While it seems BoomTown is all about the who’s-leaving-Yahoo-now posts, it’s not so!

Case in point: Here are two folks the Silicon Valley Internet giant has just hired.

First, as announced in its Yodel Anecdotal blog yesterday, David Rice will join Yahoo (YHOO) as VP of Product for Media.

That means he will be managing the “strategy and execution for our News, Sports, Finance, Entertainment, Lifestyles, and Games product teams.”

Rice is from online video company Metacafe, where he was COO. He is also an ex-Yahoo, who worked as part of its international product team from 2005 to 2007.

Next is James Wildman, who will become managing director and VP of sales for Yahoo’s U.K. and Ireland unit.

He’ll start in January, after departing his job as managing director of Virgin Media’s ids advertising and media company.

If you can’t buy Foursquare–as Yahoo did not after aggressive efforts to do so–then…buy the Indonesian version of it!

BoomTown has to be honest and say I have never heard of Koprol, a Jakarta-based social geolocation service that bears striking similarities to the hot New York-based one Yahoo (YHOO) offered $100 million for recently to no result.

But that’s just what Yahoo snapped up, announcing the purchase of the mobile-focused start-up for an undisclosed sum tonight.

It is not clear what Yahoo intends to do with the technology from Koprol, but execs called it an emerging-market play.

And, indeed, Koprol could be used to bolster Yahoo “check-in” features globally, especially in Asia.

Frankly, Koprol sounds more robust, innovative and fun than Foursquare.

Yahoo already made another splashy mobile announcement today by unveiling a partnership deal with Finnish handset giant Nokia (NOK).

Here is a video Yahoo posted on the company’s Yodel Anecdotal blog with Kopral’s founders:

And here’s the full Yahoo press release on the Koprol acquisition:

Yahoo! Acquires Koprol; Extends Social and Mobile Strategy With Location-Based Community
Expands Offerings in Rapidly Growing Emerging Markets

SUNNYVALE, Calif. and JAKARTA, Indonesia –May 24, 2010–Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today announced the acquisition of Koprol. Headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, Koprol extends Yahoo’s social, mobile and local offerings and focuses on the intersection of location, community expertise and mobile experiences that have become important trends around the globe. Koprol enables users to interact and share knowledge about their community in a way that is uniquely tailored to mobile phones.

Koprol allows people to connect and share photos, reviews and additional information about locations in real-time using just their mobile phone browser, making the service accessible to a larger percentage of mobile users. Once on Koprol, people can “check-in” to their current location and see where others are and what they are doing. The service helps people find local businesses, such as popular shops or restaurants, based on user ratings including a “thumbs-up” feature to elevate favorite places to the top of the ranking. Users can also start or join discussions based on particular locations and invite friends to participate, creating a unique city-based social mobile community resource.

“Users are increasingly relying on mobile devices to communicate and access the Internet and they are looking for seamless integration between those devices and PCs. This is especially true in many emerging markets where we are introducing the Yahoo! brand to many new-to-Net users,” said Rose Tsou, senior vice president, Asia Region at Yahoo!. “Koprol was uniquely designed for mobile phones and within a year has already built a strong user base. Yahoo! provides the global scale and technology to accelerate growth in Indonesia as well as introduce the service to new markets.”

Yahoo! is focused on providing personally relevant content to its global users on multiple devices and access points. Koprol aggregates a database of locations within a city, created through its community, so that people can find friends or discover new local businesses, neighborhood resources and discussions that are important to them. Yahoo! plans to leverage the rich community of information generated by Koprol users to make its properties and applications, including its homepage and media and communications products, even more locally relevant.

“We are excited to join Yahoo! and look forward to the opportunities being part of a global Internet leader presents,” said Fajar Budiprasetyo, CEO and co-founder of Koprol. “From the beginning, we have leveraged Yahoo!’s open technologies to help build our business, and it was just six months ago when we were showcased at the Yahoo! Hack Day held in Indonesia. This is a great success story for the online community in Indonesia and demonstrates that innovation is recognized wherever it occurs.”

Yahoo! will continue to invest in evolving Koprol’s service, such as the new BlackBerry™ application introduced today, and expects to announce new mobile applications for both local and global mobile platforms in the future.

Yahoo, in a clear attempt to get deep into the social content space and better compete with both AOL and Demand Media, announced the acquisition of Associated Content.

Sources close to the situation said the price was $90 million in cash, which is a solid outcome for Associated Content, a start-up that found itself in an increasingly crowded space for cheaper content.

There are no earn-outs and no restrictions, sources added.

Yahoo (YHOO) declined to provide the financial terms of the deal and said it expected to complete this acquisition in the third quarter of 2010.

In the deal, which the pair have been talking about for some time, the code name for the New York- and Denver-based company was Atlantic.

And, indeed, Yahoo is aiming to garner a massive sea of content by buying the company, which said it has 380,000 contributors and many millions of pieces of content.

It has about 16 million unique monthly visitors, according to recent surveys, and has signed several distribution deals with major media partners.

“This is really about our commitment to providing high-quality content that is relevant to users and also advertisers,” said David Ko, who heads Yahoo’s media efforts, in an interview with BoomTown just before the deal was announced.

For Associated, said founder Luke Beatty, it was a need to get access to Yahoo’s huge pool of consumers for its content, provided by armies of freelancers. It was founded in 2004, he noted, with the tagline: “The People’s Media Company.”

“We invented the category, thinking about this idea that there should be a democratization of content,” he said. “Being part of Yahoo increases our scale to a completely different level.”

Ko said Associated Content was “far superior than any competitor.”

