me at the time that planned to be focused on scaling the business and did not consider himself a long-term operating executive.

Since then, he has helped Pincus hire a series of experienced gaming execs, including a chief operating officer, a chief marketing officer and others.

Zynga was Van Natta’s third high-profile Web company in recent years. He was a top early exec for Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook until early 2008, and in 2009 he took over News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, a job that lasted less than a year.

Early in his career, Van Natta was also was a top strategy, marketing and deal exec for Amazon, which bought an early social networking start-up called PlanetAll that he worked at.

It will now be interesting to see what Van Natta does next, but it is unlikely he will take a permanent position. He is a longtime angel investor in Silicon Valley, including in hot start-ups such as Asana and still holds a significant stake in Facebook.

But, in moving out of his job at Zynga, he will be giving up many millions of shares of a rich trove he was given when he arrived at the company. That said, Van Natta already owns millions of accelerated vested shares and will get another large grant as a board member.

Translation: Don’t cry for Mr. Van Natta, Silicon Valley — he made $42 million last year from Zynga shares alone.

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next week or so, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: A trio of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs — SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg, Joyus’s Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.

In the onstage interview with Peter Kafka, they give their take on the Valley’s culture and commerce, and how they’re trying to export that as they venture into Asian markets.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111108/surveymonkeys-goldberg-joyuss-cassidy-and-airbnbs-chesky-on-silicon-valley-innovation-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111107/what-answer-will-investors-be-demand-ing-in-the-q3-call-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20111107/what-answer-will-investors-be-demand-ing-in-the-q3-call-today/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:13:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=141087

Just last week, it seemed as if the dangerous riptide had finally turned for Demand Media, the social content company whose stock for the quarter bottomed out in mid-October, in the $5-a-share range.

It has now rebounded to close Friday at $7.76, with a market valuation of just over $651 million — still a far cry from a high of over $27 a share in the last year, but well below the target price of upward of $14 from Wall Street analysts.

That’s why there will be plenty of questions for CEO Richard Rosenblatt in a conference call scheduled for after the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand reports its third-quarter earnings, following the close of markets this afternoon.

Analysts are expecting Demand to lose four to six cents a share. Revenue is expected to be up.

One issue sure to be on the docket will be the traffic problems at its flagship eHow site, which stymied Demand in the quarter. The situation caused it to release a statement about the issue, “which the Company believes is temporary and was the result of an internal technical issue. The technical issue has recently been remediated.”

Assume you will hear more on that and other topics, including updates on the cost of its content and the continued impact on Demand of search-algorithm changes at Google, as well as how it is faring in attracting more lucrative advertising.

I will be covering the earnings and the analyst call, so tune in later today for answers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111107/what-answer-will-investors-be-demand-ing-in-the-q3-call-today/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111104/microsoft-windows-phone-head-andy-lees-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111104/microsoft-windows-phone-head-andy-lees-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:10:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=140838

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next two weeks, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Andy Lees, president of the Microsoft’s Windows Phone division.

As such — and coming from way behind, compared to smartphone leaders Google with Android, and Apple with iOS, iPhone and iPad — Lees is working to extend Microsoft’s longtime desktop hegemony to mobile.

It’s a great time to watch the full onstage conversation between Lees and AllThingsD’s Ina Fried, since Microsoft is holding a big event in New York on Monday to celebrate the U.S. launch of devices running the new Mango version of Windows Phone 7.

The update, which features Twitter integration, multitasking and other features, has already been available for older devices; new models, with the operating system preloaded, are just hitting the market.

Here’s the Lees interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111104/microsoft-windows-phone-head-andy-lees-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111028/news-reader-traffic-jam-yahoos-livestand-and-googles-propeller-set-to-launch-aiming-at-flipboard/ http://allthingsd.com/20111028/news-reader-traffic-jam-yahoos-livestand-and-googles-propeller-set-to-launch-aiming-at-flipboard/#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:35:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=137646

Memo to Flipboard, as well as Pulse, CNN’s Zite and AOL’s Editions: You might want to make some room in the already-crowded news and social reader space, because you’re about to get some bigfoot company.

Next Wednesday, according to sources close to the situation, Yahoo will finally officially unveil its offering, called Livestand.

And perhaps as early as next week or in the weeks soon after, Google will also weigh in with its version of the genre — code-named Propeller — which also might be the product’s name. Another moniker under strong consideration: Currents.

As I have previously reported, Google Propeller is an HTML5 reader for the Apple iPad and Android — essentially a souped-up version of similar apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping users better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies on tablet devices.

