Last night, the New York Times dropped a juicy little tidbit into its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink daily update of the board mishegas at Yahoo around the deliberations yesterday over two competing private equity bids to buy a partial stake in the company.

No, not the one about Jeff Jordan — former eBay exec, OpenTable CEO and now VC at Andreessen Horowitz — possibly taking a big role at Yahoo if the firm’s bid with Silver Lake prevailed — which was mysteriously removed very soon after it posted (’cuz he will not, so good move, NYT!)

I mean the one about the venture firm’s big-kahuna partner, Marc Andreessen — who will indeed take a board seat and play a strong role in Yahoo’s future if his bid wins — getting a possible competitor in the Silicon Valley savior section of the ongoing show.

That would be in the form of Reid Hoffman, the well-known entrepreneur, VC and angel investor, who the Times said had talked with TPG Capital, Silver Lake’s rival in the Yahoo bidding, about becoming a possible partner.

Wrote the Times:

“TPG has held discussions with Greylock Partners, another venture capital firm, about a possible alignment, two people said. TPG is hoping to draw on the expertise of Reid Hoffman, one of Greylock’s partners and the founder of the professional social network LinkedIn, these people said.”

Translation: If Silver Lake has a tech icon of substance on its team to give uber-geek appeal to its offer — dagnabbit — then TPG was going to raise with another one, whom the very same Times reporter who wrote last night’s article recently nicknamed “The Start-Up Whisperer” in a recent glowing profile of Hoffman.

While I am still trying to grok what a start-up whisperer exactly means (and how someone as self-effacing as Hoffman would react to such a twee moniker without snickering), it’s a move that has likely already irritated Silver Lake.

After all, TPG aiming at nabbing Hoffman is akin to two crazy neighbors trying to one-up each other in holiday-lighting lawn decor. (You have a singing Santa, so I’ll have a singing Santa — and I might even add a Lady Gaga-themed crèche for good measure!)

But it’s not a bad instinct, either, to get your own live-action Silicon Valley legend, even if it is only half true in Hoffman’s case.

Because, according to sources who know such things, while Hoffman and TPG have had conversations, there have been no commitments, and nothing is close to being agreed on to link the pair.

That could certainly change, and quickly, but Hoffman or Greylock aren’t currently in TPG’s proposal to Yahoo.

That’s in contrast to Andreessen, who is all in (I am not even going to bother with “sources said” here, since everyone and my mother has seen the proposal) with Silver Lake on the deal to purchase 19.9 percent of Yahoo for about $16.50 a share.

As I reported earlier this week, for Silver Lake’s money and expertise in fixing broken things, the bid includes: Silver Lake getting three board seats; cash going to a buyback of stock or granting of a dividend to shareholders; the ability to select a CEO; approval of its strategic plan for Yahoo, and its solution to come to terms with Yahoo’s unhappy Asian partners; and all the purple wearables you could ever hope for (perhaps Yahoo’s best asset, IMHO, especially worn by such obviously cool dudes, as seen here).

Also, controversial Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang gets to stay around on the board (but only if he becomes very, very quiet, so as not to rile the activist shareholders).

TPG’s bid is less formed, although its price is slightly higher. And the PE firm has yet to check the “Big Geek Included” box.

Hence, the floating of Hoffman as a contender to take on Andreessen, who was once dubbed the “Golden Geek” by Time magazine.

I hope TPG does, soon, since what a matchup it would be!

But, for now at least, the pair — who share big investments in a range of Web companies, most especially Facebook (Andreessen is on the board of the social networking giant, and Hoffman was an early investor and adviser) — are at peace.

Dagnabbit.

Last weekend, I interviewed former OpenTable and eBay exec Jeff Jordan — who is now a newly minted VC with Andreessen Horowitz — at the student-run Play digital media conference at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

It turned out to be a lively session with the sassy Jordan, who talked about a wide range of topics, from entrepreneurship to running a scaled org to his first venture investments, such as Pinterest.

Luckily, I get to interview Jordan again tomorrow, at Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, along with eBay’s CEO John Donahoe. The topic will be mobile commerce.

Here’s the video of the event, with thanks to ReelSurfer for the embed:

The former DoubleClick executive, who sold his company to Google for $3.2 billion, had his pick of high-profile jobs, but instead has landed at a company most people probably have never heard of.

You can be sure that between Rosenblatt’s appointment and an injection of capital from Benchmark, that’s about to change.

Both Rosenblatt and Benchmark’s General Partner Matt Cohler will join the company’s board. Neither 1stdibs nor Cohler would disclose details of the investment.

In an interview, Rosenblatt told me that, unlike DoubleClick, this is not an advertising play.

“What was exciting to me about DoubleClick was that it was an opportunity to usher an industry into the digital age,” he said. “I think we have a comparable opportunity here at 1stdibs in the luxury marketplace. That’s what gets me excited about it. It’s not an ads business.”

The company’s obscurity in tech circles did not dissuade Rosenblatt from the opportunity.

“I have never come across a company that is as unknown among the Internet crowd, but is known as well as it is in its vertical,” he said.

Rosenblatt quoted from a Bain & Company study to highlight the size of the opportunity. It found that only three percent of luxury spending was spent online as of 2009, even though the market size totaled $257 billion in 2010.

Already, Rosenblatt said, 1stdibs’ gross merchandise volume of goods (the value of goods sold by dealers on the site) was set to exceed $500 million in 2011. He said the average price of each item sold is $5,000, which sets it apart from other luxury players, like One Kings Lane and Gilt Groupe, both of which are focused on offering daily discounts for items.

1stdibs plans to expand into more categories and geographies for growth. It has already gone beyond furnishings to real estate, fashion, fine art and jewelry. The company is a marketplace, so it makes money by charging dealers a listing fee to post items on the site. Currently, it has 1,200 dealers, who sell 6,000 items a month. Because dealers and sellers connect directly, similarly to eBay, 1stdibs does not stock inventory or have to manage warehouses.

Rosenblatt said he discovered the company through Benchmark’s Cohler.

Cohler said he learned of the site through his brother, a well-respected interior designer who was helping him decorate his house.

Cohler said that countless items in his house were found on 1stdibs. “I was astonished to see how incredibly powerful it was,” he said.

Ironically, Cohler was able to close the investment with 1stdibs and recruit Rosenblatt faster than it took to redecorate his house, which “is never really done,” he joked.

Cohler said that Rosenblatt’s appointment will lend the company the operational expertise it needs to scale a large Internet company. “I don’t think there’s anyone better in the world to take the company forward,” he added.

The 1stdibs marketplace was founded in 2001 by Michael Bruno, who had the goal of bringing the Paris flea market — famous for its one-of-a-kind items — to the Internet.