It was a sentiment countered by Demand CEO and co-founder Richard Rosenblatt:

“The fact that Yahoo–which has historically sourced content from storied brands like Reuters, Associated Press and entertainment deals with Hollywood–is now ready to bring user-generated content to its advertisers is fascinating,” he wrote in an email to me. “Demand Media’s approach is certainly different than either AC, Yahoo or the combination. We think that our approach is differentiated due to our large professional content creator network, rigorous editorial processes, strong technologies and algorithms and distribution on a combination of owned and partner sites.”

Yahoo’s Ko also called Associated Content a “pioneer” in the space to make bank from crowd-sourced, search-optimized content efforts for media about more mundane topics like back pain.

And, indeed, that is true.

Yet Associated Content’s efforts have been overshadowed recently by those of Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand Media, which is heading for an IPO at a multibillion-dollar valuation, as well as AOL (AOL), which has put a lot of muscle behind both its low-cost social content at its Seed unit and higher-priced premium content efforts.

As MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote:

“Associated Content looks and acts a lot like Demand Media, the Santa Monica-based “content mill” that’s drawn a lot of attention in the last year or so–though both companies bristle when you compare the two. It’s also thematically related to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s push to automate the production of content at that company.”

And while Beatty had said Associated Content was not for sale, many other sources inside and outside the company said it has been shopping itself for a while now, including to both Demand and AOL, in fact.

It hired Allen & Co. earlier this year, after AOL talks went nowhere.

Ironically, Armstrong was an angel investor in Associated Content, which is also backed by Canaan Partners and SoftBank Capital. It had raised a total of $21.4 million.

Another irony: In the past, Yahoo has taken a look at acquisitions of both AOL and Demand, deeming both too pricey.

In addition, the relationship between Demand and Yahoo has gotten testy of late, with Demand poaching top exec talent from Yahoo, such as U.S. ad sales head Joanne Bradford, among others.

People close to Associated Content say it’s on a $15 million run rate, up from $4 million earlier in the year.

Still, settling in at Yahoo and for a solid price is a good outcome for Associated, whose staff will now be integrated with the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

“Combining our world-class editorial team with Associated Content’s makes this a game-changer,” said Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz in a statement. “Together, we’ll create more content around what we know our users care about, and open up new and creative avenues for advertisers to engage with consumers across our network. These are important aspects of building engaging consumer experiences on Yahoo!, and one of the reasons why we’re one of the most visited destinations online.”

Here is a video that Yahoo posted on its Yodel Anecdotal blog of Beatty (good lord, you really don’t need to kiss up to your new bosses with purple socks, Luke!):

And here is the official press release from Yahoo about the deal:

Yahoo! to Acquire Associated Content

Extending leadership in content with the addition of 380,000 contributors

Sunnyvale, Calif.–May 18, 2010–Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Associated Content Inc. This strategic move extends Yahoo’s ability to provide high quality, personally relevant content for the benefit of more than 600 million users as well as tens of thousands of advertisers. As Yahoo! enhances its social, mobile, local, and media offerings, the acquisition of Associated Content reinforces the company’s longstanding promise to offer the best of the Web–by combining Associated Content’s approximately 380,000 contributors who provide rich and varied content on a broad array of passion points, with Yahoo’s leadership in partnering with established content brands and the award-winning team of editors and experts from Yahoo!.

“Combining our world-class editorial team with Associated Content’s makes this a game-changer,” said Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo! Inc. “Together, we’ll create more content around what we know our users care about, and open up new and creative avenues for advertisers to engage with consumers across our network. These are important aspects of building engaging consumer experiences on Yahoo!, and one of the reasons why we’re one of the most visited destinations online.”

“The Associated Content team and our 380,000 contributors are looking forward to joining Yahoo! and to the opportunities that being part of a global Internet brand presents,” said Luke Beatty, Associated Content founder and president. “Combining our crowd sourced content with Yahoo!’s distribution, world class editorial team and online marketing leadership will accelerate our growth as we continue to leverage our best-of-breed platform to deliver high quality compelling content on more than 60,000 topics.”

For advertisers, this deal will expand Yahoo! into more topic areas and real-time content generation. The combination promises to offer advertisers even more opportunities to engage groups of passionate consumers in ways they will find uniquely appealing to their interests and tastes. Having insight into user intent through its leading search products enables Yahoo! to identify topics important to advertisers and users. Yahoo! plans to use Associated Content to create content around those topics and leverage Associated Content to contribute content to existing media properties. Associated Content also provides more opportunities for Yahoo! to partner and collaborate with publishers who can help the company shape the tremendous variety of content coming in, into something bespoke and even more engaging.

While current Associated Content content is U.S.-centric, Yahoo! expects to scale the platform globally.

Associated Content was founded by Luke Beatty in Denver, Colorado, in 2004. Associated Content receives more than 16 million unique users per month (comScore) and the editorial staff reviews more than 50,000 pieces of content per month, including articles, images, audio and video.

Yahoo! expects to complete this acquisition in the third quarter of 2010. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Say it ain’t you, Yahoo.

And yet, here’s one of the major new conceptual directions of the troubled Internet giant’s next pricey marketing campaign, aimed at recovering from its first advertising foray, which is widely considered a failure: A full frontal attack on search leader Google.

BoomTown posted several weeks ago that the new effort was being rolled out.

And now it’s here–and, in part, it’s an odd attempt to mock the simple and elegant white box that allowed Google (GOOG) to steal Yahoo’s thunder many years back, as well as lightning and any other weather system worth owning.

“There’s nothing to look at but a box and a button,” says the voice-over in the Yahoo (YHOO) marketing video–which you can see below–about an unnamed, but obvious, Web site. “When you look at this homepage nothing looks back at you. You come to this place so you can leave.”

Well, yes! Because it’s a search page!

No matter, according to Yahoo, which remains intent on pushing the idea of being “the center of your online life.”

Which has, of course, increasingly become Facebook. The social networking giant has done exactly zero advertising to get its 500 million users and has been steadily surpassing Yahoo in a number of key consumer metrics.