Flipboard, the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, is now available only on the Apple iPad.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

According to sources, Propeller will launch with a plethora of media partners, as well as integration into the Google+ social network. The aim of the search giant is to offer media companies easy tools for publishing content on these devices, as well as a better path to monetization.

That is essentially the same plan at Yahoo, which has been working on Livestand with hopes of it being a product that will woo publishers into tight collaboration with the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Livestand was announced by Yahoo’s now-fired CEO Carol Bartz in February, at a speech at the World Mobile Congress in Spain.

At the time, Bartz demoed a magazinelike platform that would allow publishers to put up content easily and give users the ability to personalize their selections based on search history and interests.

Bartz called it “content in context.” (You can see the demo video below.)

But while Bartz promised the product within three months, development has been slowed by its complex technologies, bugs and the need to sign on publishers.

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving is pushing the product hard as a way for the company to reinvigorate its media products.

It’s not clear how many publishers Yahoo will have at launch, and neither are the distribution plans, beyond flacking it from the Web site and being present in app stores.

Google, on the other hand, has its Android platform to push out Propeller, although it all must work as well on Apple’s iPad, which is the dominant tablet on the market.

But just because both Yahoo and Google are big companies is by no means a guarantee of success — think Yahoo 360 or Google Wave or Buzz — and their lateness might be a hindrance.

And, in fact, other news reader apps are much further along. The leader, Flipboard, has already had four million downloads and 50 partnerships with leading publishers.

It also has started to introduce rich advertising products and, perhaps most importantly, has tight social integration with Twitter and Facebook.

There will be social elements on both Yahoo’s Livestand and Google’s Propeller. But news reading will be stressed more, making them more like Pulse, a tiny but highly innovative start-up.

Each of the existing apps will presumably compete by adding on more features. Pulse recently added cross-platform, cross-device syncing, while Flipboard is close to unveiling an iPhone version it has said it was working on.

Yahoo and Google PR declined comment.

Here is the Livestand demo video from February:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111028/news-reader-traffic-jam-yahoos-livestand-and-googles-propeller-set-to-launch-aiming-at-flipboard/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111027/aols-biz-dev-svp-and-strategy-chief-heads-to-spotify/ http://allthingsd.com/20111027/aols-biz-dev-svp-and-strategy-chief-heads-to-spotify/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 07:19:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=137184

Jared Grusd, AOL’s SVP of business development and chief of strategy, is leaving the New York Internet giant to work at Spotify, according to sources close to the situation.

At AOL, according to his bio, Grusd “oversees the organization responsible for all domestic and international strategic partnerships and commercial alliances for AOL and each of its operating units. He is also responsible for identifying and evaluating new corporate strategies and opportunities for the company.”

The marathon fiend and former Google exec — who held top legal-deal jobs there — also serves on AOL’s Executive Management Team.

It is not clear what the well-respected Grusd will be doing at the online music service, which has been expanding its executive ranks as it has moved aggressively into the U.S. market. But sources said it was a high-level position in New York.

Spotify recently hired former Clear Channel exec Gerrit Meier as GM of distribution and partnerships, reporting to U.S. head Ken Parks.

Spotify also just scooped up former AOL sales head Jeff Levick — another Google alum — as its chief advertising officer.

The departure of Grusd further thins out the exec ranks at AOL, which is still mired in a turnaround under the leadership of CEO Tim Armstrong (yes, he too is a former Googler!).

I lobbed a query into AOL PR for comment, and am awaiting news of my news.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111027/aols-biz-dev-svp-and-strategy-chief-heads-to-spotify/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111017/all-eyes-on-yahoos-q3-earnings-tomorrow-with-results-under-pressure/ http://allthingsd.com/20111017/all-eyes-on-yahoos-q3-earnings-tomorrow-with-results-under-pressure/#comments Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:23:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=132860

Tomorrow, after the markets close, Yahoo will announce its third-quarter earnings, perhaps one of its more important reports in recent years.

Wall Street analysts are expecting the Silicon Valley Internet giant to report earnings of 17 cents per share on $1.07 billion in revenues.

But whether or not Yahoo has beat expectations will be less scrutinized than information about the state of Yahoo’s key search and display advertising businesses, as well as other user metrics.

It is at those numbers that a range of players — including major shareholders, possible bidders and media — will be looking to see just how badly the company’s business has fared with all the turmoil of late.