Bruno, who Rosenblatt calls a charismatic entrepreneur, will continue to play an active role at the company by working on strategy and consulting directly with customers.

Rosenblatt will continue to sit on the boards of Group Commerce, Twitter and IAC.

By the end of the day’s trading, the restaurant booking site had regained some ground, closing down only eight percent, or $5.23 to $57.50 a share.

But at least one analyst called the market’s bluff, concluding that the purchase did not mean Google was interested in competing with OpenTable.

OpenTable currently accounts for 10 percent of all diners who end up being seated in a restaurant, while Google mostly gains customer reviews and surveys from Zagat.

“The risk here … is that this marks Google’s attempt to compete directly with OpenTable in the Restaurant Reservation segment. For now, we don’t believe it,” wrote Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney in a note to clients. “Although Google has thrown a few surprises by us recently, we see it as highly unlikely that Google would want to enter the salesforce-intensive/truck-roll/hardware & software-install Restaurant Reservation business.”

Mahaney also noted that there’s little risk that traffic to OpenTable will fall because of the deal.

Today, only five to 10 percent of all reservations come from third-party networks like Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Zagat, etc. OpenTable, for example, is the exclusive restaurant reservation service on Zagat. Another review site, UrbanSpoon, was purchased by IAC two years ago. IAC, which owns a very diverse portfolio of businesses, saw its stock sink 15 cents today to close at $39.53.

Citigroup reiterated its buy and said its current price target is $82 a share.

The purchase of Zagat is likely a bigger blow to Yelp, which is still seeking an exit of its own after turning down a half-billion-dollar offer from Google two years ago. The companies are not completely alike. Yelp has been fairly successful in gaining a very broad audience, especially since Zagat charges for many of its publications and mobile applications — a very un-Google approach.

Google said this morning that Zagat will work closely with its search and maps divisions, but it also would make sense for it to work closely with Google Offers, which is trying to be the local deals equivalent to Groupon.

It’s a little bit like Groupon Now and LivingSocial Instant, which offer deals that can be redeemed immediately and are based on your location.

But the comparisons with the industry’s leaders and TownHog end there.

Lilia Martinez-Coburn, TownHog’s VP of product and marketing, explains that since getting into the business in late 2009, the company has shifted its focus away from building up a huge sales staff and competing one on one with the giants in the space.

Instead, it is offering the platform it built for its own deals to third-party publishers.

Today, its platform is being used by several companies, which already have the distribution and the sales force, including CBS Local Offers, OpenTable, Cumulus Broadcasting’s SweetJack.com, the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate and others.

TownHog’s consumer-facing site now primarily operates in San Francisco only, where it continues to help SFGate source deals.

This is the second time the company has shifted businesses. Previously, it was called DotBlu, a social games company that didn’t work out. But since the company still had some money left in the bank, it tried the daily deals business.

Many started to think TownHog was again on the downturn earlier this year, when it started scaling back the number of employees it had.

Martinez-Coburn explains it has been reducing the number of people on staff because it didn’t need as many salespeople, since its publishing partners were increasingly sourcing the deals directly. About a month ago, TownHog had 40 employees; today it has closer to 30.

“As our partners ramp up and are getting the hang of how to sell this, the hope is for them to take on the role and source their own deals,” she said.

Other companies providing white label platforms in the daily deals space include Tippr and Group Commerce.

TownHog’s mobile product, which it unveiled today, is called Express Offers. It will allow partners to quickly launch a standalone iPhone app to publish offers.

Unlike traditional deals that run for 24 hours and make you wait to redeem them, consumers will have the chance to purchase these offers immediately from the phone or online.

Going forward, Martinez-Coburn said she hopes that all offers on their network will be offered instantly because of the benefits to the consumer and the publisher.

Publishers gain the opportunity to run more than one offer at a time, instead of providing just one deal a day. In addition, Martinez-Coburn said, it will help with conversion rates. Right now, many publishing partners promote deals on the radio or in the paper, and when people see it or hear about it, they immediately want to go and get 50 percent.

When they realize they have to wait 24 hours, the conversion drops off.

The online restaurant reservations company said today it has appointed Duncan Robertson to the position of CFO. Robertson previously co-founded and served as CFO of SnapStick, a mobile app company. Prior to that, he was CFO of Aricent, a technology services company.

Three months ago, the company surprised Wall Street when its CFO Matthew Roberts was promoted to president and CEO and said Jeff Jordan, the president and CEO, would transition to executive chairman.

Jordan has since taken a job at Andreessen Horowitz, the large Silicon Valley VC firm.

When Jordan’s departure was announced, OpenTable’s stock fell $17 to $96. Today, the company’s stock continued spiraling downward, slipping another 9.5 percent, or $6.51 a share, to stop at $68.90 a share in after-hours trading.

OpenTable reported second-quarter revenues of $34.3 million, a 53 percent increase over the same period a year earlier. It was that figure that narrowly missed analyst expectations of $35.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters.

The company’s quarterly profits totaled $6.3 million, or 26 cents a share, up from $2.6 million or 11 cents a share in the second quarter 2010.

Despite executives playing musical chairs, Citi’s Internet Research Managing Director Mark Mahaney wrote in a note to investors that the company reported an “intrinsically robust” second quarter, and that revenues were only modestly below his estimates, whereas adjusted earnings per share of 33 cents beat expectations.

Other positive results:

• Its base of restaurants increased 27 percent to 15,560 year over year and diners seated totaled 22.2 million, a 47 percent increase in North America.
• Internationally, it saw even stronger growth, with its installed base of restaurants growing by 276 percent and seated diners up 249 percent year over year.

The publicly held company, which seats more than seven million diners every month, has partnered with a company called Savored.

Savored, which was previously called VillageVines, believes it has a solution for restaurants that like the idea of filling empty tables but are terrified at what a coupon deal might do to everyday business.

OpenTable has already begun working with daily deal providers such as San Francisco’s TownHog to provide discount offerings, but this works a little differently.

Savored gives people 30 percent off their dinners when they pay $10 upfront, unlike the typical daily deal, which gives people $30 for $15, or about half off. Diners must pay upfront and book a reservation at a specific time to receive the discount.

High-end restaurants, which may normally be afraid to offer blanket discounts, can designate the available times based on regular lulls.

The program debuts today on the San Francisco Bay Area homepage of OpenTable and will expand to other U.S. markets over time.

The San Francisco-based company has received $112 million in a second round of funding from well-known Silicon Valley investor Andreessen Horowitz. Other investors participating include DST Global and General Catalyst.

Andreessen Horowitz contributed about half of the round. Jeff Jordan, one of the newest general partners at the firm (and who recently left OpenTable), wrote about the investment in a blog post.