In fact, Facebook is Yahoo’s true nemesis, although the new ads push Facebook, as well as Twitter, in order to focus on Yahoo as the place to interact with a lot of different sites and services in one place.

“Today we are excited to preview the next phase of the Yahoo! marketing campaign, showcasing the amazing content and experiences people can find only with Yahoo!. We want people to experience first-hand how Yahoo! is the place where all the things, people, experiences, information–everything you care about–come together,” said Yahoo marketing head Elisa Steele in a blog post on the company’s Yodel Anecdotal blog tonight. “It’s a place that gets to know you, a place that surprises you. And we’ll demonstrate it by letting you sample the products, see them in action and have experiential encounters.”

Well, at least that sounds better than the willfully vague $100 million campaign Steele launched with noisy fanfare last fall with the motto: “It’s Y!ou.”

Yahoo never really answered what exactly “you” was, which is why CEO Carol Bartz finally admitted to a group of reporters in March that the effort “didn’t have a really good call to action.”

Actually, it had none and–more important–did not increase traffic in the key U.S. market (as you can see in the chart), although Yahoo execs tried mightily to spin it as successful in some international markets and as an opening effort to revive the tarnished brand.

A pretty pricey effort it was, causing Yahoo to pretty much dump the WPP Group (WPPGY) ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather, and hire Omnicom Group (OMC) unit Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the new work.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal tonight, Yahoo will spend $75 million to $85 million on the renewed multimedia campaign, although it seems to be part of the original outlay of $100 million.

The Journal said there was a new slogan: “Your favorite stuff all in one place. Make Yahoo your home page.”

The more specific effort will show off partners that Yahoo has been integrating into the service, as well as its own properties.

And as it turns out, that’s why the “It’s You” tagline is remaining, with a spate of efforts to make it more specific and product-centric.

According to the article in the Journal, there will be a lot of marketing gimmicks, such as kiosks, giant Apple (AAPL) iPhones with a huge Yahoo search app, and photo booths.

While that is all well and good, Yahoo’s key issue–besides its talent brain drain–remains its lack of new and innovative products, which are being pumped out aggressively by Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft (MSFT) and, yes, Google.

At least we now know why Bartz took aim at Google’s search business model in a BBC interview recently, noting it was one-note.

As Yahoo is now trying to paint Google’s main product offering in its new marketing materials and, presumably, its upcoming ad campaign.

But, in fact, touting its simple search box on its own, Google spent very little on its utterly charming “Parisian Love” commercial, which aired during the Super Bowl and scored off the charts in a number of surveys.

It’s about exactly how useful one box can be.

Compare that Google marketing video with Yahoo’s effort below and decide for yourself which marketing material works better:

Here are more new Yahoo ad examples:

And here is the full text of Steele’s blog:

A Sneak Peek of Exciting & Fresh Stuff from Yahoo!

Posted May 5th, 2010 at 7:11 pm by Yahoo!, Blog Editors

Odds are that sometime in the last six months you have experienced the Yahoo! “It’s You!” campaign somewhere in your world: reading the news you crave every day, during your favorite television show, searching on why lady bugs have spots, on the side of the bus you take to work. Our goal with this campaign was to make a connection with our hundreds of millions of users over the world and have fun with your favorite stuff, all in one place!

Today we are excited to preview the next phase of the Yahoo! marketing campaign, showcasing the amazing content and experiences people can find only with Yahoo!. We want people to experience first-hand how Yahoo! is the place where all the things, people, experiences, information–everything you care about–come together. It’s a place that gets to know you, a place that surprises you. And well demonstrate it by letting you sample the products, see them in action and have experiential encounters.

Keep in mind, this is just a sneak peek into the fun ideas and experiences we are dreaming up. Starting May 18th and throughout the year, you will begin to see finished new elements of the campaign, with many fun surprises across the Y! network, web and within venues such a cinemas, television and even in the air (on planes!).

The Yahoo! marketing campaign will show users how to tap into Yahoo’s industry-leading products and make the Internet far more personally relevant. Starting a band? Yahoo! Search–a smarter, more personal search, will help you find the gear, gigs and guitar heroes you need to rock out.

Going to the movies? Yahoo! can entertain and enhance the cinema experience. Starting in the lobby before the movie starts, we will showcase Yahoo! products and properties through interactive panels. Using the new Sketch-a-Search app we can help you find a restaurant for after the movie. At the start of the film, we’ll integrate Yahoo! Search into the movie trailers, simulating a Search Wow Module.

At 30,000 feet, Yahoo! will make it fun to travel. As passengers relax on airline flights, we entertain by showing how Yahoo! brings my world and the world together through our creative campaign and tailored Yahoo! content. Each flight will feature our full video campaign, and depending on the flight and time, Yahoo! content such as Funny or Die and other pieces of Yahoo! entertainment.

Keep track of the highest bid on a vintage skateboard on eBay, share your latest photos showing you landing that kickflip on Flickr and find out who’s dating who on Facebook–all from the comfort of your Yahoo! Homepage.

We can’t wait to share the new campaign where you spend a lot of your time- online. While scrolling through the “live” images you can add all your favorite items to your Yahoo! homepage. Making it relevant and personal.

So the next time you hop on a plane, check your email or go to the movies. Yahoo! can bring YOUR world and THE world together in one convenient place–wherever you are.

Elisa Steele, Yahoo! EVP & Chief Marketing Officer

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

A few weeks ago, several sources at Yahoo begin telling BoomTown about a mysterious “Project Rushmore,” which was described as a massive integration of major social networking sites across the giant Internet portal.

Now, the first unveiling of Project Rushmore comes with this morning’s announcement that Yahoo (YHOO) will be integrating Facebook Connect with its many properties–from its powerful media sites to its Flickr photo service to its email.

