Yahoo on Sale ?

Yahoo reportedly going to redesign their strategies, one of them with open space for third parties. No mention of exactly what the strategy will be pursued, but Yahoo would consider a number of steps confirms, such as open space to the various parties who are interested in this company. There has been no official confirmation from Yahoo related memo allegedly leaked from the people in it, but it further strengthens the notion that Yahoo would be sold. Plus Microsoft is also reportedly interested in buying them.

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What Was Behind the Timing of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s Abrupt Ouster?

In the end — the bitter end, that is — there really is no good time to fire someone.

But the timing of the ouster of Carol Bartz as CEO of Yahoo is one of the more curious things about the corporate mishegas at the Silicon Valley Internet giant of late.

That included drastically moving up the clock on Bartz, which was not part of a plan until recently. In fact, several sources were told only last month by Yahoo board members that evaluation of her status — her contract ended at the beginning of 2013 — would not take place until the end of 2011.

That obviously changed.

And, because it is Yahoo — which never met a crisis situation it could not hopelessly complexify — there are numerous and conflicting accounts about the reasons it was done so quickly and abruptly.

They include the board’s feeling that Bartz had not responded to their requests for a credible strategic plan; worries that she would not ever meet annual performance goals, including improving its stock price; upcoming weak third-quarter numbers, which will continue a troublesome downward trend in Yahoo’s key advertising business; and, perhaps most intriguingly, the need to make a move before it was revealed that another activist investor, this time Third Point’s Daniel Loeb, had decided to target Bartz and the Yahoo board.

One thing is certain: The ousting of Bartz was messier than it needed to be, mostly because several sources said she was caught unawares.

“She did not know it was happening, even if she probably should have seen it coming,” said one person familiar with the situation. “And she had no allies at the company to warn her, either.”

Indeed, at the time Bartz was fired over the phone by Chairman Roy Bostock — who had until late this summer been her fervent supporter — she was set to appear at a high-profile Citigroup investor conference in New York.

“It had to happen then, because you can’t put a CEO in front of investors and analysts and then fire her soon after,” said one person close to the situation.

Actually, former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel stepped down only days after appearing at the company’s annual meeting and telling the gathering he was in for the long haul.

The Loeb problem also played a part. According to several sources, while Loeb did not surface until after Bartz’s firing, several board members and Silicon Valley players were aware of his plans to target Yahoo.

While Loeb was not the more heavyweight threat that activist investor Carl Icahn had been in the past, sources said he was planning to call for Bartz’s firing, as well as a board re-do.

The large part of the reason for letting her go finally, of course, centered on not meeting performance goals set by the board.

While the overhaul of a hairball of systems and a rejiggering of staff was quickly done by the longtime and experienced manager, the turnaround and renewed product innovation promised by Bartz was slow in coming.

In addition, advertising sales results had worsened and recent quarterly reports showed little progress.

To remedy the situation, directors had asked Bartz to present a strategic plan earlier this year, which she did with the help of top execs. It further underscored the idea of Yahoo as a top-level digital media company.

But the board pressed for more details and felt Bartz was not the right exec to carry out the kind of dramatic renewal of Yahoo that is needed.

Looming, too, was the third-quarter results on October 18, which sources said will show continued weakness at Yahoo.

For that, it’s likely the fired Bartz will get the blame, giving the board — which is also being criticized by large shareholders and others — a bit of breathing room as it figures out what to do next.

In other words, with no good news to report, the Yahoo board decided to deliver some bad news to Bartz.

(In related news, according to an 8-K filing by the company, interim Yahoo CEO and also CFO Tim Morse got a small bump in base salary from $600,000 to $750,000, effective September 15, 2011.)

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Former Yahoo Indonesia Launches Peneroka

Today, former Yahoo! Indonesia Country Editor Budi Putra and Jimmy Kembaren (also ex-Yahoo) announces their new project, and sure enough it’s a blog. Sort of.

The two partners for their next project where Kembaren handles the product & engineering and Budi handles the content, and believe me when I say that they’re really good at what they do. Their new project is called Peneroka, an Indonesian word for “pioneer”, and they have a good reason to call it “pioneer”. While Peneroka is basically an online magazine with content and all, it’s actually a new way of seeing content and an experiment from the two based on how users consume content on the web.

Peneroka is an online magazine, but if you look at the frontpage they only have 4 articles. Budi told us that they limit one “edition” to 4 articles, and that one edition is not necessarily limited to one day and in one day they can have multiple editions.

Go figure that out.

The philosophy behind this complicated scheme is that Kembaren is convinced that users aren’t looking for content, they want the news handed to them. Give user less options and make it as simple as possible for them to consume the content. The same reason is used by Kembaren to omit the ability for users to find information, no search engine and no archive. If you miss a news, you miss a news.

To be honest, I kinda like the idea of “less is more”, but deleting search and archiving function on a content site doesn’t seem to be a good idea for me. But again, Budi Putra and Kembaren insists that this project is more of an experiment on content delivery and I see it as a new way to consume content to users and that they’re very open to feedback from users.

Sooner or later, someone has to come up with a new way of seeing content, obsolete the current concept of content delivery. They may fail, but they are the pioneers.

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Yahoo Records Dip In Advertising Sales: Trouble On The Horizon?

Yahoo lost traction years ago in the battle for search dominance, but they’ve been quietly eking out a living in their corner of the web—until now.

Yahoo has recorded losses for the second quarter running, reporting $1.08bn in revenue for the 3 months ending June 2011.According to Yahoo, that’s a 4.6% decline on last year’s revenues. The company is citing reduced advertiser spending as the major cause of the dip.

Of course Yahoo won’t openly say that eroding market share is a contributor because that would make Google and Facebook all the merrier. The truth is though, between lower consumer spending, advertiser migration (especially to social media platforms), Yahoo has taken a big hit. One also has to bear in mind that there was merger between Microsoft’s, Bing and Yahoo not too long ago. That consolidation, obviously didn’t transform the market has everyone expected.

Things aren’t looking too bad for Yahoo though, because even with only $1.08bn in revenue, the company did manage to make a profit. And that’s a lot more than some of the bigger tech companies can say. Those profits should now be guarded and channelled properly because if sales continue to decline, Yahoo will most certainly move from the black into the pits of the red.

Do you think Yahoo can keep up with the likes of Facebook and Google? Watch the video below to see what the analysts are saying.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuNNzNk5SXk

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