TechCrunch previously reported that the company was seeking more than $100 million at a $1 billion-plus valuation.

The second round of funding for the company is astonishing, given that its first round totaled $7.8 million.

The company said the capital will be used to generate new growth and hire additional employees.

The vacation rental start-up was recently featured in a WSJ story as having some of the most enticing job perks, such as wine and cheese mixers, rooftop barbecues and an air-guitar contest.

Airbnb has experienced extremely strong growth over the past year, and now has booked more than two million nights. It also receives more than 30 million page views per month.

The company expects to grow internationally, including in markets such as Germany, the U.K., France and Brazil, where it is already seeing some traffic.

Earlier this month, HomeAway, which owns several vacation home rental property sites around the world, raised $231 million in stock from its IPO.

The most recent addition to the list: AT&T.

As expected, AT&T Interactive, which operates its YP.com brand, today launched its first daily deals associated with its yellow pages offering in Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth and Los Angeles.

In many respects, the offers represent just another ad unit its sales force can pitch to merchants. To date, it’s primarily been focused on selling search terms, banner ads, coupons, and more recently, mobile ads.

Since May, YP.com has been collecting email addresses from customers who were willing to sign up for the offers in those three markets. Registration is now open nationwide as it plans to expand in other cities.

In addition to distributing the offers by email, AT&T Interactive plans to push them out over mobile phones.

Last week, Foursquare announced that AT&T’s Deal of the Day offers will be distributed and available to Foursquare’s app users, and AT&T Interactive plans to integrate Deal of the Day offers into its YPmobile app on iPhone and Android in the next few months.

In Los Angeles, it’s first offer was for $20 worth at Em’s Artist Café for $10; in Atlanta, it’s first offer is for 52 percent off three art classes; and in Dallas, it’s selling half-off tickets to see “America’s Got Talent” runner-up Jackie Evancho.

In addition to Groupon and LivingSocial, some of AT&T’s direct competitors will be Google, Yelp, OpenTable and Travelzoo, which are all trying to leverage their brand recognition and monthly visitors to enter the frequently very profitable daily deals space.

The study conducted by Rice University found that while more than half of the merchants believe they made money from deals, merchants report that a relatively low numbers of buyers spend beyond the deal value.

The report, conducted by Utpal Dholakia, surveyed 324 businesses that conducted deals between August 2009 and March 2011 in 23 U.S. markets from five major providers — Groupon, LivingSocial, OpenTable, Travelzoo and BuyWithMe.

The business reported that 55.5 percent of the time they made money, 26.6 percent lost money and 17.9 percent broke even.

Moreover, the study concluded that over the next few years, it is likely that daily deal sites will have to settle for lower revenue shares because it will be harder and more expensive for them to find viable candidates to fill their pipeline.

The four major red flags:

• A low percentages of deal users spend beyond the deal value (35.9 percent) and return for a full-price purchase (19.9 percent).
• Less than half of the businesses indicated enthusiasm about running another daily deal in the future.
• About 70 percent indicated openness to considering a different daily deal site.
• And only 35.9 percent of restaurants and bars and 41.5 percent of salons and spas said they would run another promotion in the future.

In practice that looks a little like this: Someone browses online for a particular product — perhaps a bike trailer. Later, when they are on a separate site, they see the same trailer being advertised in an ad. [See photo below.]

The second round of funding was led by Bain Capital Ventures. To date, TellApart has raised $17.75 million.

The company was founded in 2009 by former Google product and engineering executives Josh McFarland and Mark Ayzenshtat.

Other investors include Greylock Partners and several well-known angels, including Ron Conway, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, LinkedIn’s founder Reid Hoffman and OpenTable’s former CEO Jeff Jordan.

The new financing will go toward supporting additional customers.

The company says it has the ability to “tell apart” the best customers from the rest. By identifying the most likely customers to target, it says it can generate an average 7.5 percent user click-through rate and an average 4.5 percent conversion rate from the ads it places on other sites.

By retargeting, TellApart claims its clients end up seeing an average of three to five percent lift in revenue.

TellApart only charges for its platform when a prospective customer clicks on a TellApart ad and makes a purchase.

Customers include Diapers.com, eBags, Drugstore.com and Hayneedle.

Yesterday, Jeff Jordan, the company’s president and CEO, unexpectedly stepped down from his job at the online restaurant reservation leader. Boomtown’s Kara Swisher reported that he is likely to take a job at Andreessen Horowitz, a major venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.

Up until this week, the company’s stock was something of a Wall Street darling.

Over the past year, the stock jumped 322 percent, trading as high as $118.66 at its peak. Today, the shares fell to as little as $87.23 during the day. In the past two days alone, the stock has lost almost $24 a share.

OpenTable said the company’s CFO, Matthew Roberts, will be promoted to president and CEO and will join the board. At the same time, Jordan will become executive chairman. The transition will take place on June 1. Roberts will also fill the role of CFO until a replacement is found.

The sudden departure led analysts to voice concern over the urgency of the changes, including Roberts’s ability to manage three jobs at once. The company also reported first-quarter results today that were in line with expectations.

Jeff Jordan, the president and CEO of OpenTable who unexpectedly stepped down from his job today at the online restaurant reservation leader, is set to take a job at a major venture firm in Silicon Valley.

Sources said Jordan has spoken to several major VCs about moving to their firms recently.

While Benchmark Capital was a big funder of OpenTable before it went public in 2009, sources said the likeliest home for the well-known Internet player–Jordan has also been a major exec at eBay–is Andreessen Horowitz.

The move would be a coup for the firm, which has been busy adding partners since its founding only a few years ago by Web icon Marc Andreessen and his longtime business partner Ben Horowitz.

Jordan’s announcement that he was leaving OpenTable today during its first-quarter earnings call caused the stock to decline precipitously today, even though he said he would remain active as executive chairman.

CFO Matthew Roberts was named as his replacement.

Explaining the move, Jordan said:

“I’ve been managing Internet businesses since 1999. That’s 12 years of being in the tornado, and it’s pretty exhausting. I’ll be looking at the next challenge, but in terms of operating an Internet business, I’ve scratched that itch very well.”

It’s an itch that he will be scratching as a VC apparently and likely at one of tech’s hottest firms, which has investments in everything from gaming phenom Zynga to social buying service Groupon to microblogging start-up Twitter.

A spokeswoman for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment and Jordan has not responded to an email query.

The online restaurant reservations company said the company’s CFO Matthew Roberts will be promoted to president and CEO and join the board on June 1. At the same time, Jeff Jordan, the company’s president and CEO, will transition to executive chairman.