Once deployed–in the first half of next year, said Yahoo–Yahoo users can monitor their full Facebook feed on the site and Facebook users will have their Yahoo activity displayed on their news feed, if they choose to.

The companies said no money will be exchanged in the five-year deal; nor will there be any other financial or advertising element.

This is a major step for Yahoo, which has long touted its openness, and a significant upgrade to the company’s relationship with Facebook.

It’s also more than ironic, as Yahoo had been very close to acquiring Facebook for just over $1 billion several years ago, in a should-have deal that went south.

Currently, Facebook users can update their status and access their stream via an app on the Yahoo homepage. They can also share to Facebook using buttons on Yahoo, and Facebook can access contacts on Yahoo.

But the relationship between the pair–which have some of the largest audiences on the Web between them–has been relatively thin until now.

This has been a glaring problem for Yahoo, which has also promised a lot of socialization throughout the service, but has not really provided it for users. The company hopes this tight link with the fast-growing Facebook will send users back to Yahoo.

Facebook–via Facebook Connect, which allows users to log on to participating sites with their identity on the service–is perhaps the bigger winner here.

The huge amount of data from the activities from one of the most trafficked sites on the Web–with upward of 500 million users–will further solidify its growing role as a central hub of a user’s Web life.

Another irony: This was the role Yahoo held for many years and has been losing to, yes, Facebook.

Yahoo is still aiming to be the central hub for a lot of people too, said Jim Stoneham, Yahoo’s VP of Communities, who noted that slightly more than half of Yahoo users also have Facebook accounts.

“That’s highly relevant that a lot of people use both,” said Stoneham. “So, there should be a strong bond across both sites.”

Added Stoneham: “This will be a done on a deep level into Yahoo.”

Stoneheam declined to comment on whether and when the service would be striking similar deals with other networking sites.

But sources told me that Twitter and LinkedIn are likely candidates, as well as MySpace.

That would, of course, account for the four presidential stone faces on Mount Rushmore–George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

Other big Internet companies are getting into the social act. Separately, both Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) recently struck a data-mining deal with Twitter and Microsoft also did so with Facebook.

So, such an overall move by Yahoo is an important and necessary one–and also very late in coming–since it completely missed the social networking train and needs to figure out how to be part of it in a way that is useful to users and open.

“This relationship pushes us really far forward [toward openness],” said Cody Simms, senior director of product management for Yahoo’s open strategy. “And it helps our users be more social, which they want to be wherever they are.”

And presumably, Yahoo hopes these moves will keep users on Yahoo a little longer while doing that.

Here is the full blog post from Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal by Stoneham:

Update once to share with many on Yahoo! and Facebook

Posted December 2nd, 2009 at 6:29 am by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor

We have good news to share with everyone who uses Yahoo! and Facebook–in the first half of 2010 we will open the door between two of the Internet’s largest online communities. You will be able to see your Facebook friends’ activities on Yahoo! and share Yahoo! content–ratings, photos, article comments, and more–directly on your Facebook stream. We’re doing this by deeply integrating a service called Facebook Connect across Yahoo! properties worldwide, which we announced today.

As the place where over 500 million people visit every month, Yahoo!’s goal is to bring together social experiences from across the web, and provide one place for people to access information and stay in touch with the people they care about most.

Yahoo!’s integration of Facebook Connect will provide you with richer experiences across the Yahoo! products you use every day, such as Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Sports. In the future, you’ll be able to choose where you want to update your status message–from destinations across Yahoo!–or directly on Facebook.

We are doing this as part of our commitment to deliver more personally relevant Internet experiences, so watch for more details in the New Year!

Jim Stoneham, VP of Communities for Yahoo!

And, if you are a glutton for punishment, here’s the full press release from Yahoo:

Yahoo! Extends Facebook Integration to Bring Together Social Experiences From Across the Web

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 2, 2009–Continuing its commitment to be the center of people’s online lives, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today announced further integration with Facebook that unites social experiences from across the Web to provide a place for consumers to enjoy meaningful content and stay in touch with the people they care about most.

“With this integration, we are opening the door for two of the Internet’s largest online communities to make it easier for people to stay connected,” said Jim Stoneham, vice president of Communities for Yahoo!. “It also enables us to further the Yahoo! Open Strategy, which is aimed at making experiences dramatically more open, social and personally relevant for the more than 500 million people that visit Yahoo! each month.”

Yahoo!’s Facebook Connect integration will give consumers richer experiences on Yahoo!, including in Yahoo! Mail and on properties like Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, and Yahoo! Finance. It will enable them to connect with Facebook friends on Yahoo!, view a feed of their friends’ related activity on Yahoo!, and share content–such as photos from Flickr or comments on news stories–with all of their friends on Facebook. The content that consumers share with Facebook friends will then create a loop that drives visitors back to Yahoo!.

This partnership extends the current Facebook integration on Yahoo! which enables Facebook users to access their stream and update their status from the Yahoo! homepage, provides “Share on Facebook” options across the Yahoo! network, and allows Facebook to access Yahoo! Contacts. People using both Yahoo! and Facebook will soon be able to share updates across both networks, creating a richer and more relevant social experience by connecting the broad range of Yahoo! content and services with their friends on Facebook.

“As one of the largest sites on the Web, Yahoo! is an ideal partner to integrate with Facebook Connect, enabling users to share meaningful content with their friends on Facebook from Yahoo’s wide range of category-leading properties,” said Ethan Beard, director of Facebook Developer Network.

The integration is expected to begin in the first half of 2010.

[Photo credit: Dean Franklin under the Creative Commons attribution license.

While Nicki Dugan (pictured here) was not one of the top execs at Yahoo, she certainly is typical of many at the company who stuck with it through many ups and downs.

No longer, according to a memo BoomTown obtained from several sources, since the longtime PR staffer–who has been at Yahoo (YHOO) for almost a decade and who was previously with an outside public relations firm that worked for Yahoo–will leave the company Monday.

