AllThingsD » product development

Exclusive: High-Profile Hires for Palm–Nokia's Ari Jaaksi and Samsung's Victoria Coleman

John Paczkowski — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:48:15 +0000

Earlier this month, Ari Jaaksi resigned as head of Nokia’s MeeGo division, citing “personal reasons” as the cause for his departure.

Turns out “personal reasons” was actually a euphemism for “I’m joining Palm.”

Sources close to the company tell me that Jaaksi has been hired on as senior vice president of webOS at Hewlett-Packard’s Palm division. He’s to start in November, after relocating to the Bay Area, and when he does, he’ll lead Palm’s webOS engineering team.

Jaaksi is already a big fan, as evidenced by this observation on his blog back in May: “I used to use a Palm Pre a lot. What a great device. What an astounding software. I was so disappointed to see it not getting the traction it deserves. I really hope that now that it has found a new home @ HP it will rise again! And by the way, I have an extra sweet spot for Pre. It shares a lot of stuff with Maemo and N900.”

And Jaaksi isn’t Palm’s only new high-profile hire. Victoria Coleman, who recently headed up Samsung’s R&D Center in San Jose, is joining the company as well. Her task: To oversee platform and application development for next-generation versions of webOS.

Palm has also managed to pull some talent from within HP. Steven McArthur, the SVP of the company’s consumer applications business, is now heading up product marketing for Palm. Joining him are Enrique Lores, SVP of PSG worldwide sales, who is leading the Palm sales organization. Steve Manser, SVP of product development, oversees product management.

Quite the lineup, and one that bodes well for Palm’s webOS devices and its future at HP.

Zynga Buys Austin-Based Challenge Games

Kara Swisher — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:26:14 +0000

Zynga, the online gaming powerhouse, has acquired Austin, Texas-based Challenge Games.

The social game start-up will be renamed Zynga Austin and be focused on product development.

Backed by Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital Partners, Challenge focuses on virtual goods games, such as “Warstorm.”

Zynga did not reveal the terms of the deal.

The San Francisco-based Zynga has been on a bit of a deal tear of late, inking partnership agreements with both Yahoo (YHOO) and Facebook recently.

Here’s the official release:

ZYNGA ACQUIRES CHALLENGE GAMES

San Francisco–June 3, 2010–Zynga today announced the acquisition of Austin-based social game company Challenge Games. Effective immediately, the Challenge Games office will become Zynga Austin, a game studio focused on product development. Today’s announcement expands Zynga’s studio operations adding to locations already in San Francisco, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Bangalore, and Beijing.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

“Austin is an ideal location to extend our studio operations with its rich talent in the games business,” said Mike Verdu, senior vice president of Games at Zynga. “We look forward to building out our Zynga Austin studio with the best and brightest in the industry as we continue to bring social games to more users worldwide.”

Challenge Games’ Co-Founder CEO, Andrew Busey, will become Zynga’s general manager and vice president of the Austin studio. The Challenge Games team of 35 employees will be immediately integrated into Zynga’s workforce.

Challenge Games, backed by Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital Partners, launched in 2007 to focus on immersive Web game development built on a virtual goods business model. Two of the company’s most popular games, Warstorm, a collectible card game set in a fantasy universe, and Ponzi, a tycoon game, will be further developed by the Zynga team.

Today’s acquisition along with Zynga’s recently announced partnerships with Facebook and Yahoo! continues to extend the company’s footprint worldwide, creating more opportunities for Zynga to connect the world through games. Recently, the company announced a promotion with 7-Eleven where stores across the United States and Canada are offering special promotional game gifts with Slurpees® and other items.

Yahoo Product Head and CTO Ari Balogh Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:05:01 +0000

In BoomTown’s bold quest to annoyingly stick a Flip digital video camera in the face of every Yahoo senior exec, this week I worked the last nerve of its CTO and EVP of Products, Aristotle “Ari” Balogh.

Actually, the 45-year-old Balogh is a very calm and pleasant man, especially considering the huge responsibility that has been foisted on him by CEO Carol Bartz to rejigger how Yahoo (YHOO) makes its products and services and deploy its technology in a more efficient, centralized and most of all, innovative manner.

