4 posts and columns on Yusuf Mahdi

Awkward! As Microsoft Marketing Event Opens, Its Longtime Marketing Head Announces Surprise Retirement

in News on March 30, 2011 at 9:43 am PT

Timing is everything and, sometimes, very awkward. Today at its Redmond, Wash., campus, Microsoft is hosting a splashy online “marketing leadership summit” titled “Imagine 2011″–a gathering of top marketing execs from across the globe, most of whom are advertising clients of its online division. Also today: Its longtime head of global marketing, Mich Mathews, announced her departure–to the surprise of many Microsoft execs here, in fact–via a report in Ad Age.

Microsoft Bing's Yusuf Mehdi Talks About Facebook Search Lovefest!

in News on October 14, 2010 at 5:15 am PT

After yesterday’s event at which Facebook and Microsoft declared their never-ending love for each other via a search integration into the Bing service of a lot of data from the powerful social networking behemoth, I sat down to talk about it with Yusuf Mehdi, a longtime exec at the software giant. It is the first sign of a major deployment of a deal announced last year between Microsoft and Facebook. Here’s the video.

Van Natta Takes Playlist CEO Job, With New Investment by Pittman

in News on November 10, 2008 at 9:00 pm PT

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, and Pittman will join its board. The site, which has been called Project Playlist, had previously raised several million dollars. The new round of funding super-sized that, sources said, hovering at about $18 million. “Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta to BoomTown, in an interview this afternoon, giving it as his main reason for joining Playlist.

The Entire D6 Interview With the Gates Foundation's Melinda Gates (3 of 4)

in News on July 30, 2008 at 7:28 am PT

We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May. Here’s Part 3 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates. In this video, Melinda Gates talks about the best ways to fix the broken parts of the public high school educational system in the U.S.