marissa mayer

Marissa Mayer misses a chance to shame a 'dirty old man'

I would have been tempted to step down from the stage, cock my fist, and swing it while saying: "Lean into this, George."

And yet not being Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, I was unable to perform this task at Tuesday's shareholders meeting.

Sadly, Mayer decided to put up with an alleged shareholder taking the microphone and offering: "I'm George Polis. I have 2,000 shares of Yahoo. I'm Greek, and I'm a dirty old man, and you look attractive, Marissa."

Perhaps this man thought he was being funny.

More likely, he really … Read more

Yahoo's buying spree continues with Rondee acquisition

Yahoo has been on an acquisition spree lately, and it's not done yet.

The latest catch: Rondee, a free conference-call service provider. The service announced the deal Wednesday on its Web site, saying simply that it's been acquired by Yahoo and will join the online giant's Small Business team. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With the Yahoo acquisition complete, Rondee is no longer accepting new users. Current users can continue to create their free conference calls until July 12. Data from past calls will be available until August 12. After that, Rondee is going … Read more

Is Marissa Mayer worth more than Tim Cook?

You can never underestimate the competitiveness of your average CEO.

You can also never underestimate the business sense of charities who know when they're on to an easy earner.

Tuesday brings news of Marissa Mayer trying to see whether lunch with her might be more valuable than coffee with Tim Cook.

Recently, someone who clearly values power over food paid $610,000 to have coffee with the Apple CEO. This was all organized by auction site CharityBuzz, which guilts people into doing exciting things and paying for them hugely.

Now, similar forward-thinkers are being asked how much it's … Read more

Yahoo going after Hulu's subscription revenue

Yahoo just spent $1.1 billion of its cash horde to acquire Tumblr, a blogging site with 300 million mostly young-ish visitors and 24 billion minutes of usage per month. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's team can slap a lot of tasteful, personalized native ads into the Tumblr content streams to monetize the fast growing site. It's the same way that Facebook and Twitter hope to get into the tens of billions in revenue league, but it's a long and winding road.

Now Yahoo is taking a run at Hulu, with its 4 million subscribers paying $7.99 … Read more

Yahoo's big lean into content to fuel growth

One of perennial questions about Yahoo has been, "What is Yahoo." As the pioneering Web brand slid downward, rebuffed Microsoft's generous acquisition offer and was overshadowed by the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon, the question morphed into  "Is the beleaguered Yahoo going to fade away?"

Marissa Mayer, the fifth Yahoo CEO in five years, seems to have a clear view of what Yahoo is, and a plan remove the word "beleaguered" as an adjective preceding its name.

The stock price is up over 70 percent since Mayer took over in … Read more

Yahoo wants to make Flickr 'awesome again'

NEW YORK -- Yahoo on Monday unveiled updates to its Flickr photo-sharing site that the company hopes will make Flickr "awesome again."

Among the changes are a new redesign with larger images, the ability for users to upload full-resolution photos, and 1TB of free storage for all users. Yahoo also launched a redesigned Android app for smartphones and tablets, which goes along with the recently revamped iOS app. The changes are available immediately, an executive said.

"The look and feel here is about photos and being unbounded," CEO Marissa Mayer said Monday. "That's what … Read more

The 404 1,272: Where Tumblr takes the cake (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Yahoo confirms $1.1B Tumblr buy, promises "not to screw it up."

- WordPress: 72K blog posts exited Tumblr in one hour over Yahoo deal.

- Tumblr CEO David Karp was on the 404 almost five years ago to the date.

- Australian politician sorry for "liking" Facebook photo of teenager's genitals.

- Nintendo claims ownership over gamer fanvids on YouTube.

Bathroom break video: Smooth McGroove sings an a capella cover of the Chemical Plant Zone music from Sonic the Hedgehog 2.… Read more

Yahoo-Tumblr: 7 ways to evaluate the union

Marissa Mayer views success as every Internet user in the world spending some time every day engaging with Yahoo properties. "We want to be product that people use on a daily basis, at least some part of it," the Yahoo CEO says.

Now the question will be just how the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr can actually help Yahoo become more of a daily habit.

Tumblr will be operated as a separate business, like a child of Yahoo just out of college. As described in Yahoo's press release, "Per the agreement and our promise not … Read more

Yahoo to consider $1.1B price tag for Tumblr this Sunday -- report

Yahoo's board of directors is meeting this weekend to consider buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash, AllThingsD reported Friday.

Unnamed sources told ATD that the deal is entirely in cash, which means Yahoo isn't offering up any stock options for the hip blogging site. The sources also said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer -- who has been trying to turn the large, struggling company around -- thinks buying Tumblr is key to her vision of a new Yahoo.

Yahoo sent out an invitation to the press Friday for a product event in New York taking place on … Read more

Marissa Mayer's sprint for daylight

Over the last several weeks, Marissa Mayer has talked about "sprinting." She is referring to Yahoo's run for daylight, after years of stumbling and being viewed as yesterday's Internet company.

Mayer's formula for a Yahoo resurgence starts with a sprint to get the "right people in place, and culture and energy where we want it to be so we can really run," she said during an interview last week at the Wired Business conference.

In her nine months as CEO, she has been adding and subtracting to Yahoo's talent pool, and rounding … Read more