Rosensweig

Rosensweig named chief of Chegg

Dan Rosensweig, a high-profile technology executive, is the new president and chief executive of the online textbook rental company Chegg.

The appointment, announced by Chegg co-founder Osman Rashid on Tuesday, becomes effective immediately. Rosensweig finds himself in a crowded business segment, with Chegg squaring off against its chief rival, BookRenter.com, as well as megasize book retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com and smaller local booksellers.

But helped by penny-pinching concerns born of a bracing recession, students increasingly view textbook rental as an attractive alternative to purchasing their books outright. The service operates on a time clock. … Read more

Dan Rosensweig to be named Guitar Hero CEO

Update at 6:10 a.m. PDT March 23: Activision makes it official.

Quadrangle Group partner Dan Rosensweig will be named CEO and president of Activision Blizzard's Guitar Hero franchise, CNET News has confirmed.

The pending appointment was first reported Sunday evening on AllThingsDigital. Rosensweig's appointment will be announced Monday morning, according to people familiar with the decision.

Rosensweig spent 18 years at Ziff-Davis in a variety of senior sales and publishing roles, the last one as CEO of ZDNet, before its acquisition by CNET Networks in 2000. He then served as CNET's president before becoming chief … Read more

Adobe downgraded; ex-Yahoo added to board

Shares of Adobe Systems fell 7 percent Tuesday after a market analyst downgraded the company's stock from "market perform" to "underperform."

Share closed at $22.10, down $1.66, after FBR Research analyst David Hilal said in a research note that he cut his rating on Adobe's stock because the "shares have risen to a point where the risk-reward profile is unfavorable." Hilal also said Adobe depends too much on new unit sales and lacks recurring revenue from existing customers.

In other news, Adobe announced that former Yahoo executive Dan Rosensweig had … Read more

More speculation on Jerry Yang's fate

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD.com puts Sue Decker at the top of her list to succeed Jerry Yang as Yahoo CEO if he returns to his former position of founder and chief Yahoo. She acknowledges that the Yahoo president has been part of the team that put Yahoo in its current position, but that she "might blossom if she had full control" over the company. It seems that she already has a lot of control over the company, based on her performance at the D6 conference and analyst calls over the last few months.

Kara also listed former … Read more

Zuckerberg ought to pull 'an Andreessen,' not 'a Gates'

Kara Swisher has a deliciously speculative piece up Friday about who Mark Zuckerberg should appoint to replace Owen Van Natta as Facebook's No. 2.

Before weighing in, though, I must say that Zuckerberg just made his first business mistake--nothing that he won't recover from, but an error nonetheless. He should have pulled an Andreessen. Instead, he's trying to pull a Gates.

Marc Andreessen was the technological brains behind Netscape. His company thrived--until it was brought down by Microsoft's death ray--because the role of Netscape CEO was entrusted to an experienced business executive named Jim Barksdale.

You … Read more