It is actually a process that was started under the previous leadership, especially President Sue Decker.

But now, after a number of reorgs, a wide swath of Yahoo is under Balogh’s purview–from search to open initiatives to product development to trying to fix Yahoo’s big problem of never quite getting its innovations out the door.

To explain all this, Balogh sat down with me twice–he is clearly a glutton for punishment–to talk about where Yahoo stood as it sought to dig itself out of its long slump and reemerge as the potent Internet force it once was.

While he successfully avoided the questions about Yahoo’s talks to do a search and advertising partnership with Microsoft (MSFT), he did talk about his view of its new Bing search service (well done, but can it scale?–which is an engineer’s favorite schoolyard taunt).

He also addressed the bigger question of how Yahoo can stay relevant in the fast-changing Web 2.0 world.

To Balogh, copying trendsetters like Facebook is not the answer. For example, he noted that Yahoo is more a place where consumers do “one-way” follows of things important in their lives rather than wanting another social-network service (which Yahoo has tried and failed at, actually).

“We’re not going to be another social network,” said Balogh flatly, agreeing that that boat has already long sailed without Yahoo on it with a significant product–Yahoo famously failed to buy Facebook, well before Balogh arrived in early 2008 from VeriSign (VRSN). “But we can be a place where people make and manage the important connections they have.”

How this will all play out is one of the most interesting questions in Silicon Valley because–even after all the turmoil–Yahoo remains one of the largest sites on the Web.

About 500 million monthly unique visitors enter its homepage and course through its vast site constantly, from its search pages to its massive email and instant-messaging services and its popular suite of content sites.

No one says Yahoo is not big–what everyone says is that it has missed many major and critical Internet trends as it has become mired in a management morass and external battles.

Now, with new leadership in place, observers are waiting to see what’s next.

In this regard, it is important what Balogh thinks since he is perhaps Yahoo’s only person who even closely resembles a Web product visionary now that former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang has stepped aside and Bartz has taken up command.

While he typically shies away from the spotlight, he is not bashful about talking about Yahoo’s infamous lugubrious development process.

“We have pockets of great technology that we have to really put back together into a coherent infrastructure,” said Balogh. “We have to get the basics right and focus on those core daily experiences that make Yahoo extraordinary.”

That is easier said than done, especially when changes impact so many consumers and, of course, the bottom line. Choosing what key trends to attack is harder for a large public company like Yahoo, which has a lot to protect in its current businesses.

“There will always be a battle between new ideas and monetization,” said Balogh. “The question is how much do you push that line back and forth?”

That fine line will surely be tested with the rollout of its new homepage in the fall, a long project that has been codenamed “Metro.”

“It is not a radical departure, but we have given users more power to do what they want and also serve as the best of Web versus that is already inside of Yahoo,” said Balogh of the new homepage. “With technology, it is always a push-pull.”

Here’s my video interview with him, talking about all this and more:

[ See post to watch video ]

RIM Product Line More FrankenBerry Than CrackBerry

John Paczkowski — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:00:53 +0000

With the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS in stores and the myTouch 3G, T-Mobile’s second Google (GOOG) Android phone, headed to market, is the Research in Motion (RIMM) product lineup beginning to look a bit dated? Which leads to another question: Has RIM’s success made it too complacent?

GC Research analyst Tero Kuittinen believes it has. In a research note Friday, Kuittinen described the company’s Blackberry product range as “shopworn,” noting that even the new Blackberry Tour is quite close to the aging Curve in look and feel.

“We are concerned about the autumn and winter Blackberry product range–RIM seems to have made a deliberate decision to rely on incremental improvements in mid-range and low-end models instead of bringing advanced features aggressively to cheaper devices,” Kuittinen writes. “Considering how competitive the smartphone market is getting, we believe this cautious approach may begin backfiring in the autumn and particularly during the Christmas season.”

Kuittinen goes on to question the logic of the company’s new flip phone initiative, wondering why the company is rolling out its 8230 clamshell at a time when consumers are so enamored with large display devices like Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and the new Palm (PALM) Pre. And that’s a great question because, well, the contract phone bestseller lists at most carriers aren’t exactly overrun with clamshells these days, are they?

