yahoo

Are Yahoo, Mayer building an 'interest graph'?

If you haven't noticed, the Marissa Mayer-led Yahoo has been on a bit of an acquisition roll lately, buying up a number of small startups as it drives toward relevance. At least, that's the plan.

The latest? Summly, a mobile news reader startup helmed by someone young enough to not know a world that Yahoo did not inhabit. Sobering.

(The others: mobile interest tracker Stamped, news clipper Snip.it, restaurant recommendation app Alike, culture recommendation app Jybe, and video chat platform OnTheAir.)

What's the bigger strategy, exactly? Writing for Fast Company, Sarah Kessler takes a stab at it. … Read more

Hulu may not be for sale yet, but buyers are lurking

Hulu might not be on the auction block, but that hasn't stopped buyers from expressing interest.

A report from AllThingsD said several potential purchasers have reached out to Hulu's corporate owners, though none have made a formal offer. The site lists Ross Levinsohn, the former interim Yahoo who now works for Guggenheim Partners, as one potential acquirer. Yahoo and Amazon are a couple of others that have "kicked the tires," AllThingsD said.

Hulu, Yahoo, and Guggenheim Partners declined to comment. We've contacted Levinsohn and Amazon and will update the report when we have more information. … Read more

ComScore: Google claims top spot for desktop and mobile hits

Google hasn't budged from the No. 1 spot when it comes to its desktop and mobile audience, according to ComScore's latest rankings, but the companies with the most mobile growth are ones that have been struggling to keep investors happy.

Groupon, Zynga, and Pandora's mobile users grew more than twice as much as their numbers for desktop users, according to ComScore's February measurement for the top 50 digital media companies. Of course, the three companies -- which have seen their share of management shakeups and disappointing earnings this past year -- had much smaller numbers to … Read more

Yahoo to buy news-summarizing app Summly for undisclosed sum

Yahoo's acquisition push under new CEO Marissa Mayer continues today, with the company saying it's buying news-reading app Summly.

Yahoo announced the move today in a blog post by Adam Cahan, senior vice president of mobile and emerging products. Summly is an app that uses an algorithm to pull out relevant information from news articles and turns them into neat paragraphs that fit on an iPhone screen, while also linking to the full article. The app, created by teenager Nick D'Aloisio, is a sort of CliffsNotes for the news.

The Summly app will be shut down, but … Read more

Yahoo brings back former employees with Jybe acquisition

Yahoo has picked up a new app and brought some former employees along for the ride.

Announced today, Yahoo has acquired Jybe, an iOS app that recommends books, movies, and restaurants based on a user's personal tastes. Jybe's service and app kicked off about two years ago.

The Jybe team consists of five people who used to work at Yahoo. The team will join Yahoo's platform organization to focus on targeting and personalization, according to the company.

"This will be a 'coming home' for the team -- all five are former Yahoos," Yahoo said in … Read more

Yahoo looks to buy stake in video-sharing site Dailymotion

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is working on buying a controlling stake in video-sharing site Dailymotion, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

Unnamed sources told the Journal that Yahoo is in talks with France Telecom, the company that owns Dailymotion, to buy as much as 75 percent of the site. The site may be valued at about $300 million.

It's far from a done deal at this point, according to the Journal's sources, but Yahoo could use a boost in the video-sharing space, which is mainly dominated by services like Google's YouTube.

Although Mayer purchased a recommendations startup … Read more

Another Yahoo exec leaves the fold. Is Mayer to blame?

Yahoo has lost another top executive to another company, and more are likely to follow suit, says AllThingD's Kara Swisher.

James Carroll, who had served as senior vice president of Yahoo's consumer and global platform group, is taking on a key role at domain-hosting firm Go Daddy, say Swisher's sources. Formerly employed by Microsoft, Carroll was "responsible for Yahoo's content, social and membership platforms and the international delivery of all Yahoo products and services worldwide," according to his LinkedIn profile.

Carroll is a familiar face to Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving. Irving was formerly Yahoo's chief product officer … Read more

Silicon Valley execs press D.C. on immigration law fixes

Silicon Valley firms are presenting a rare united front in an effort to end a political logjam that has blocked high-tech immigration reform.

In an unusual show of support that underscores how important the topic has become, executives from Facebook, Google, eBay and other major tech companies sent a letter today to President Obama and congressional leaders asking them to fix immigration law by the end of 2013. The current system is broken, they say, blaming visa shortages, long waits for green cards, and difficulties bringing spouses and children to the United States.

"Because our current immigration system is … Read more

Best Buy ends trailblazing work-at-home program

Best Buy, seen as a trailblazer for its progressive telecommuting policy, is now putting limits on the ability of its non-store staff to work from home.

Just a week after Yahoo told its workers that they could no longer work from home, Best Buy ended its Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) program, which allowed employees to set their own hours and work from anywhere as long as they got the job done. Telecommuting is not completely ruled out as an option for the company's 4,000 non-store employees, but workers will need to seek managerial approval first.

The change … Read more