That has included the firing of its CEO Carol Bartz, a massive strategic review that includes the possibility of a sale to a range of mostly private equity buyers, a persistent attrition problem and a worry that the company continues to drift in its product innovation, even as others have surged.

Last week, I reported that Yahoo had finally selected an executive search firm to help it find a new CEO, which many think is a difficult task given the uncertain situation.

A series of worrisome trends across its ad businesses over several recent quarters has some looking at the company for possible purchase with some skepticism.

“What if it is too broken to fix, what if trends to Google’s and Facebook’s premium offerings is too overwhelming?” said one potential bidder for Yahoo. “There are a lot of what-ifs at Yahoo.”

By comparison, Google posted impressive earnings last week.

Yahoo stock closed at $15.70 today, down 1.3 percent.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111017/all-eyes-on-yahoos-q3-earnings-tomorrow-with-results-under-pressure/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111001/vcs-unite-chamath-palihapitiya-decries-airbnbs-recent-112m-funding-for-excessive-founder-control-and-cashout-in-email/ http://allthingsd.com/20111001/vcs-unite-chamath-palihapitiya-decries-airbnbs-recent-112m-funding-for-excessive-founder-control-and-cashout-in-email/#comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:39:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=127222

Here’s some electric weekend reading for those interested in the push and pull between venture investors and start-ups in the frothy Web 2.0 environment.

In an email to Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky (which I obtained, embedded below), former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya, who now runs an investment fund called the Social+Capital Partnership, is passing on participating in the recent $112 million round for the hot online rental site that was announced in July.

The deal — which values the company at $1.2 billion — has not officially closed yet, but includes venture firms such as DST Global, Andreessen Horowitz and others. Previous investors include Sequoia Capital.

Palihapitiya confirmed to me that it was his email and that his possible investment in Airbnb was small.

That said, his concerns center on how much voting control of new investors’ preferred shares the founders have in the latest round and also a $22.5 million cashing out, $21 million of which is going to those founders.

Another $9.6 million is being used to buy secondary stock from current Airbnb shareholders, who have to render parts of their vested stakes for the money.

Such wrangling between investors and entrepreneurs is not uncommon in Silicon Valley these days, as ever-dumber money chases ever-more-powerful geeks. But Palihapitiya’s email is a smart, reasonable and well-written argument to stop the madness.

According to sources close to Airbnb, the numbers that he refers to below are accurate, as is what appears to be an unusual level of voting control by its founders. Presumably, it is to protect the company from possible future sales on the secondary markets and to keep control with its founders as the number of investors grows.

In any case, the Palihapitiya email to Chesky is well worth the read (I have removed email addresses as a courtesy):

From: Chamath Palihapitiya
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2011 11:16:05 -0700

To: Brian Chesky

Subject: Airbnb financing…

Brian,

Cc Marc, Reid, my deal team

Thanks again for giving me the chance to participate in your latest financing. I had a chance to review the docs at length yesterday and I wanted to follow up as, quite honestly, I’ve never seen a deal like this over ~60 investments I’ve done and I’m pretty concerned.

I’m all for getting the best valuation you can, minimizing dilution and maximizing control. We did this brilliantly at Facebook…all of our financings (except our first $$$ from Peter Thiel) were done not out of necessity but opportunity. As such, our investors had virtually no control and it resulted in a much better outcome. As we’ve discussed, I generally don’t believe investors add much to a success story and so minimizing their impact is a great strategy when you are onto something that is working.

This said, while several of these concepts are reflected in the current deal, there is one big thing that I am fundamentally against and violates my principles and will prevent me from participating in your round. When I saw that you guys were taking $31M out of the company, I didn’t think much of it as I just assumed it would entirely be via a secondary sale.

But as I understand the deal, it seems that you are doing only $9.6M in secondary and $22.5M as a dividend to common (of which $21M goes to you and your co-founders). I am really uncomfortable with this and don’t think its in the spirit of building a good, long term business. Effectively, it is a strategy that allows you guys to take money out of the business and not dilute yourself — I’m not sure why this is such a big deal when you guys are almost 90% vested and the financing is at $1.2B where your dilution is marginal. Further, it excludes many of the employees that probably have helped you and your co–founders get the company to this place as most of these folks probably don’t have any stock but have unexercised stock options and thus won’t get a dividend.

My basic principle on this stuff is that if you want liquidity, that’s fine, but you should make it available to everyone. Otherwise, no one should get it. Your current deal is the farthest away from this principle that I’ve seen in a while…this strategy has been done once before — at Groupon. We can see how “well” they are doing and how short term the investor community is now viewing their motives. I really think you can do better than this…and that you are better than this.