Dugan has a high-profile role at Yahoo, running its Yodel Anecdotal corporate blog and penning most of the pieces on it.

It’s not clear from the memo where Dugan is headed, though the memo is full of interesting “moments” she had while at Yahoo and includes some nice historical details (including a scoop I had from Web 1.0 that I had long forgotten).

Here’s the email she sent to colleagues:

From: Nicki Dugan
To: XXX
Cc: Nicki Dugan
Sent: Thu Oct 29 16:35:22 2009
Subject: Fare thee well

Hiya:

After almost exactly 9.5 years, 10 Oktoberfest mugs, 9 founder holiday gifts, 4 cube moves, and 76 daily miles, I’ve decided to hang up my purple badge. Saying goodbye to Yahoo!–and all of you–is no easy task. It’s a rare place that can capture your heart and soul and hang onto it for about a quarter of your life. What’s made Yahoo! so special? I thought I’d rattle off some of my favorite moments:

* Jerry asking me (on my first day) if the PR team really needed another person

* Filo’s all-worldwide “get back to work” Yahoo! Greeting during my first week

* Yahoo! Surfers. Full stop.

* Risking life and limb to cross the street for a meeting when our HQ was on Kifer Road in Santa Clara

* My first earthquake, experienced working on a Saturday in Building D

* When our various business units were called “pods” (communications, communities, commerce, content)

* Our former general counsel propping his cowboy boots up on the conference table during a USA Today interview

* When Jerry and David taught Madeleine Albright how to surf the Web

* When In & Out Burger trucks provided meals during summer picnics

* Launching the world’s first Internet taxi

* When NASDAQ halted YHOO trading after Jim Hu and Kara Swisher caught wind of our Broadcast.com acquisition

* “Sleeping” under my desk the night before Analyst Day 2001 as lawyers and the deal team haggled sentence structure with SBC in our joint release

* When the cow from our lobby attracted Mennonites at NYC’s South Street Seaport

* Terry Semel doing earnings calls in his socks

* Being the stage photographer for Beck at Open Hack Day 2006

* Getting Jerry & David to sumo wrestle in the name of fighting climate change (http://bit.ly/2NIjkO)

* Tom Cruise recreating the Oprah coach moment during his Yahoo! Influentials visit

* Convincing Matt Dillon that our contract trumped his hangover at the Greenest City in America press conference in Times Square

* Flying to Burbank via a NetJet with every C-level Yahoo! executive for the Overture acquisition

* When Sue Decker rode into an all-hands at URLs on a Harley Davidson

* Meeting Al Gore at a private “An Inconvenient Truth” screening with the Yahoo! For Good team

* Breaking the world record for largest simultaneous yodel…and getting ordinary Americans to yodel their hearts out in NYC, SF and Seattle for the Yodel Challenge and Yodel Studio

* Watching mobs of Yahoo! users line up outside Baskin-Robbins stores across the country for free ice cream on our 10th anniversary

* Having Michael Arrington leave the third comment on Yodel Anecdotal when we launched (and a positive one at that!) (http://bit.ly/1Lvzrx)

* The emotional weekend spent at Skadden as we prepared to announce Terry’s resignation

* Learning how to play Faceball at Flickr HQ (http://bit.ly/4mdJ24)

* Getting Blake Jorgensen to pull off the best April Fool’s video… Evar

* Stuffing cotton into Filo’s cheeks for his cinematic debut as Don Corleone in Ari’s tech team video

* Asking Ash to dress in an orange jumpsuit to pick up trash in Filo’s cube (I’ve clearly abused Filo extensively)

* Dressing in black and leaving rubber duckies all over Google’s campus at dawn (10K+ photo views! http://bit.ly/vX8hA)

* Convincing 33 Yahoo! teams to dance with Matt “Where the Hell is Matt?” Harding all over our HQ during the Summer of Microsoft (http://bit.ly/929hT)

* Getting the Food Network to produce a “Dinner: Impossible” episode for Yahoo!’s Search’s anniversary and watching Chef Robert Irvine abuse Tuoc and Raj in the kitchen (http://bit.ly/291zsB)

* Carol’s first all-hands F-bomb

We played hard, worked harder, and drank copious amounts of purple Koolaid. And I’ll probably never quite get it out of my system. Working here through so many of Yahoo!’s phases has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m so grateful for the memories and friendships built over these many years. I look forward to watching the ‘hoo from afar.

If we don’t connect on Monday for a final farewell, please keep in touch. Employee #370 (adjusted hire), over and out.

–Nicki

Here’s a link to one of my favorite blogs by Dugan, which she referenced above, on dancer Matt Harding, with a video below she did by dragging him to do jigs all over Yahoo:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091030/yahoos-yodel-anecdotal-blogger-will-not-be-yodeling-anymore/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20091019/yahoo-hires-goodby-as-top-creative-agency-for-its-ongoing-brand-revitalization/ http://allthingsd.com/20091019/yahoo-hires-goodby-as-top-creative-agency-for-its-ongoing-brand-revitalization/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:55:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=19543

In a shift that is sure to be much commented on by the advertising industry, Yahoo has tapped Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to take the lead for creative, advertising, digital marketing and strategic planning efforts.

The San Francisco-based Goodby, which is owned by the Omnicom Group (OMC), is known for its innovative ideas and has done such memorable campaigns as the Slowsky turtles for Comcast (CMCSA), the weird folk of Emerald Nuts, owned by Diamond Foods (DMND)–as well as campaigns for tech companies such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Adobe Systems (ADBE) and Netflix (NFLX).

Also, of course, the terrifically memorable “Got Milk?” campaign.

Perhaps a “Got Yahoo?” campaign is in the future?

Until now, the top job of goosing Yahoo’s tarnished brand, as part of a recently launched $100 million marketing push, has been helmed by Ogilvy & Mather, a unit of the WPP Group (WPPGY).