“Overall, RIMM’s expansion to flip phones is ill-timed, and the Tour line lacks kick and the low-end improvements are minor at best,” Kuittinen concludes. “It is the combination of these three simultaneous factors that leads us to believe RIMM may have become lulled into complacency by the stellar success of the Blackberry devices over the past couple of years. The year 2009 is a tough period to let your product development program spin its wheels.”

Hard to disagree with that assessment given the handset launches we’ve seen so far this year. But perhaps the Storm 2 will prove Kuittinen wrong on that account. Perhaps it will even raise the bar a little. But even if it does, will that be enough to invigorate the entire product line? Kuittinen doubts it. “One major big-display phone launch, in our opinion, may not fully offset the slight malaise afflicting the rest of the Blackberry range in the autumn,” he concludes.

Below, our D7 Interview with RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis.

[ See post to watch video ]

Ex-Yahoo Ad Exec Karnstedt to Efficient Frontier

Kara Swisher — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:16:27 +0000

Former top Yahoo advertising exec David Karnstedt (pictured here), who has been parked at a Silicon Valley venture firm since he left the company, has been named president and CEO of Efficient Frontier.

Interestingly, another former Yahoo (YHOO) exec, Ellen Siminoff, has also been CEO at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search engine marketing firm. She is now chairman.

Karnstedt, who was SVP of of Yahoo’s North American sales until last fall, replaces James Beriker.

He has most recently been an executive-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures, an investor in Efficient Frontier.

Here is an interview I did with Karnstedt in 2007, when he was at Yahoo.

And here is the full press release:

Efficient Frontier Names David Karnstedt as President and CEO

Former Redpoint Ventures Executive-in-Residence and Senior Vice President of Yahoo!’s North American Sales Brings Extensive Experience to the Post

Sunnyvale, Calif. – April 2, 2009 – Efficient Frontier, the worldwide leader in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) technology and services, today announced that David Karnstedt has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of the company.

Karnstedt most recently was an Executive-in-Residence at Redpoint Ventures, an investor in Efficient Frontier. Prior to Redpoint, he served as Senior Vice President of Yahoo!’s North American Sales with responsibility for more than $3 billion in revenue. During his tenure at Yahoo!, he successfully led the integration of the Search and Display sales teams into one central unit and helped establish Yahoo! as a recognized leader in both display and search marketing.

“We feel incredibly fortunate to have someone of David’s caliber join Efficient Frontier at this point in the company’s life cycle,” said Ellen Siminoff, Chairwoman of Efficient Frontier’s Board of Directors. “David’s extensive experience in the Internet space – specifically search – will be a huge asset as he leads the company forward.”

Karnstedt’s experience includes several industry firsts. Prior to Yahoo!, David led the Direct Sales team at Overture Services, the company that pioneered the paid search industry and was acquired by Yahoo! in 2003. He also served as Vice President and General Manager of Alta Vista, where he was responsible for the consumer business and helped shape product development and marketing strategies that leveraged the auctions-based search approach. Prior to Alta Vista, David served as Western Advertising Director at Wired Digital where he helped to develop some of the first advertising models on the Web. He is also active in the industry, having served on both the Advertising Council and Interactive Advertising Association’s Boards of Directors.

“As the leading global Search Engine Marketing company, Efficient Frontier has built tremendous assets –
including its technology platform, a global presence and a great team,” said David Karnstedt. “I plan to build on these key assets by expanding the company’s leadership in search, diversifying into complimentary product offerings and increasing its global presence. I am pleased to lead the company into its next phase of growth.”

Karnstedt is replacing James Beriker, who held executive positions at the company since April 2007 and was its President, CEO and a member of the Board of Directors from February 2008 until March 2009. The company’s business expanded significantly while James was CEO. We are appreciative of his efforts and contributions.

Tired of April Fools Gags? Wait, There’s More.