Separately, when you look at successful tech companies, it seems that dividends are an approach used by cash rich operations to distribute excess earnings — in fact, the most successful, cash rich tech company in the world, Apple, hasn’t issued a dividend and they have more than $75B in cash! Again, while I think Airbnb will be a good company, this is nowhere near the truth now — you guys still need to scale and build this thing for the future.

I really think you are onto something but I would implore you to not take the easy way out. Treat your employees the same as you’d treat yourself. Do things that you will be proud of and can defend to anyone including your Board, employees, prospective hires etc. In such a competitive hiring market, you are competing with not just your obvious competitors, but also any successful tech company who is also looking for great talent. A principle that treats your employees as well as you’d treat yourself is a huge strategy for differentiation, retention and long term happiness of the exact types of people you will need to be successful. In contrast, if you are viewed as self-dealing and shady, it will only hurt your long term prospects…

In summary, I’m passing on this financing because I strongly disagree with what’s going on. I’m not sure who advocated this approach but I did mention this to Reid [Hoffman, another Airbnb investor via Greylock Partners] last night and he was of a similar mind to myself and surprised this was the approach being taken. If you want some good advice — I would ask that you consider pinging him about different ways to think about going about the liquidity portion.

If you change your mind on how to close this financing, let me know and I’d love to reconsider. Otherwise, good luck and lets keep in touch.

Take care,

Chamath

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111001/vcs-unite-chamath-palihapitiya-decries-airbnbs-recent-112m-funding-for-excessive-founder-control-and-cashout-in-email/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110930/jack-ma-at-stanford-we-are-very-interested-in-buying-yahoo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110930/jack-ma-at-stanford-we-are-very-interested-in-buying-yahoo/#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:00:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=127071

In answer to a direct question about whether his company was going to buy Yahoo at a forum at Stanford University in Silicon Valley this afternoon, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Jack Ma said: “We are very interested.”

Said Ma: “We are very interested in Yahoo. Our Alibaba group is important to Yahoo and Yahoo is important to us … All the serious buyers interested in Yahoo have talked to us.”

Finally, at least one crystal clear answer in the confusion at Yahoo. More importantly, it is the first time Ma has indicated that he wanted to be a principal player in any deal around Yahoo rather than an element of a buying group.

Later, in answer to a question I posed about how he was going to do that, Ma said he wanted the “whole” company, but that the effort was complicated and included a number of players.

Again, he said: “We are very, very interested.”

I also asked him if he had visited Yahoo in his trip to California, which Ma said he has not in 15 days here so far. He said he has mostly been sleeping and eating, as part of a longer-term visit to the U.S.

Ma’s declaration came as part of a lively closing keynote speech at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he talked about the Chinese Internet company’s growth, focusing on how China is the next great Web economy.

Talking about competitors such as eBay, which have tried to enter the huge Asian market, he joked that “eBay might be sharks in the ocean, but Alibaba is a crocodile in the Yangtze.”

Of course, given his presence in Silicon Valley, one topic of interest was whether Ma would be heading over to visit nearby Yahoo and what role he will play in the current internal debate over the company’s future in the wake of the ousting of its CEO Carol Bartz.

The disposition on Yahoo’s Asian assets, which includes 40 percent of Alibaba and a large stake in Yahoo! Japan, are critical to the current strategic review of the company, since they make up a large part of its market valuation.

In comparison, the value of its U.S. and other global assets are small.

When later asked about his experience of being involved with Yahoo, which made a very canny investment by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang in Alibaba many years ago, Ma also said that he would do it again, but not in the same way.

The same way has to do with the level of foreign ownership, which Ma has been trying to reduce in a number of ways and which Yahoo has thus far resisted.

To answer a question about the fight between Ma and Yahoo over its Alipay fight, when Ma spun it out of Alibaba, he said the situation was tense, but that today “the problem is solved and I am half-burnt.”

He was referring to a settlement, which will require a lot of growth from the still-nascent online payment business.

Ma was asked later about the biggest misunderstanding in the U.S. about China and vice versa. “Our job is not to solve the misunderstanding,” he said. “Our job is to change ourselves to solve the problem.”

In another query about his relationship with Yahoo’s Yang, Ma called him a lifelong friend and also said he appreciated how much that meant to Alibaba’s beginnings.

“But, this is business and not personal,” Ma said about the current situation. “While we appreciate yesterday, but we are looking for a better tomorrow.”