In a conference call discussing first-quarter earnings, Jordan said, “I plan to have an active role. I’ve been managing Internet businesses since 1999. That’s 12 years of being in the tornado, and it’s pretty exhausting. I’ll be looking at the next challenge, but in terms of operating an Internet business, I’ve scratched that itch very well.”

Despite the management changes and stock drop, OpenTable’s revenue was pretty much in line with expectations and its earnings per share exceeded estimates. OpenTable earned $4.2 million, or 17 cents a share, on revenues of $33.7 million in the first quarter. Revenues were up 59 percent over the same period last year, and profits jumped by 65 percent.

The company said its two big areas of growth are mobile, which has now assisted a total of 10 million reservations, and Spotlight, which offers Groupon-like discounts at restaurants in 10 markets. On the call, Spotlight was characterized as being the company’s fastest-growing product ever. The company’s first-quarter results also include the acquisition of toptable.com, which operates internationally.

For some more perspective on Jordan, here’s an interview he did with BoomTown’s Kara Swisher in September.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110503/opentables-stock-tanks-after-executives-play-musical-chairs/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110425/facebooks-response-to-groupon-launching-tonight-probably/ http://allthingsd.com/20110425/facebooks-response-to-groupon-launching-tonight-probably/#comments Tue, 26 Apr 2011 01:08:04 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=4824 Facebook will be introducing its response to the group-buying phenomenon tonight when it rolls out deals in five cities around midnight.

The timing of the launch leaked out early when the New York Times accidentally published its story early and then promptly took it down.

In a cached version of the story, which is also available in RSS feeds with the words “embargo-till-midnight/” in the URL, explains that the test markets will be Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco. UPDATE: The story now has been published officially.

A lot of details on how Facebook Deals planned to operate and how it anticipated rivaling others, like Groupon and LivingSocial–or even Google Offers, which launched last week–have been available for some time.

The one noticeable aspect that the unpublished article confirms is that users will be able to use Facebook Credits to pay for the offers.

Up until now, Credits have mostly been used for virtual goods inside of games, or for some movies. Facebook typically takes a 30 percent cut from those transactions, but it’s unclear whether that will continue to hold true for these deals as well. Users will also be able to pay by using a credit card.

So far, the economics of group-buying on other sites would in theory support Facebook taking a 30 percent cut. Typically, a merchant offers its services for 50 percent off, and then gives the company that generated the lead 25 percent of those revenues.

It was already announced that Facebook had signed up nine partners: Gilt City, HomeRun, OpenTable, PopSugar City, Tippr, KGB Deals, Plum District, ReachLocal and Zozi.

Facebook’s goal is to focus on group activities and to make it easier to share deals with friends when they see a friend purchase something.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110425/facebooks-response-to-groupon-launching-tonight-probably/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110324/more-on-facebook-deals-will-only-include-social-experiences-may-use-credits/ http://allthingsd.com/20110324/more-on-facebook-deals-will-only-include-social-experiences-may-use-credits/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 08:30:37 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=4717 A test version of the new Facebook Deals product will launch shortly, as has been reported and assumed for some time.

NetworkEffect spoke to Facebook and people familiar with Facebook’s plans about how the program will work, and what will differentiate it from daily-deal market leaders Groupon and LivingSocial.

All deals offered on the Facebook platform will be “social experiences,” said a spokeswoman–aka “things you can do with your friends.” That might include a discount for a karaoke bar or a tour of a haunted house, but not 50 percent off a t-shirt or a pedicure, she said.

Facebook’s deals will be available for considerably more than a day, she added, without specifying a length.

As for how users will pay for the deals, the spokeswoman said Facebook has not yet determined exactly how that will work, but it may include Facebook Credits.

This would be an interesting move, considering Credits are to date mostly used for virtual goods and occasionally for digital goods.

But deals may well have the kind of margins to support Facebook taking a significant cut (its current policy for Credits is 30 percent).

At the least, Facebook plans to handle Facebook Deals transactions directly through its site, said people familiar with the program.

Facebook and Google ads are a huge expense for deals sites. A deals site might typically spend $5 to $12 on Facebook ads to register a new user on its email list, said a source.

Thus, Facebook will have significant pull with deals providers who use it for distribution. Nine partners are already signed up: Gilt City, HomeRun, OpenTable, PopSugar City, Tippr, KGB Deals, Plum District, ReachLocal and Zozi.

Even if they had been invited to participate, Groupon and LivingSocial probably wouldn’t have, because they prefer to control their customers’ full transactions. The two market leaders have a policy of not sharing affiliate fees with distribution partners, while most of their smaller competitors often do share revenue in exchange for distribution.

The Facebook program is launching in five test cities– Austin, Atlanta, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco–and Facebook is actually competing with its partners to sell deals in those locations.

The Facebook spokeswoman said the company has “a very, very small sales team” devoted to this effort.

Facebook already has “Check-in Deals,” which are redeemed through the mobile phone. The spokeswoman said this program is “under the same umbrella” as the soon-to-launch Deals program, but uses “different redemption mechanisms,” because users are located in the same place as the deal when they buy it.

Meanwhile, word got out recently that Facebook had established a wholly owned subsidiary in December called Facebook Payments Inc.

In a statement, Facebook played off the subsidiary as a common move for companies in the online payment space. And it is–often for the purpose of establishing oneself as a licensed financial institution. For example, Google owns Google Payment Corporation.

Becoming a licensed financial institution could be critical to Facebook Credits–or any future Facebook payments system–because it allows for companies to transfer cash in and out of their systems. Right now, Facebook Credits have no real-world monetary value, and can’t be transferred. But if the Facebook Payments subsidiary were to secure all the proper licenses, the Silicon Valley social networking giant could potentially run a full alternative to eBay’s PayPal.

In the U.S., financial companies have to get licensed in every site, which usually includes getting all directors to sign off on each application and give fingerprints. Facebook Payments has only three directors from Facebook: David Ebersman, Dan Rose and Ted Ullyot.

The context for these moves is that Facebook has made it clear time and again that it wants to serve as a platform that helps companies transform industries by building in social from the ground up. This transformation has already happened with social games, and e-commerce is often suggested as the next viable contender.

Since Deals will be one of Facebook’s first major pushes into enabling e-commerce providers on its platform, it makes sense that the company is getting its ducks in a row for Payments and Credits. Especially considering the friction Facebook experienced after imposing Credits and its 30 percent fee on the social games industry after it was already established. (Credits, which support in-game virtual goods payments, will be mandatory for Facebook game developers starting in July.)

So, while Facebook Deals may be just a limited trial launch, the terms of how it is run should be indicative of Facebook’s intended involvement in transactions on its platform, going forward.

And transactions, it might go without saying, are where the money is.

(Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110324/more-on-facebook-deals-will-only-include-social-experiences-may-use-credits/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110302/the-next-web-frontier-finding-new-offline-friends/ http://allthingsd.com/20110302/the-next-web-frontier-finding-new-offline-friends/#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:00:37 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3915 Can the Internet help us meet people offline? Not like a dating site that’s cordoned off from the rest of the Web, but in more of a good-conversation-at-a-dinner-party kind of way? That’s a premise that multiple start-ups are currently exploring.

One, called Yobongo, intended to launch tomorrow, offers a mobile app with proximity-based chat rooms (or, to use the hip start-up term of the moment, “group messaging”). Another, called Grubwithus, arranges family-style meals at restaurants.

Yobongo co-founders Caleb Elston and David Kasper, formerly of the Web video start-up Justin.tv, have built their iPhone app with serendipitous conversations in mind.

Only 12 or so people can join any one Yobongo room at the time; users are highly encouraged to share their real names; and there are no topics or room directory.

Each time users open the app, they are placed in a room containing people nearest to their physical location and, if possible, people they have talked to on Yobongo before.

The San Francisco-based company is hoping for quick growth at the geeky petri dish of SXSW. It does have one feature that seems perfectly tuned for the Austin party-hopping crowd–iPhone notifications for when a Yobongo conversation is heating up nearby.

Elston said he thinks the mobile, social, geo-located experience can give chat rooms a makeover the same way apps like Instagram are breathing new life into photo sharing.

“Often the best times are small, impromptu groups of people,” Elston said. “It’s the sitting-around-the-campfire type of experience.”

Meanwhile, Grubwithus is one of leading contenders from the latest Y Combinator start-up accelerator class, according to recommendations from its classmates. The company arranges family-style meals with restaurants and signs up participants to book and pay in advance, usually at a discounted price.

It’s kind of like an ad hoc Meetup with food. Or Groupon where a group of restaurant coupon buyers dines together.

As attendees commit to a certain dinner, their names and pictures show up on a dedicated Grubwithus meal page. Those who sign up early get a small discount for taking a bigger risk on who their dining companions will be.

Grubwithus co-founder Eddy Lu said that in San Francisco and Chicago, where the site is already operating, 75 percent of sign-ups come from individuals rather than couples or groups.

Some Grubwithus meals are posed around a topic or celebrity diner, while others are more random. Lu said like-minded people tend to flock to the same meals based on the price.

Grubwithus, obviously, takes a cut of each dinner fee, and also sees itself as a marketing channel for restaurants. It is testing a feature to help users set up their own dinner party invitations and menus, kind of like OpenTable for groups. Lu said the company intends to start fundraising later this month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110302/the-next-web-frontier-finding-new-offline-friends/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110203/hearsay-labs-brings-compliance-to-social-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20110203/hearsay-labs-brings-compliance-to-social-media/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:00:42 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3222 Hearsay today launched a social media platform for companies that have both corporate brands and local representatives, with existing customers such as Farmers Insurance, State Farm and 24 Hour Fitness.

The San Francisco-based company helps its customers manage compliance with brand guidelines as well as regulations from the SEC, FINRA and the FTC. That’s especially important when local representatives and franchisees are networking with and recruiting their own clients under the banner of a corporate name.

It also helps these types of companies push out social media content for their local representatives to personalize, and analyze the effectiveness of their efforts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The idea isn’t to make social networking boring and corporate, necessarily, but rather to provide sample content to riff off and to flag inappropriate updates before they go up.

Hearsay stems from the work of co-founder and CEO Clara Shih, who wrote “The Facebook Era,” an early book about how businesses can use social networks. Shih then wanted to found a company around those ideas, and iterated her efforts until she found a fit. The company has been in stealth mode since 2009, but it is already cash-flow positive.

Hearsay raised a little more than $3 million in funding last March in a round by Sequoia Capital. Other investors are Michael Abbott (Twitter), Steve Chen (YouTube), Ron Conway (SV Angel), Nils Johnson, David Lawee (Google), Thomas Layton (former OpenTable), Dave Morin (Path), Patrick Pohlen (Latham & Watkins), Alberto Savoia (Google), Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures) and Aaron Sittig (former Facebook).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110203/hearsay-labs-brings-compliance-to-social-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110124/zendesk-growing-like-mad-adds-a-coo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110124/zendesk-growing-like-mad-adds-a-coo/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:00:33 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=2225 Zendesk, the Web-based help desk outfit, says its revenue has grown 300 percent in the last year (though it didn’t disclose an amount). It has also tripled its number of business customers, who use it to keep track of help desk calls, to 5,000. Add in iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps, as well as integration with Salesforce.com and Twitter, and Zendesk has touched some 22 million end users, the company says.

No surprise then that it’s beefing up its executive team. Zendesk named Zack Urlocker chief operating officer. Urlocker is currently a former executive in residence at Scale Venture Partners. Before that he was an executive vice president at MySQL, and helped boost its sales to $100 million before it was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

Among the new Zendesk customers are Groupon, OpenTable and Zappos Insights, as well as established brands like Adobe and Sony Music. This news comes on the heels of its $19 million round of funding led by Matrix Partners late last year, along with Charles River Ventures and Benchmark Capital.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/zendesk-growing-like-mad-adds-a-coo/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101215/microsoft-shares-its-new-years-resolutions-for-bing/ http://allthingsd.com/20101215/microsoft-shares-its-new-years-resolutions-for-bing/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:42:33 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=935 Microsoft is having a little Bing gathering in San Francisco. I’m told there will be some mobile stuff, plus I’m still having withdrawal symptoms after seven years on the Redmond beat, so I’ll be providing live coverage starting at about 10 am PT.

We’ll also see what they have to say about the Yahoo search partnership and its efforts to catch up with Google (and trip them up with antitrust headaches).

Liveblog

Okay. I’m onsite and nearly caffeinated. Yes, there are donuts, but Mobilized is going for the savory option.

10:03 am: Still waiting for things to get started here.

10:04 am: Microsoft search engineering head Satya Nadella comes out. “Okay, let’s get this thing underway.”

10:06 am: First up, some momentum stuff. Share is at 11.8 percent per comScore numbers released yesterday, up another 0.2 percent from October. Overall up 48 percent since launch. “We’re very, very happy with that growth.” Now over 90 million users, but the big deal, he says, is more heavy searchers. “We never had the fans of Bing and the heavy users,” Nadella says.

10:08 am: Nadella says Bing is still getting a larger percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds than its share of searchers as a whole.

10:09 am: “These are footholds that we have in the marketplace,” Nadella says.

10:11 am: Continued focus on specialized verticals (like travel, music, health, image search etc). Overall, such searches account for five percent of all queries, but specialized search makes up of 10 percent of Bing’s searches.