While Goodby will lead on creative initiatives worldwide, Ogilvy will remain in the mix, Integrated Marketing and Brand Management SVP Penny Baldwin told BoomTown in an interview this afternoon, focusing on international marketing efforts, including all upcoming brand launches in France, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Brazil and Indonesia.

And, via it Neo and Mindshare units, Yahoo said, Ogilvy will also run all media buying for the Internet giant globally.

Yahoo (YHOO) is also keeping strategic branding firm Landor & Associates.

Goodby, Ogilvy and Landor will apparently form a Brand Advisory Board at Yahoo, run by Baldwin.

Baldwin stressed that the move was a broadening of its outside marketing advisers and was not a replacement of Ogilvy, or any indication that the current new marketing campaign needed to change.

She said internal reports on the effectiveness of the overall big theme, “It’s Y!ou,” launched last month, have been strong.

Nonetheless, Baldwin added that the new agency is sure to bring more ideas to the mix in the massive effort, which has included television, print, outdoor and online ads.

And, she noted, the location of Goodby’s HQ in San Francisco, not far from Yahoo’s Sunnyvale digs, was also a plus.

“Goodby has the caliber to serve worldwide needs,” said Baldwin. “And with the way the Web moves so fast, we thought it was also important to have deep resources locally.”

Up next, she added: to “root our brand strategy with more hard-hitting” messages about Yahoo.

“This is far more than just an advertising effort,” said Baldwin of Yahoo’s efforts to revitalize itself in the eyes of consumers–and, while she did not say so, to the digerati of Silicon Valley. “This is a business transformation.”

Here is Baldwin’s boss, Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele talking about the company’s marketing efforts of late in a video interview with Nicki Dugan on the company’s Yodel Anecdotal blog in a new feature called Yodelcast (sorry, Nicki, but it is simply too professional and unjiggly for BoomTown’s seal of approval):

And here are two examples of Goodby’s creatives–Comcast’s Slowskys and Robert Goulet for Emerald Nuts:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091019/yahoo-hires-goodby-as-top-creative-agency-for-its-ongoing-brand-revitalization/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090226/bartz-blogs-reorg-the-entire-memo-to-employees/ http://allthingsd.com/20090226/bartz-blogs-reorg-the-entire-memo-to-employees/#comments Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:28:26 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=10395 Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz declared reorg today on the company’s corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal.

Here is her entire memo:

Getting our house in order

Posted February 26th, 2009 at 9:16 am by Carol Bartz, CEO

A month and a half in the saddle and today I have the perfect excuse to get blogging.

I’ve been on a whirlwind tour for the last six weeks, talking with everybody from executive leaders to the guys who configured my laptop. I’ve been in student mode, slowly getting smarter about what makes this place tick. And most recently, I’ve been gathering information on what it’s going to take to get Yahoo! to a great place as an organization–and one that brings you killer products.

People here have impressed the hell out of me. They’re smart, dedicated, passionate, driven, and really nice. There’s so much great energy and frankly lots of optimism. But there’s also plenty that has bogged this company down. For starters, you’d be amazed at how complicated some things are here.

So today I’m rolling out a new management structure that I believe will make Yahoo! a lot faster on its feet. For us working at Yahoo!, it means everything gets simpler. We’ll be able to make speedier decisions, the notorious silos are gone, and we have a renewed focus on the customer. For you using Yahoo! every day, it will better enable us to deliver products that make you say, “Wow.”

I’ve noticed that a lot of us on the inside don’t spend enough time looking to the outside. That’s why I’m creating a new Customer Advocacy group. After getting a lot of angry calls at my office from frustrated customers, I realized we could do a better job of listening to and supporting you. Our Customer Care team does an incredible job with the amazing number of people who come to them, but they need better resources. So we’re investing in that. After all, you deserve the very best.

We’re also leaning on this team to make sure we’re all hearing the voice of our customers (consumers and advertisers). I’m singularly focused on providing you with awesome products. Period. The kind that get you so excited, you have to tell someone about them. Whether on your desktop, your mobile device, or even your TV.

And that takes a real understanding of what you want/need/love/hate, how you’re using our products, and what you find simple, intuitive, easy and fun. Who wants innovation for innovation’s sake if it doesn’t make your life easier, more efficient, more productive? So expect us to hear you better and take better care of you.

Finally, a note about our brand. It’s one of our biggest assets. Mention Yahoo! practically anywhere in the world, and people yodel. But in the past few years, we haven’t been as clear in showing the world what the Yahoo! brand stands for. We’re going to change that. Look for this company’s brand to kick ass again.

Big thanks to the many of you who’ve reached out with positive comments. It’s clear people want Yahoo! to succeed. I’ll try to pop by here again soon, though probably not too soon. I have a pretty long to-do list.

Carol Bartz

CEO

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090226/bartz-blogs-reorg-the-entire-memo-to-employees/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090214/how-is-yahoos-massive-metro-homepage-redesign-going-it-depends-on-who-you-ask/ http://allthingsd.com/20090214/how-is-yahoos-massive-metro-homepage-redesign-going-it-depends-on-who-you-ask/#comments Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:38:26 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=9825

Late last night, Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat (pictured here) posted an update on the ongoing redesign of the Internet giant’s homepage, a massive undertaking given that 300 million people visit it each month.

Bhat, who is SVP of Yahoo’s Front Doors, Communities and Network Services, said the company was completing the first phase of its “bucket testing” and collecting feedback, but that, “Bottom line is we’re getting closer to the final design, but we’re not quite there yet.”

Indeed not, according to several sources at Yahoo (YHOO), who said that the massive underhaul of the homepage has been a much more complex, much dicier effort and was taking a lot longer than expected to launch.

(You can see examples of the redesign and also Bhat’s post last night on Yahoo’s corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal, below.)