The first line, for those not mad fans of the classic movie like me, is from “The Godfather.”

The question is, though, will Ma make Yang an offer he can’t refuse?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110930/jack-ma-at-stanford-we-are-very-interested-in-buying-yahoo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110926/the-attrition-begins-yahoos-latin-america-head-departs/ http://allthingsd.com/20110926/the-attrition-begins-yahoos-latin-america-head-departs/#comments Mon, 26 Sep 2011 22:17:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=125049

According to sources close to the situation, Guilherme Ribenboim, VP and managing director of Latin America and U.S. Hispanic markets, has left Yahoo for another job at a start-up.

The 12-year Yahoo veteran, who is located in Brazil, is widely respected at the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant and leads an area that is growing for it.

[UPDATE: A Yahoo spokeswoman confirmed the departure of Ribenboim.]

[UPDATE NO. 2: Also leaving: Connie Lee Schiefer, the well-regarded Yahoo veteran of more than eight years. She was VP of product management at Yahoo's cloud platform group.]

Sources said that attrition — already a big problem at Yahoo — is about to hit the company hard. While the board and its top leaders try to figure out a strategy — either a sale or whatev — in the wake of the firing of CEO Carol Bartz, Yahoo has yet to put in place a new plan to hold onto talent.

“The people walking out the door is about to become a flood, unless management acts,” said one employee in a common sentiment among people I have interviewed at Yahoo.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110926/the-attrition-begins-yahoos-latin-america-head-departs/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110922/exclusive-dst-silver-lake-and-yunfeng-to-lead-1-6b-tender-offer-aimed-at-alibaba-employees-and-others/ http://allthingsd.com/20110922/exclusive-dst-silver-lake-and-yunfeng-to-lead-1-6b-tender-offer-aimed-at-alibaba-employees-and-others/#comments Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:45:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=123431

Silicon Valley’s Silver Lake and DST Global of Russia, as well as Chinese private equity firm Yunfeng Capital, are leading a $1.6 billion tender offer for privately held employee and shareholder stock of China’s Alibaba Group, according to sources close to the situation.

Yunfeng, by the way, was co-founded by Alibaba Chairman and CEO Jack Ma, as well as other prominent Chinese entrepreneurs.

Along with DST, Silver Lake and Yunfeng, Singapore-based investment firm Temasek is also participating in the tender offer as an investor, but in a smaller way.

The deal, which has been discussed for some time, was signed earlier today and will be presented to its employees in an internal company blog, which will be in Chinese.

To get around persistent foreign ownership issues in China, sources said, DST and Silver Lake are ceding voting control of their stakes to Alibaba management.

If the tender is fully subscribed, that would mean a stake of just under five percent for the group, sources said, and it gives Alibaba a $32 billion enterprise valuation.

The impetus for the tender offer, which begins today, appears to be trying to address a cash-out, paper-rich issue for Alibaba employees.

There are no active secondary private markets in China, as is the case for tech start-ups in the U.S., and there is also no IPO in the foreseeable future for Alibaba. Thus, management has been looking for a way to give its employees and also other shareholders some liquidity.

This tender offer is not a capital raise by Alibaba and is only aimed at eligible employees and shareholders. The purchase of the Alibaba shares is expected to close before the end of December.

It will be done via a special investment vehicle, specifically aimed at this purchase, that includes a spate of investors. Giant Interactive Group, a Chinese online game developer, for example, said it had committed $50 million to the fund.

It’s not clear what the implications are for Alibaba’s biggest shareholder, Yahoo, which sources said is not selling shares in the tender offer. Yahoo’s fully diluted Alibaba 39 percent stake is now worth $12.5 billion in the deal.

That’s discounted due to tax issues and also the inability of the Silicon Valley Internet giant to sell its Alibaba shares.

In other words, investors will likely welcome this higher valuation, but realize a public offering is farther away than ever.

But it is interesting in that it clearly shows a strong relationship between DST and Silver Lake, which have jointly been mulling a possible bid for Yahoo along with Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, as I previously reported.

Some will speculate that Silver Lake and DST now have an in with Alibaba, which is important, since a large slug of Yahoo’s market valuation is due to its Alibaba and also Yahoo Japan! assets.

If Yahoo is sold, of course, the disposition of the Alibaba asset is an important part of the deal.

More to come, including the implications for Ma, who has been under siege of late around his spinning out of Alibaba’s Alipay payments service and the noisy battle that later ensued with Yahoo. Yahoo and Alibaba, as well as its other large shareholder, Japan’s SoftBank, settled that dispute earlier this summer.

