Yahoo! Management Shakeup
Quoting their news release "Yahoo! Re-Aligns Organization to More Effectively Focus On Key Customer Segments and Capture Future Growth Opportunities".
In a not so surprising move, Lloyd Braun, head of media operations is leaving however, he is not mentioned in the release. What is surprising, is that Dan Rosensweig, Chief operating officer who is highly regarded within the firm has decided to leave Yahoo!, at the end of March.
You can read the full release Yahoo! News Release
Wall Street Journal (subscription required) by SVP, Brad Garlinghouse entitled The Peanut Butter Manifesto suggested some of these changes.
As for the release, the main thread seems to read as a tighter reporting structure along with a new focus on specific market segments, namely
Expand customer-centric culture and capabilities:
They are indicating a change in focus to reflect audience segments as opposed to product segments in addition to leveraging community and search. In addition, they talk of tagging, sharing and consuming media..
There will be three Operating Groups under the new structure each lead by a senior executive reporting directly to Terry Semel, these include:
Audience Group
The Group will be charged with building on network and off network audiences and relationships. Of note:
"Open more opportunities for users to take advantage of Yahoo! tools and services off network and through mobile and digital devices".
Perhaps this will mean Yahoo! Groups might see products geared specifically for group circles and social networking? Certainly, tools like JumpCut come to mind. In addition, the idea of media meshing has been talked about for both mobile and fixed platforms, perhaps they have some thoughts in this direction.
Advertiser & Publisher Group
Lead by current CFO, Sue Decker
"This group will lead the transformation of how advertisers connect with their target customers across the Internet, with the goal of driving more value for more advertisers and publishers than any other company".
Technology Group
Headed by CTO, Farzad Nazem the group seems destined to focus more on leveraging social media, does this portend the much-discussed purchase of Facebook? In addition, it mentions next generation ad networks beyond the deployment of Project Panama.
"We will concentrate key engineering talent and shift investment towards the development of high-impact, scalable, global platforms and infrastructures".