When the redesign–which is called “Metro” internally–was announced last September, Bhat said the changes would initially impact less than one percent of worldwide users in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and India.

But he also said they would then be rolled out to a wider and wider circle over the next six months. That has not happened, obviously.

Why? One key reason: Some results in limited testing showing actual declines in traffic, both from pointing outward more and also having people stay on the homepage with beefed-up “one-click” features.

The biggest issue is openness, which is aggressive in the new design, especially for Yahoo.

But it is a move pushed strongly by former CEO Jerry Yang. The idea is that Yahoo was a “starting point” for consumers was one of his key strategies.

That includes adding in lots of widget-like applications, or apps, onto the homepage from outside partners, and many more links to sites all over the Web.

“We’re pointing people off Yahoo and they are going,” said one exec about Yahoo’s first massive redesign since 2006. “While being open is a good thing, it also means less traffic inside Yahoo.”

Said another: “A lot of us want it to point more to great Yahoo services we offer instead of giving everyone else the benefit of our size.”

And the results so far, several sources said, have definitely caught the attention of new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who some say might be considering slowing the wider rollout of the new homepage that insiders said was expected to be well on its way by spring.

Delay is, of course, common in massive projects like this, especially in this case, since the Yahoo homepage is a powerful “firehose” all over Yahoo and the Web.

When I contacted Bhat earlier this week to ask about the status of the homepage redesign, he would not comment about when it would roll out widely or about results of the testing, or give me access to the redesigned pages.

But he did kindly offer to walk me through the progress so far, next week at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale.

Then an update from Bhat suddenly appeared last night, in which he outlined that positive and negative feedback from that small number of Yahoo customers who have been using the new homepage.

Apparently, testers love the streamlined look and feel and the apps, and prefer the new page over the current one.

They also want even more apps, though, and think Yahoo should nix the darker color, as well as give easier access to mail and other services.

One assumes that is just a tiny bit of the feedback, especially given how dramatic the changes are.

In a post last fall when the redesign was announced by Bhat, I wrote that Yahoo was “employing a design that more significantly allows users to customize the starting page in a way that essentially amounts to a kind of My Yahoo-lite for everyone.”

That meant the ability to get to information and services more quickly, with links to outside email providers, initially from Google (GOOG) and Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL.

The test design also includes a prominent left-hand vertical bar, with applications from both Yahoo properties and third-party services like eBay (EBAY), which are easy to add and remove.

Eventually, Bhat said at the time, there would be thousands of apps, from Yahoo and also from outside developers.

“People want broadcast and narrowcast at the same time,” said Bhat then. “They want choices, but they also don’t want to do the work involved [in programming their own homepage].”

Noting that it was not the dashboard approach of My Yahoo or iGoogle, Bhat added at the time: “People are time-starved…so it is important to the user to get to their relevant daily information as quickly as possible without having to click around.”

But, said several sources at Yahoo who have seen the Metro results so far, by giving them more options, especially outside ones, clicking around is precisely what users do.

More next week when I visit with Bhat…

Until then, here is a screenshot Bhat posted of the latest look for Metro last night, and below it are several screenshots of the initial Yahoo redesign, as well as Yahoo’s current homepage (click on the images to make them larger).

In addition, Bhat’s whole post last night about Metro’s progress is at the very bottom.

This is the latest iteration of the homepage redesign:

This is the homepage that was rolled out in September 2007:

This is a homepage rolled out in September 2007 that includes more outside apps:

This is the homepage rolled out in September 2007 that shows how email from Yahoo and Google and AOL would look:

This is a screenshot of Yahoo’s current home page:

And here is the full text of the Bhat post from last night, below.

Update on our new homepage testing

Posted February 13th, 2009 at 8:08 pm by Tapan Bhat, Front Doors

As many of you know, we started testing new concepts for the Yahoo! homepage last fall, with the goal of helping to simplify the Web for the more than 300 million people around the world who visit the site each month.

We are wrapping up the first phase of our “bucket testing” and have gleaned some great insights from people in the US, UK, France and India who have tried out the new page. We’ve done a number of things to collect input–from reading your comments here on Yodel to reviewing online feedback forms and customer care inquires to meeting with many of you in person and online. Bottom line is we’re getting closer to the final design, but we’re not quite there yet.

Before I share details around what we’ve learned, I wanted to give a quick recap of some of the functionality we’ve added over the past few months since just a fraction of you have experienced it firsthand.

Back in September, we introduced a new section called “My Apps.” The great part about having apps on your homepage is that you can easily check in and get more done–from reading and responding to multiple email accounts to browsing local movie listings–all without leaving the page.

Today, we’ve enhanced that experience and we’re testing more than 25 apps that will keep you updated with whatever you want to know. New additions include apps from eBay, Forbes.com, Wired.com and more top brands. We’ve also beefed up the Sports and Finance apps, for example, providing schedules, team standings, blogs links and more, plus one-click access to your stock portfolios and stock quotes. The best part is that the “My Apps” section is now customizable so you can add and remove apps (check out this screenshot) so your homepage reflects what matters most to you.

Heres what we’ve heard from our testers:

Positive Feedback

* People are happy with the streamlined look and feel
* There’s lots of love for the applications
* Most testers said they prefer the new homepage over the current homepage

One comment that sums it up nicely:

“Well–I was surprised at first at how little change was introduced, and liked that. Now I’m surprised by how much change actually is packed in, but is more interaction based…Basically it’s deceptively different–looks and feels the same, but much more functionality built in at a new layer.” –Thomas

What We’re Working On

Now that we’ve got a critical mass of input, we’re translating it into updated versions of the page for ongoing testing. Here are some highlights.