His involvement in Yunfeng, which is buying the company’s shares in a special fund that Ma is not in, will likely attract some scrutiny, anyway.

Sources said Ma is a minority investor in Yunfeng itself, has no control rights and is not a director. In addition, Yunfeng has no relationship with Alibaba.

In another interesting twist, Alibaba rival Tencent has close ties with DST’s Internet affiliate that used to share the same name, having invested $300 million last year in the affiliate that holds major Russian Internet properties.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110922/exclusive-dst-silver-lake-and-yunfeng-to-lead-1-6b-tender-offer-aimed-at-alibaba-employees-and-others/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110921/former-ebay-ceo-meg-whitman-being-considered-for-hp-ceo-job-to-replace-apotheker/ http://allthingsd.com/20110921/former-ebay-ceo-meg-whitman-being-considered-for-hp-ceo-job-to-replace-apotheker/#comments Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:05:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=122967

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is being considered by Hewlett-Packard directors as a possible candidate for CEO, in a move that would replace its current leader Léo Apotheker, according to several sources close to the situation.

The appointment of Whitman — a longtime and experienced Silicon Valley exec, who joined the board of Hewlett-Packard in January — to the top job at HP is by no means a done deal, sources said.

But a significant contingent on the board is keen to remove Apotheker after what some directors consider a series of management mishaps.

If it occurs, it would be the second major CEO ouster in a short time — Yahoo recently fired its CEO Carol Bartz due to lackluster performance.

[UPDATE: Wall Street seems to like the Apotheker-gone idea, with HP shares spiking almost eight percent on our news, as well as a simultaneous Bloomberg report. The rise has added almost $3 billion to HP's market valuation.]

In addition, sources said Whitman has been contemplating taking another big exec job, after a 10-year stint at eBay, which was followed by an unsuccessful run as the Republican nominee for governor of California last year. Since then, she has been a part-time consultant at top venture firm Kleiner Perkins.

Her role there — which has largely been seen as a temporary one — has included acting as a strategic adviser to start-ups and evaluating investment opportunities.

Sources said Whitman — who has also been active with her family foundation — has shown some interest in talking about taking the HP job.

Turning to Whitman would not be a surprise, given there are few execs in tech experienced enough to run such a large and complex organization as HP.

Still, her expertise has mostly been in the consumer space and she has never run what is largely a hardware company and one with major enterprise clients.

So, if appointed, Whitman would need a lot of help, especially to fix one with as many troubles as HP has seen of late.

That is why the board has been meeting by phone and in person this week to talk about a range of issues, focused in part on how to spin the company out of its current cycle of bad news and what to do about the situation.

Its most recent spate of trouble was the announcement of layoffs of hundreds of employees in its Palm division.

This inevitable move to jettison Palm employees came after HP’s sudden news in August that it was shuttering its webOS hardware business.

Add to that a proposed class action lawsuit, filed Sept. 13 in the U.S. District Court for Central California, along with another handful of law firms that are launching their own investigations of HP over the move.

In the suit, according to a report by Arik Hesseldahl, an “HP shareholder named Richard Gammel alleged that comments by CEO Léo Apotheker — concerning the company’s earnings expectations, the importance of its personal computer business and plans to move ahead with devices running the webOS operating system — gave a vastly different indication of actions HP took on Aug. 18, when it killed the webOS hardware business and announced plans to spin off the PC business and spend $10 billion to acquire Autonomy.”

In other words, lots to discuss for HP’s directors, who have been under siege, essentially, ever since the former CEO Mark Hurd resigned under pressure more than a year ago over a variety of allegations about expense reports related to a sexual harassment inquiry. The board found no evidence to support the sexual harassment claim.

In the wake of that scandal, HP appointed Apotheker to take over for Hurd.

It has been a bumpy ride, as HP’s stock has plummeted almost 43 percent in a year’s time. By comparison, rival Oracle’s shares are up more than three percent in the same period, and Apple stock has risen more than 50 percent.

That share decline, given a series of major moves and just as many gaffes, has put Apotheker — who has been trying to reposition HP largely as an enterprise company — in the hot seat.

An HP spokeswoman declined to comment. I have several calls in to reach Whitman and have not yet heard back.

More to come, obviously. But, until there is more news, here is the video of the full interview with Apotheker at the ninth D: All Things Digital conference this summer.