10:12 am: Partnerships: Yahoo is obviously the big one, but Nadella shows slide with Facebook, Twitter, Verizon., BlackBerry, Apple, Android, Foursquare and other logos.

There ave been 5.5 million downloads of the iPhone app.

Nadella says the toolbar deals are also important: They just give us a shot at acquiring the users. They have another one coming with Conduit. Also, they are now at least an option on iPhone and Firefox.

10:16 am: Nadella says the engineering team is focused on three areas, beyond the “arms race” of overall search quality–increasing the visual organization, task-centered nature and social elements of search.

“We’re neck and neck in terms of search quality and we are able to maintain it,” Nadella says.

10:18 am: Lots of talk about the ins and outs of search tech. Nadella says Microsoft has moved from a “neural net” approach to “boosted decision trees.” (No idea what that means.)

10:22 am: Effort to make search more social is important, but just beginning. “This is a journey we are at the very beginnings of,” Nadella says, but says social will change search in terms of how results are discovered, formulated and answered.

10:24 am: Nadella is talking about the importance of visual highlighting to call out various results as well as boosting interactivity, such as including forms within results so users can take action.

Still waiting for any new stuff, but we’re told it’s coming.

Nadella says the company has broken down a list of the tasks people are trying to do when they are trying to do more than just navigate to a particular site.

“We have a pretty granular understanding just looking at the query stream of what people are trying to get done.”

Microsoft has broken it down to some 150 categories, but here are some of the top ones: 4.6 percent of searches are music related, 1.8 percent clothing and shoes, 1.6 percent consumer electronics, 1.1 recipes, 1.3 percent home furnishings.

10:29 am: On to some new stuff.

New image search launching today, but first Microsoft is talking about visual search for things like finding movies and giving direct answers for some new types of queries.

10:31 am: Microsoft is talking about any sort of non-search result as “answers.”

In one case, an “answer” for the query “let’s make a deal” would be video episodes of the game show.

But Microsoft says that automatically putting it at the top is not necessarily best. What the company says it should do instead is put it below the first two results, such as the show’s homepage, which get more clicks than the video.

10:35 am: Also when a user searches flights from Denver to Las Vegas in June, Microsoft pre-populates the fields in a flight search with a guess at the dates, in this case the first weekend in June.

10:38 am: New image search represents first major changes in a year. Biggest shift is white space is gone with just a ton of tiles of images, with some categories at the top.

For example, search “Casablanca” and you get an option for the city in Morocco, another for the movie, a third for the style of wedding dress and another for the Casablanca Lily flower.

10:40 am: On to shopping. Quadrupled the number of products in its database.

10:43 am: Bing is adding a new focus on places as “destinations” with all the potential content from booking a flight or hotel to maps and attractions.

Which is nice, because I’m ready to go on a vacation right about now.

They use weather data to show times to go to and times to avoid a particular place.

10:45 am: Microsoft is beefing up event listings with partnership from FanSnap and other partners. You get ticket info, diagram of stadium, etc.

10:50 am: Back to social. Nadella says search can change by using one’s social graph to influence search results.

First example, you will start to see when your Facebook friends “Like” a page that is in search results.

For now, such results will only come up fairly infrequently, but Nadella says it will be a big deal when you do see pages that your friends have liked.

Search allows the data your friends share on Facebook to come to you when you actually want the information.

“In a way you are taking your friends with you,” says Microsoft’s Paul Yiu.

An example is when you are shopping for a product or going to visit a place–that’s a time when you really want to know what your friends think.

(Seems pretty cool, but wondering just how infrequently this will show up.)

10:57 am: Another example Yiu gives is a search one might do at 3 am for what will make your baby stop crying. There are lots of results, but one that your friend likes might be worth trying first.

11:00 am: Bing is also using one’s Facebook social circle to rank results in people search–i.e., if you have a friend in common, it will rank that “John Doe” higher than one you don’t know.

11:01 am: Nadella is back to talk about local and maps and how that integrates with mobile. Behind him Blaise Aguera y Arcas is pulling out several phones to do a demo. (And they look like iPhones.)

11:03 am: Aguera y Arcas takes the stage to show some changes coming to maps, first on the desktop. He notes the recent shift away from putting its most powerful map features on a Silverlight-powered site. Now it is moving that all to an HTML5-based site that needs no plug-ins.

11:07 am: Bing is bringing the “tasks” concept to searches within maps. A search for a restaurant now brings up not just a map, but more info on the eatery and also the ability to make reservations via OpenTable.

11:09 am: Aguera y Arcas switches to the iPhone. Shows how people can add their own panoramas to maps using a cellphone.

11:13 am: iPhone demo over 3G is going really slow. Aguera y Arcas asks how many of the reporters in the room are using 3G.

11:15 am: Although its going painfully slow, looks like Bing app starts to recognize a restaurant search and pops up options like types of cuisine and price. The goal is to save keystrokes.

Other options are things like get a map, make a reservation, menus, etc.

Still R-E-A-L-L-Y S-L-O-W.

“This bandwidth situation is really going to suck for what I have to demo next.”

He switches to a first-person StreetSide view, but all we see are dots.

“This is so sad,” Aguera y Arcas says, lamenting that we aren’t able to see all the cool stuff. There does seem to be some new StreetSide view stuff on the iPhone app that could be neat, assuming it runs faster on the street than inside this demo room.

11:23 am: We’ve reached a new low. “Close your eyes and imagine….” Aguera y Arcas says, and then describes what the app would do if we could see it.

11:23 am: And they have switched to Wi-Fi. “This is so exciting,” Aguera y Arcas says. Now he’s going back to StreetSide. “That’s so much nicer.”

As for directions, Bing now has bus directions with schedule info in addition to driving and walking directions. “It’s about time,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for this one myself.”

Another feature reminds you to do something when you reach a certain place, like call someone or check-in to FourSquare or Facebook.

11:29 am: Aguera says we are in Search 2.0–where you do more than just search and get results.

Image search is an example. Shows the coming ability to search for something by using a camera to start a search. Basically you can shoot a picture of a page and use any of the terms there to start searching (It uses character recognition in the background).

Questions and Answers

---

11:32 am: How big a deal is Google Instant?

“We are absolutely studying Google Instant,” Nadella says. Says they could match it. It’s a question of whether it makes task completion easier. “Is it a value or a distraction?” Doing studies and so far Microsoft’s research says it is mixed at best.

“It’s not a game changer. It’s a nice feature at best.”

He hedges a bit on whether it is something Microsoft needs to match.

11:39 am: Mobile features were demoed on iPhone. So when will they come to Windows Phone 7 and other platforms?

Nadella says they now have software for most major phone operating systems, including Android.

“The different devices have different schedules,” he says.

