Exclusive: Yahoo Nabs Microsoft Exec Brett Wayn to Help Local Efforts
After it struck its online advertising and search partnership with Yahoo, Microsoft tapped longtime Internet exec Brett Wayn (pictured here) to work with Greg Nelson during the integration.
Well, Wayn must have liked what he saw at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, since he is bouncing there from his job at the Redmond, Wash. software giant to help run local efforts at Yahoo.
[UPDATING local roles at Yahoo.]
Wayn will be working for Chief Product Officer Blake Irving and will be responsible for product management of Yahoo’s local “horizontal.”
He will work closely with whoever Yahoo finds as a replacement for Matt Idema, a longtime Yahoo exec who shuttled over to Facebook as a director of business operations, working on the local arena.
Luke Beatty, who heads up Yahoo’s Americas region community and local businesses, including Flickr, Groups, Answers and hundreds of local sites, is doing Idema’s job for now within Americas head Ross Levinsohn’s unit.
Local is a hugely hot space right now, with a spate of Web focus from giants like Google and Facebook to powerful start-ups such as Foursquare and Groupon.
Wayn has more recently been working on international for Microsoft’s MSN portal. The Australian native has also worked at AOL and, interestingly, has an actual medical degree.
In other words: Paging Dr. Local, stat!