At D9, the former SAP chief declared that he would not ship the now-doomed TouchPad until it was perfect. Ooops!

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110921/former-ebay-ceo-meg-whitman-being-considered-for-hp-ceo-job-to-replace-apotheker/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110921/google-cries-bing-and-yelp-yelps-as-senate-hearings-commence-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20110921/google-cries-bing-and-yelp-yelps-as-senate-hearings-commence-today/#comments Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:59:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=122853 Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Later today, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will appear at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee for hearings on whether Google is a search bully or not.

Schmidt, according to written testimony obtained by the Politico blog, will be trotting out the company’s longtime argument that its competitors are “only one click away” from taking Google down.

And, in what can only be described as a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding furthering of that meme, Schmidt will apparently claim that Microsoft’s much tinier Bing search service could catch and pass Google by next year.

Reads the testimony, according to Politico: “Microsoft’s Bing launched in June 2009 and has grown so rapidly that some commentators have speculated that it could overtake Google as early as 2012.”

Say what? Say ridonkulous! The Facebook worry, I get, but costing-Microsoft-a-billion-a-quarter Bing?

That’s because in the most recent market-share report from comScore, Google had 64.8 percent of the total, with Yahoo at 16.3 percent and Bing at 14.7 percent. Even combining the pair — who are currently in a search partnership — they still have less than half the share that Google has.

In any case, although the Google-as-imminently-threatened concept displays a lot of gumption, it’ll be interesting watching Schmidt try to sell it.

And also to see Google’s critics call foul.

After Schmidt appears, there will be a second panel, featuring Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman; Jeffrey Katz, CEO of Nextag; and Tom Barnett, spokesman for FairSearch.org and counsel to Expedia.

Stoppelman, who almost sold his online reviews company to Google in late 2009, has since become a vocal detractor of the search giant’s methods.

In his testimony as well as exhibits, all posted below, Stoppelman paints a more dire picture of Google:

“When one company controls the market, it ultimately controls consumer choice. If competition really were just ‘one click away’ as Google suggests, why have they invested so heavily to be the default choice on web browsers and mobile phones? Clearly they are not taking any chances.”

Stay tuned for my liveblog at 11 am PT, as well as other AllThingsD coverage of the hearings.

9.21.11 Verbal Testimony _10am final_

9.21.11 Written Testimony _clean_

9.21.11 Exhibits

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110921/google-cries-bing-and-yelp-yelps-as-senate-hearings-commence-today/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110915/will-rim-not-disappoint-this-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20110915/will-rim-not-disappoint-this-time/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:43:22 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=121057

After a series of increasingly disappointing quarterly earnings announcements, Wall Street is hoping that Research in Motion will deliver better results today.

The Canadian phone maker — most famous for its iconic Blackberry devices — will be reporting its second-quarter earnings after the markets close later today.

Analysts are predicting earnings of 87 cents a share for the period, which is within RIM’s own guidance range of adjusted profit — between 75 cents and $1.05 per share.

Higher would be better, based on the hope that sales of its most recent smartphones with the Blackberry 7 operating system, and also its lackluster PlayBook tablet, will help its results after a downward slide that has been painful.

That’s been especially tough, since both Apple’s iOS and Google Android are surging ahead in the mobile market.

RIM hopes to also get a boost from the first phone using the QNX operating system it bought last year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110915/will-rim-not-disappoint-this-time/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110915/chegg-buys-zinch-in-another-move-toward-a-social-education-platform/ http://allthingsd.com/20110915/chegg-buys-zinch-in-another-move-toward-a-social-education-platform/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:00:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=120370

Chegg — best known for online rentals of textbooks to college students — said it has just bought Zinch, a start-up that links high school students and college recruiters.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The purchase of the San Francisco-based Zinch, said CEO Dan Rosensweig in an interview earlier this week, is part of a larger plan involving a series of acquisitions aimed at “how we move from two-day relevance to relevance all year around for students.”

By that, he meant the short time period when students either buy or rent their textbooks for the semester.

That’s certainly been a good business for Chegg, which is the leader in the online textbook-rental arena, including digital distribution.

But to further solidify its relationship with students and expand its market base to include high schoolers along with college consumers, Chegg has picked up a number of start-ups like Zinch, using its stock and also the whopping $220 million in funding from a number of venture firms, including Kleiner Perkins.

In late September, for example, the company bought CourseRank, which helps students share course schedules, take classes with friends, and read and write reviews on classes and professors, as well as find out how they grade.