11:42 am: And we’re out of here….Thanks for tuning in.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101215/microsoft-shares-its-new-years-resolutions-for-bing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101019/presto-chango-kaching-becomes-wealthfront/ http://allthingsd.com/20101019/presto-chango-kaching-becomes-wealthfront/#comments Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:00:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35771

Today, the execs at kaChing, a social investing site, are ringing the closing bell at the Nasdaq–actually, it is more of a button-pushing–to herald in a complete shift for the Palo Alto, Calif., start-up.

That includes a new name for the year-old company–it is now officially called Wealthfront–which signals a focus on linking professional money managers to customers and a move away from the “American Idol” investor talent discovery approach that kaChing had been founded on.

Now, Wealthfront is trying to solve the thorny problem of delivering good investment advice and actionable tools online.

Using a “methodology of the Ivy League endowments, to identify which money managers will outperform”–sounds fancy!–Wealthfront has vetted 25 investor options to be offered on its platform for anyone with a minimum of $10,000 to sink into equities (no bonds for now).

It’s certainly an interesting, if risky, move, for kaChing/Wealthfront, which has garnered $10.5 million in funding from a range of big Silicon Valley names, such as Marc Andreessen and OpenTable CEO Jeff Jordan.

Thus, here is a video interview I did yesterday with CEO Andy Rachleff and founder Dan Carroll explaining it all:

And here is the official press release on the switcheroo:

KACHING BECOMES WEALTHFRONT, APPEAL OF PERFORMANCE ATTRACTS MORE THAN $100M TO INVESTING SITE IN FIRST YEAR

Wealthfront Introduces Manager Recommendations, Makes it Even Easier for
33 Million American Households to Invest Well

Palo Alto, Calif., October 20, 2010–One-year after launching its investing platform, the company known as kaChing formally announced today that it has changed its name to Wealthfront and unveiled a host of new product features as the company continues to deliver on its promise to make it easy to invest well. An SEC Registered Investment Advisor, Wealthfront also announced more than 25 registered money managers have qualified and joined Wealthfront, and that it has attracted more than $100 million in assets to its investing platform.

Average American investors, made up of 33 million American households with a net worth of between $100,000 and $1.5 million, have collectively invested $7 trillion in the stock market. Yet the average American with a net worth of less than $1.5 million has long been conditioned to believe it is impossible to outperform the market. A recent study, commissioned by Wealthfront and conducted by telephone by Harris Interactive confirmed this attitude, finding that only 6% of all U.S. adults, and only 3% of those with a financial advisor, “strongly agree” that financial advisors know how to consistently outperform the market. This finding is unsurprising since access to quality money managers has been traditionally limited to wealthy individuals with a net worth of at least $1.5 million who can afford the high minimum investment requirements.

“People have been conditioned to believe outstanding performance is impossible, but we think it IS possible,” said Andy Rachleff, CEO of Wealthfront. “Everyone deserves a better way to invest, and with our ability to vet, select and recommend outstanding money managers for investors, we believe Wealthfront can meet this need.”

Wealthfront Managers Outperformed the Market in Last Twelve Months

Wealthfront has built its business on the fundamental belief that it is not only possible to consistently outperform the market, but that it is also possible, using the methodology of the Ivy League endowments, to identify which money managers will outperform.

Since launching as an SEC registered investment advisor one year ago, Wealthfront has applied its rigorous vetting process, for which an average of only one in ten managers qualify, to add 25 top professional money managers to its investing platform and make them accessible to anyone with a minimum of $10,000 to invest. Together over the past year, Wealthfront’s managers have collectively outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 6% net of fees.

Today’s announcement, that Wealthfront has attracted more than $100 million in assets to its platform, further demonstrates the company’s appeal to both average investors looking for a better way to invest and to top professional money managers looking to scale their business through cost-effective distribution.

“With Wealthfront, we can easily and cost-effectively access a new segment of investors by taking on accounts well below our historic minimums,” said Colin Higgins, president of The Golub Group, an investment management firm with more than $600 million under management. “There’s no reason average investors with a net worth of less than $1 million shouldn’t have more options to invest their money. Now with Wealthfront–they do.”

Recommendations Make Finding the Best Money Managers for You Easy

According to the Harris Interactive survey, about one in two U.S. adults believe they know how to evaluate financial advisors. Responding to the need to make it easier for the average investor to invest well, Wealthfront also unveiled today its new recommendation engine to match investors with the most appropriate money managers for them. Taking an algorithmic approach, Wealthfront first vets managers to qualify for its platform. Investors then answer a few short questions about their investing goals, and Wealthfront recommends the best money managers to suit their goals.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101019/presto-chango-kaching-becomes-wealthfront/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101014/meet-the-yahoo-board-something-old-something-new-but-will-they-do-something/ http://allthingsd.com/20101014/meet-the-yahoo-board-something-old-something-new-but-will-they-do-something/#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:00:49 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35099

With all the noisy swirl around Yahoo of late–from its executive turmoil to its flat growth to its dashed partnerships in Asia to its brash CEO–its board has been unusually quiet of late.

Comatose, some might say.

In fact, many do say exactly that, pointing to the trauma of their disastrous performance when they fended off a hostile takeover attempt by Microsoft (MSFT) for above $30 a share as the cause.

Since then, the stock price of Yahoo (YHOO) has been mired in the low teens.

That is, until yesterday, when even more rumors of new plots emerged in the media, with private equity firms, media companies, Web rivals, big shareholders, Wall Street and others all machinating about trying to grab all or some of the Internet giant.

Now, it will be interesting to see if its directors will shake themselves out of their typical comfort zone of inactivity to actually do their job.

Which, as former GE (GE) star exec Jack Welch–in a recent smackdown of a spate of controversial moves by the Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) board–said in a recent interview, is to “pick the CEO, help them shape strategy, make them feel good about themselves, and, if the CEO isn’t doing a good job, to ‘get them the hell out of there.’”

According to sources close to the situation, the Yahoo directors are in a quandary, even as they are on the receiving end of a flood of suggestions and demands from big investors, ranging from merging with AOL (AOL) to aligning with News Corp. (NWS) to selling off the company’s lucrative Asian assets to replacing CEO Carol Bartz.

You get the idea.

But that might not happen as quickly as some want. Sources said that while the eight-person board has some strong personalities on it, there is no one who has emerged as a powerful leader, aside from Bartz.

Yahoo has recently tried to attract two execs who might be able to go toe-to-toe with her–OpenTable (OPEN) CEO Jeff Jordan and Akamai (AKAM) President David Kenny–but was turned down by both.

Neither apparently wanted the headache of dealing with Yahoo’s struggles.

The same goes for some on Yahoo’s board.

