Gawker: valleywag, yahoo buzz

Who will replace Jeff Weiner at Yahoo?

Owen Thomas — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:00:00 EDT

If Jeff Weiner, head of Yahoo's search, community, and media properties, leaves the company, who's left to run things? An outside hire seems unlikely, Michael Arrington points out, given Carl Icahn's fight with the Yahoo board. That leaves a battlefield promotion for one of Weiner's direct reports, shown here from left to right: Brad Garlinghouse, Scott Moore, Vish Makhijani, and Tapan Bhat. Here's our handicapping of this horserace:

Brad Garlinghouse: The obvious candidate; a former CEO, Garlinghouse wrote a controversial "Peanut Butter" memo calling for Yahoo to focus on fewer products and do them well, a strategy Yahoo has followed. He currently oversees communications properties like Yahoo Mail and Messenger, which are shaping up as the centerpieces of Yahoo's attempt to catch up with Facebook and turn its user base into a social network. The odds-on favorite to succeed Weiner.

Scott Moore: The head of Yahoo's Media Group, overseeing properties including news, finance, sports, celebrity portal OMG and women's site Shine. Not in the running, we think: He was only recently promoted, and he likes living in the L.A. area, where the Media Group is based.

Vish Makhijani: Runs Yahoo Search. No chance; given the performance of Yahoo in the search market, it's not clear why he has his current job, let alone why Jerry Yang would give him a new one.

Tapan Bhat: Runs the Yahoo.com homepage and My Yahoo, among other "front doors." Bhat keeps a low profile, but he recently launched Yahoo Buzz, a Digg competitor which has been well received. The most likely scenario for Bhat: Garlinghouse gets promoted, but Bhat gets handed his communications and community portfolio. We'd like to see what Bhat does with sites like Flickr, whose product development has stagnated. (How long did it take to launch video on Flickr?)

Your thoughts on these Yahoo executives in the comments, and your tips in our inbox, are welcome.

Yahoo, CNET sign ad deal

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:20:00 EDT

Yahoo is about to get a lot more CNET. The companies agreed to an expanded editorial and advertising relationship. One likely goal: CNET CEO Neil Ashe wants to get traffic from Yahoo Buzz, the Web giant's partner-to-play version of Digg. Buzz is designed to favor sites for which Yahoo brokers ads. [BoomTown]

Yahoo Buzz traffic shows why leaks are good for business

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:20:21 EDT

After Valleywag published leaked screenshots of Yahoo Buzz last month, Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan sent a companywide email saying that the person who leaked Buzz "had been found and dealt with." In light of the Hitwise traffic statistics charted above, let's hope that "dealing with" our tipster meant Callahan personally fetched him or her an extra latte from Beantrees.

62 percent of readers don't mind the Yahoo Buzz payola scheme

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:00:16 EDT

According to our admittedly unscientific poll, 62.3 percent or readers said they wouldn't mind if publishers wheeled and dealed their way to the front page of social news sites like Digg, Yahoo Buzz, and Reddit. The news bodes well for Yahoo. Buzz is meant to lure websites into Yahoo's ad network; Yahoo will then take a cut of the ad revenue generated when Buzz send traffic to those sites. It's all part of Yang's grand promises to shareholders made to counter Microsoft's acquisition bid.

Why Digg should have sold already

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:12:06 EDT

Last week, Digg CEO Jay Adelson wasted no time debunking rumors that Google, Microsoft and two media companies were bidding $200 million or more to buy the social news site. It's too bad, because last week would have been a good time for Adelson and Digg cofounder Kevin Rose to sell. According to metrics firm Hitwise, traffic Yahoo's Digg competitor, Buzz, sends to news and media sites nearly caught up with the traffic Digg sends in just one month.

Pay-for-play Yahoo Buzz "blows away" Digg — but will users bite? Vote in our poll

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:20:38 EDT

Yahoo Buzz, the Digg competitor we uncovered last month, has Web publishers giddy over traffic binges. Us Weekly, Salon and Michael Arrington's TechCrunch all report that when Yahoo Buzz put links to their sites on Yahoo's homepage, they posted record traffic days. "It's clear that a link from Yahoo.com blows away anything Digg or any other competitor can offer," Arrington writes on TechCrunch. "That will keep the Buzz publishers, who must be invited into the service, paying attention." And paying for traffic, according to Yahoo's plan.

The payola is indirect. Yahoo's intention with Buzz is to lure publishers into its advertising network. Publishers will give up part of their ad inventory, as well as a cut of sales, to Yahoo. Yahoo's willing to turn on the traffic firehose, but only if publishers let it set up buckets at the other end. Great for Yahoo, great for publishers. But one wonders if anyone has thought about Yahoo's users in this whole pageview-padding scheme. Sure, they'll get to vote on stories — but only if they're on a site in bed with Yahoo.

What do you think? You don't have to join an ad network to vote in our poll:

Yahoo management hounds Buzz leakers, not engineers

Owen Thomas — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:00:34 EST

Is Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan trying to tell us he's bored? Having tired of turning dissidents over to the Chinese government, the lawyer has reportedly turned his attention to other prey — the sources of leaks about Yahoo's newly launched Buzz news site, a poorly made Digg clone. He recently "sent out a note saying that the person who leaked 'Buzz' had been found and dealt with," commenter Snarkotron writes. Perhaps his energies would be better spent prosecuting Buzz's engineers. John Paczkowski of AllThingsD tells me that Buzz is failing in its most basic purpose: Accepting a link for discussion and voting. "I posted a story 90 minutes ago, and readers are telling me they can't buzz it up," he writes. Paczkowski's story is unflattering to Yahoo. I'd speculate that Yahoo is filtering out unwelcome news on Buzz, but that would imply far too much organization and competence.

Yahoo's Digg clone gets three months to prove its worth

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:22:06 EST

Yahoo plans to launch its Digg competitor, Yahoo Buzz, tomorrow. After that, a tipster tells us, Yahoo VP Tapan Bhat and his Front Page/Front Doors group will have three months to prove the project's worth. If it's not driving significant traffic to publishers in Yahoo's ad network by then, EVP Jeff Weiner will shut it down. (Assuming he's still with the company.) Our source isn't optimistic, telling us "Buzz will launch with all hat but no cattle."

Monday you'll see what I'm talking about. The site will have no RSS feeds etc. [It's] another example of Y! not innovating but rather copying existing products in the marketplace poorly.

Screenshots of Yahoo Buzz, a Digg competitor

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:40:17 EST

The pace of of product launches from Yahoo is breathless — and with a whiff of desperation. On February 26, Yahoo plans to beta launch Yahoo Buzz as a competitor to Digg, and a tipster supplied Valleywag with screenshots. Buzz, built under the direction of VP Tapan Bhat, will begin with a limited number of publishers — about 100 — and will rank stories based on popular search results and user voting. By summer, Buzz will open to the entire Yahoo Publisher Network. In other words, if you let Yahoo sell ads on your site, it will allow your stories to appear on Buzz. Word is Yahoo plans to launch the site on buzz.yahoo.com, which currently tracks popular search results. Pics or it didn't happen? See the screenshots, below.