Also scooped up by Chegg: Notehall, which is a student-to-student note-taking trading market; Cramster, a social homework helper; and Student of Fortune, a homework-answers site for student questions (which a recent filing by Chegg noted was bought for $5.9 million in stock).

Also being tested are such offerings as deals for students and other ways to leverage the original textbook relationship.

“This is the beginning of a connected student network that we hope to build into a giant platform,” said Rosensweig. “We want to have a student using us all the way through for a 10-year span, from high school on.”

In related news, Chegg said it has hired former Palm CFO Andrew Brown as its new CFO. Prior to Palm, he served as the CFO of Pillar Data Systems Inc., a storage start-up funded by Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

While a CFO hiring often indicates a soon-to-happen IPO, Rosensweig said that Chegg has more than enough capital, needs to focus on building up its offerings and is in no rush to go public.

We’ll see, but here’s the official press release from Chegg about Zinch:

Chegg Plans to Expand into $7 Billion College Recruiting Market and Increase Student Base By Over 3.5 Million

Chegg enters into a definitive agreement to acquire Zinch, the leading digital network that helps high school students research, connect with and pay for college

SANTA CLARA, Calif., September 15, 2011 – Chegg today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zinch. The acquisition is subject to standard closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of this month. The acquisition will expand Chegg’s social education platform into high schools. Zinch, founded in 2007, connects prospective college and graduate students to scholarships, admissions officers and other students who have been through the same process.

The acquisition of Zinch, with over 3.5 million members, $1.9 billion in scholarships and over 5,000 school profiles, will significantly expand Chegg’s customer base and its social education platform. Colleges and students will be able to connect more effectively for less through Chegg, helping to streamline the college recruiting process globally. In addition, unlike any other company in the education space, Chegg will provide resources to students at every major milestone before, during and after their college career — including bridging the gap from high school to college.

“Our mission has always been to save students time, money and help them get smarter,” said Dan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Chegg. “With our acquisition of Zinch, we’re extending our mission to high school students through the $7 billion college recruiting market, while continuing to break down the barriers of a college education, from the high cost of tuition and textbooks to helping students make money, pick their courses and get the academic help they need.”

At Zinch, over 3.5 million students have built online profiles to showcase themselves as “more than test scores” to shine in the admissions process, and to be matched with schools and scholarships that might be a good fit. Colleges and universities worldwide, including more than half of the US News top ranked national universities, use Zinch for cost-effective student recruiting and outreach.

“Getting in and paying for school is daunting. Together, Chegg and Zinch can not only make higher education more affordable and accessible, it gives students an edge in finding the right school, getting admitted and reducing the cost. Students can put their best foot forward, be recognized for their achievements and be discovered by programs that fit their interests,” said Anne Dwane, CEO of Zinch.

The acquisition is subject to standard closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of this month.
To learn more about Chegg’s social education platform and its network of services, go to www.chegg.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110915/chegg-buys-zinch-in-another-move-toward-a-social-education-platform/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110912/even-more-asiad-speakers-yahoos-yang-htcs-wang-samsungs-hong-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20110912/even-more-asiad-speakers-yahoos-yang-htcs-wang-samsungs-hong-and-more/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 05:08:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=119818

With AsiaD just a little over a month away, Walt Mossberg and I are adding even more speakers to the list, for what we hope will be an awesome event in Hong Kong.

Taking place from Oct. 19 to 21, the conference lineup is already impressive, with a mix of speakers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as Silicon Valley and more.

The previously announced speakers include: Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Asus Chairman Jonney Shih; Sony president and second-in-command Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai; Google+ guru Bradley Horowitz; Hollywood big shot Peter Chernin; Huawei’s North American R&D head John Roese; Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Andy Lees; and a panel of start-up stars — Joyus’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.

Now, to add to the kitty:

Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba. One of Yahoo’s first big investments came from Asian investor Masa Son, in fact, way back when.

Also on deck is LivingSocial’s CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear with Daniel Shin, the CEO and co-founder of South Korea’s Ticket Monster, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia. Competing there with its U.S. rival Groupon, as well as a myriad of local social buying services, the market is a tough one.

Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, we thought it was important to have Dr. Won-Pyo Hong. He heads global product strategy for Samsung’s mobile business, which has surged in the past year to make the Korean tech giant a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.

Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, the chairwoman of three Taiwan companies, including HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. But just this week she talked about the possibility of HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market.

That’s it for now, but we will have more big names to come, as well as some pretty cool demos we will be putting onstage at AsiaD. So stay tuned.

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