Said one person who had spoken to a few board members recently: “Each of them tells me, ‘I’m only one person and I can’t act alone.’”

Indeed not, which is why you have a board. Stone soup, people!

In any case, it is high time to put the spotlight on the Yahoo directors, which I have done in the past in other crisis moments.

Here’s a rundown, with their photos from Yahoo’s shareholder Web site, along with some BoomTown analysis:

Carol Bartz, CEO:

We all know her, the tough-talking longtime Silicon Valley software exec who was brought in to clean up Dodge in the wake of the rocky tenure of former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang. She is under pressure here for not doing that well enough, of course, despite a very, very big compensation package.

Still, with an aggressive personality and a wimpish board, she might be able to stave off any challenges to her power.

Roy Bostock, Chairman:

The longtime airline board member and advertising exec has been at the top of the Yahoo board since 2008 and on it since 2003.

Which is why I called for his resignation after Yang and former Yahoo President Sue Decker gracefully stepped down, after their management was called into question.

Bostock was right there with them, making all those decisions, which turned out to be disastrous in hindsight. Still, he does not seem to be much for the honorably-falling-on-your-sword thing.

In fact, sources said he has been making the rounds of investors recently trying to gauge the mood. Memo to Roy: It’s bad.

Eric Hippeau

Now the CEO of the Huffington Post, the longtime Web investor and publisher has a lot of online experience and should be one of the leaders on the Yahoo board. Hippeau has certainly been a director long enough to be one–since 1996, as an early investor in the company.

He’s also known as a super-nice guy in Internet circles, which means he is no head-smacker. Too bad.

One idea floated to me by an investor: Yahoo could buy the upstart online media darling and install him as CEO. Pretty please, because the entrance of the fab stylings of Arianna Huffington into this mess would send me into the stratosphere of reporting nirvana.

Vyomesh Joshi

Also a very endearing dude, the top HP exec was one of those on the short list for CEO of the tech giant recently. He runs its gigantically profitable printing and imaging business.

He’s been a Yahoo director since 2005 and should be a key decision maker, since he is an experienced operator. He’s not been, unfortunately.

Arthur Kern

Also a lifer, also having been on the Yahoo board since 1996, the investor and radio exec has also worked in marketing at Digitas.

Among the board members, he seems to be the quietest of the bunch, so I am not sure what to say about him except that he has very white teeth.

Gary Wilson

Another investor–in private equity, he has been on the board of airline companies (what is with this plane stuff on the Yahoo board?), as well as a top financial exec at Disney (DIS) and Marriott (MAR).

Again, a nice résumé, and he should be a leader. He was definitely more involved in the Microsoft situation than others.

Since then? Meh.

Sue James

The accountant. Retired from Ernst & Young. Used to work for Bartz, as lead partner for audit work for Autodesk (ADSK). Joined the Yahoo board early this year.

Probably just figuring out that this whole thing might not be adding up.

Patti Hart

Also new, since June. Worked in the digital video business, and is now the CEO of a “global provider of electronic game equipment and systems products.”

Say what?

Okay, I will go with it, as I am liking that Bartz has brought on two women to the board, which has mostly been stacked full with men.

Brad Smith

The president and CEO of Intuit (INTU), the financial management software powerhouse, also joined in June. This guy should be able to shake the trees, right?

But he is probably still trying to learn everyone’s name. Brad, not to put too much pressure, but everyone is counting on you.

Jerry Yang

Last, but certainly not least, the man who is ultimately the power player here.

The Internet pioneer and industry legend checked out of Yahoo for a bit after he stepped down in early 2009–time to tee off!

But many sources said he has been back at Yahoo for a while–glad-handing advertisers, meeting with entrepreneurs, sussing out trends, piping up in strategy meetings and doing the behind-the-scenes thing that he does so well.

Reports vary on how much he likes Bartz–he expresses support for her to some, but seems to have soured on her to others.

Who knows with the endearingly prickly Yang, whom I have been covering for a dog’s age and who should return my emails once in a while, like in old times when I stalked him.

Dinner is optional, but I will pay this time (see video below of our last semi-enjoyable meal).

Still, here is what I know for sure: Yahoo is Yang’s creation and legacy, and he’s the one who has to make sure that it survives and thrives.

For all the uncertainty surrounding Yahoo once again, that much is true.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101014/meet-the-yahoo-board-something-old-something-new-but-will-they-do-something/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100917/groupon-and-the-clone-wars/ http://allthingsd.com/20100917/groupon-and-the-clone-wars/#comments Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:55:57 +0000 Tomio Geron http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=29896 Thanks to the overwhelming popularity of its local-discount offers, Groupon Inc. now generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, commands a valuation north of $1 billion, and has attracted some $170 million in venture capital–all in less than three years.

But that explosive growth–-Forbes called Groupon the “fastest growing company ever“–-has presented several challenges.

One of them is fending off the many “clones” that have sprung up to copy Groupon, some of which have nearly identical designs and layouts as Groupon’s site. Some legitimate venture-backed start-up contenders have also launched, such as Washington-based LivingSocial Inc., which raised $14 million in Series C funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in April, and New York-based BuyWithMe Inc., which in July raised $16 million in Series B financing led by Bain Capital Ventures. And publicly traded companies such as Travelzoo Inc., OpenTable Inc., and The Knot Inc. are also jumping on the trend.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100917/groupon-and-the-clone-wars/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100909/opentable-ceo-jordan-talks-about-groupon-mobile-growth-and-why-ipos-arent-scary/ http://allthingsd.com/20100909/opentable-ceo-jordan-talks-about-groupon-mobile-growth-and-why-ipos-arent-scary/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:38:23 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=33570

It was certainly high time that BoomTown made a reservation–oh, I had to make that pun–to check in with OpenTable (OPEN) CEO Jeff Jordan.

The well-liked and voluble Silicon Valley exec–who had worked in a top job at eBay (EBAY) before moving over to the online restaurant reservation service and taking it public last year–has actually been up to a lot recently.

That includes a discount-coupon program that was just rolled out called Spotlight, which Jordan doesn’t even try to pretend is not a copycat move to take advantage of all the excitement around Groupon.

And there has been more, from adding restaurant reviews to a cloud computing offering to, most importantly, a big push for its mobile apps, which have been growing wildly.

Jordan also discussed how leading a public company has been going, especially since many Internet outfits have been avoiding the prospect.

So far, the company’s post-IPO life has been going well. OpenTable stock has been performing strongly this year, up 118 percent in the year to date, compared to many more lackluster performances in the sector.

Jordan, who had been in consideration for many big Internet CEO jobs, talks about all this and more in the video interview below:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100909/opentable-ceo-jordan-talks-about-groupon-mobile-growth-and-why-ipos-arent-scary/feed/ 0