Don Clark — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:51:23 +0000

Jokes dreamed up by tech companies for April Fool’s Day may not be spectacularly funny. But one can’t help but notice the level of effort put in, which sometimes seems to rival the intensity of their product-development efforts.

Qualcomm (QCOM), for example, has a very slick video on YouTube that initially seems to be a typical piece of corporate B-roll hyping the latest development out of their labs. Then it turns out they are discussing putting cellular base stations on pigeons to form a flying wireless network, which prompts the need to develop a beast called the wolf-pigeon to defend the network, which inspires the creation of a shark-falcon to control the wolf-pigeons, and so on.

Amazon.com (AMZN), reacting to the gaseous conversations about a trend known as cloud computing, contends in a Web posting that it has a new high-level offering in the field–on a blimp. It’s called “the Floating Amazon Cloud Environment, or FACE for short. Using the latest in airship technology, we’ve created a cloud that can come to you,” the company writes.

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Yahoo Content Model Gets Remixed as Product Development Is "Globally" Centralized

Kara Swisher — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:45:48 +0000

Will Yahoo’s media properties fall flat with sweeping new changes that are afoot that will drastically change the way the company bakes its content offerings?

Or will the ability to have a single, highly scaleable, centrally developed architecture make the media programming Yahoo delivers more responsive and flexible in the era of fast-twitch bloggers (all while cutting costs)?

According to many sources inside and outside the company, product development for Yahoo’s heavily trafficked media operations–including its powerful News, Finance and Sports sites–is set to be moved under Ash Patel, who is EVP of the company’s Audience Product Division.

The move has been supported by U.S. Audience head Jeff Dossett, who came to Yahoo (YHOO) from Microsoft (MSFT). He replaced former media head Scott Moore, who is about to take over content efforts at Microsoft.

The centralization of product development for the media properties was much resisted by Moore and by many managers within Yahoo’s media group, who are worried and unhappy about the upcoming change.

Sources told BoomTown that it is one of many changes coming to the unit, which is likely to soon get a dramatic management restructuring too.

Under the new configuration, which sources said had been approved by CEO Carol Bartz, media products–but not editorial programming–will be developed “globally” at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale HQ in Northern California.

Until now, such development has been mostly done by individual media properties, many of which are located down south, in Santa Monica.

But a move to global product and platform development has been steady at Yahoo for a while. The move to change how media are made was initially championed by former President Sue Decker, but has continued to move forward after she announced in January that she planned to leave the company.

As with most things, there are pros and cons to the new approach.

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

Said one on-the-bandwagon exec to me in an email: “This is a good and smart plan to achieve better balance between the benefits of a globally scalable product development and the need for regions to be very close to and responsive to local user and advertiser needs…there is huge upside (in user engagement and monetization) that will come from a deeper focus on editorial, content (original and licensed) and programming within the properties and most importantly across the network.”

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

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

“It’s like separating the cook from the recipe and ingredients,” said one person who thinks that it’s very hard to separate product from the content online. “You could end up with a really bad cake.”

Translation: I don’t think that I can take it/’Cause it took so long to bake it/And I’ll never have that recipe again.

Whatever the case for Yahoo’s media properties, I think we can all completely agree that this Donna Summers rendition of “MacArthur Park” remains as fresh and delicious as ever (plus it’s a karaoke video version, so feel free to sing along):

THQ Slides on Weak Outlook; Where's Wall-E?

Eric Savitz — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:09:46 +0000

Oh, Wall-E, where did you go?

THQ (THQI) shares hit the skids in late trading, after the videogame publisher provided a weak outlook for the March 2009 fiscal year.

For the fiscal second quarter ended September, the company posted sales of $164.8 million and a non-GAAP loss of 46 cents a share. THQ noted that this was worse than its previously forecast loss of 35-39 cents a share “primarily due to lower-than-anticipated international sales” of its Wall-E game and higher-than-expected sales returns and allowances.

THQ unveiled a new strategic plan that includes the closure of five studios, resulting in the reduction of 250 jobs, or about 17 percent of its studio staff. The company also cut its fiscal 2010 product development spending plans by about $100 million, which brings its total budget for 2010 $30 million below the 2009 level.

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