* The #1 thing we’re hearing you want is more apps and we’ll be adding many apps in the coming weeks
* Most didn’t like the dark color that we tested initially–see the screenshot below of the new visual treatments we’re testing
* Easier ways to access and preview email and instant messaging accounts are in the works
* It should be easier to get to other Yahoo! services that you’ve come to rely upon

Metro test

We don’t take changes to your homepage lightly and your input is critical. To help our designers and engineers, tell us what else you think we should consider. Is there a killer app that you’d love to see?

Know that we’re working hard to create a new homepage that you’ll love and we’ll keep you posted as we get closer to launching. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Tapan Bhat
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Front Doors, Communities and Network Services

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090214/how-is-yahoos-massive-metro-homepage-redesign-going-it-depends-on-who-you-ask/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20081110/van-natta-takes-playlist-ceo-job-with-new-investment-by-pittman/ http://allthingsd.com/20081110/van-natta-takes-playlist-ceo-job-with-new-investment-by-pittman/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:00:39 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=6295

Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist. Pittman will also join its board.

Playlist has previously raised several million dollars, said sources, but the new funding is many times that, to total about $18 to $20 million.

The move to Playlist is an interesting one for Van Natta, who has looked at a number of jobs since leaving the high-profile social-networking site earlier this year.

He has talked to a wide range of companies, sources said, including Microsoft (MSFT) and a range of start-ups, as well as with MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS). (News Corp. also owns this site).

Those talks between Van Natta and MySpace to run its new music initiative did not pan out for a variety of reasons.

But he has long expressed a desire to become a CEO of a company, rather than just head to another executive job within a larger company, so the move to run a start-up is not a surprise.

In an interview this afternoon, Van Natta told me he got very intrigued by the possibilities at Project Playlist, which was the first iteration of the start-up and in which he is an investor, due to its viral growth.

And, indeed, Playlist has grown quickly to become one of the larger music communities on the Web, claiming that more than 38 million music fans monthly, sharing playlists via its Web site and also widely distributed embeddable widgets. The site has tens of millions of daily page views, according to surveys.

To get to those big-scale numbers, Playlist essentially has offered users a giant linking service for music, not unlike Google (GOOG) with all information, pointing users to promotional, free and sometimes illegal music and music video tracks all over the Web.

Those links to illegal music have resulted in a lawsuit aimed at Playlist from the music industry, sources said, a sadly typical experience of many online music services.

The usual tactic for the music giants: Sue first and shake down later.

Under Van Natta, I would guess, Playlist is likely to reach out to music companies and strike deals.

The company also needs to settle on its main business plan, which appears to me to have been less important than its explosive growth.

Playlist currently does have some small amount of advertising on the site, and seems to be making most of its scratch from sending leads to ringtone sellers.

Van Natta did not want to reveal specific strategies for Playlist going forward, only noting the opportunity is large.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta. “And the company that does the best job of taking advantage of that is really going to be huge.”

That said, there have been a lot of music-aimed efforts like Playlist in the music space, with a lot of different business plans and varying degrees of success, ranging from the Apple (AAPL) behemoth iTunes site, which sells single songs, to the CBS (CBS) music service, Last.fm, which relies more on advertising revenues.

Other contenders in the space include the Rhapsody subscription service from RealNetworks (RNWK), music discovery service iLike and many others. MySpace has also waded deeply into the music space, and Facebook is also reportedly weighing its own service.

Van Natta was one of Facebook’s earliest and most prominent execs, serving in jobs like COO and also Chief Revenue Officer while there.

He came to Facebook in the fall of 2005, after a stint as VP of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon, and was part of the founding team of A9, the Amazon search company.

“I am excited to be building a company again,” said Van Natta, who has taken many months off since he left Facebook in February.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081110/van-natta-takes-playlist-ceo-job-with-new-investment-by-pittman/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20080807/scratch-jerry-yang-for-post-ceo-dancing-with-the-stars-gig/ http://allthingsd.com/20080807/scratch-jerry-yang-for-post-ceo-dancing-with-the-stars-gig/#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:43:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=2528

“Is that all there is, is that all there is.
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball,
If that’s all there is.”

Peggy Lee sang it best about troubled times in the classic song “Is That All There Is?”

But, dancing and making a video about dancing is obviously something that elevates Yahoo (YHOO), which is no small thing in this tough period for the iconic Internet company.

In the video below, Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal Blog Editor Nicki Dugan (whom BoomTown is immediately offering a job as AllThingsD.com video chief) takes the well-known dancing-fool Internet celeb Matt Harding of the Where the Hell Is Matt? Web site and places him all over Yahoo for 33 dancing sessions.

The video was recently shown at the company’s all-hands meeting, and it is simply delightful to see Yahoos looking happy simply by tripping the light fantastic.

I think activist shareholder Carl Icahn should make Harding one of his picks for the Yahoo board. (Icahn was officially appointed to the board yesterday, and his two board picks will be revealed Aug. 15.)

Highlights of the video of Harding dancing at Yahoo include Co-Founder David Filo’s infamous mess of a cube, a video conference jig with the team in Burbank, doing a sitting-down boogie with President Sue Decker, having a tango with Yahoo’s Purple Cow and a hip-shaking visit to “Frenemy Territory” at Google.

Best of all, of course, is a do-si-do with Yahoo Co-Founder and CEO Jerry Yang, who seems to be channeling an odd combination of Tony Manero in “Saturday Night Fever” and Barney the purple–how perfect!–dinosaur in his dance stylings. (Enter a caption contest here related to the picture above.)

Happily, this is the kind of dancing it is enjoyable to see Yang doing, because the two-stepping, shuffling and tap-dancing he is going to have to do to stay in power–after the much less sanguine shareholder vote this past week–is going to be much less fun to watch.

Here’s the video from Yahoo (all credit to Dugan and Yahoo) and the wonderful “Dancing 2008″ video that Harding did all over the world (I dare you not to smile):

[ See post to watch video ]

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