Yahoo Cuts About 600 Jobs, Or 4% Of Work Force >YHOO - Wall Street Journal

(Updates with additional details and background)

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) said Tuesday it was cutting about 600 jobs, or about 4% of its work force, as the struggling Internet media company strives to increase revenue and boost margins.

Yahoo spokeswoman Kim Rubey said the cuts were largely aimed at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's products group, which builds advertising products, Web properties like the company's popular news, sports and finance pages, as well as its widely used email service.

Most of the jobs cut were in the U.S., she said.

"Today's personnel changes are part of our ongoing strategy ...

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Bartz: Yahoo developing content optimization service - Computerworld

IDG News Service - Yahoo is developing technology to help publishers personalize their websites, in much the same way that it helps them to populate their sites with ads, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said on Tuesday.

"We're looking at helping people manage their content," Bartz said at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, during a keynote appearance in which she was interviewed on stage by conference co-chairman John Battelle.

When Battelle asked her if the content management service she was describing existed as a product already, she answered that it doesn't. Once it's ready, Yahoo will be able to help Web publishers with both ads and content, she said.

The "content optimization" tool would focus on helping publishers personalize their content offerings and target it better for their site visitors, a process that requires automation, algorithms and data crunching at a scale that can't be done manually, she said.

For example, Yahoo serves up 6 million variations of its home page every day, varying the content it displays and the placement of items, based on what it determines will be the best experience for different users, she said.

Part of that knowledge comes from what Yahoo knows about signed-in users, from machine-learning insights and, also, from human-driven editorial decisions, Bartz said.

To be a successful content provider, Web publishers need to strive for "intense personalization," and one thing that hurt Yahoo was that it kept its content pages "static too long," she said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Yahoo announced new and enhanced local search and social media tools and features, including broader integration with Twitter and Zynga, a new beta version of Yahoo Messenger with more social-networking capabilities and local search improvements.

Yahoo also announced a program called Local Offers, in which Yahoo will aggregate offers, coupons and special deals from local merchants through partners including Groupon, LivingSocial, DealOn, Zozi, Tippr, Coupons.com and Valpak.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2010 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Yahoo! Just Not Good Enough - Forbes

Yahoo! reported earnings Tuesday after the bell that blew past forecasts but the performance failed to boost the Web portal's stock price in after hours trading.

Yahoo! ( YHOO - news - people ) doubled earnings to 29 cents per share thanks to one-time events, far surpassing the 15 cents in EPS expected by analysts. The problem was on the top line. The company grew revenue by 2% to $1.6 billion for its third quarter, but after taking out commissions to partners, net revenue came in at $1.12 billion, below the $1.13 billion expected by analysts. Earnings were boosted more than 120% by profits made from the company's sale of HotJobs to Monster.com for $225 million.

The company also points to gains in display advertising revenue, up 18%. "We've made substantial progress this year toward executing our strategies for enhancing profitability and resuming revenue growth," says CEO Carol Bartz,. "We've disposed of non-core assets while making strategic acquisitions."

The acquisitions include Associated Content and Citizen Sports, both content websites that Yahoo! acquired early this year. The company projects fourth quarter revenue to be in the range of $1,125 million and $1,225 million. Analysts are looking for a less conservative $1,257 million in the fourth quarter.

Stocks slid Tuesday as earnings season pressed on, even though many companies were topping profit forecasts. This is particularly true in the tech sector, where IBM ( IBM - news - people ), Google ( GOOG - news - people ), Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) and now Yahoo! have reported better than expected earnings, in some cases by hefty margins, and investors have responded by selling the stocks, sending the Nasdaq index down 45 points and the Dow down 171 points in day trading.

Yahoo! stock rallied last week, gaining 12% on news of a possible buyout by AOL. Rumors began circulating about a take-over backed by private equity firms and the smaller internet company, when the Wall Street Journal reported it using unnamed sources on October 13. Of material importance in the rumors is Yahoo's 39% stake in the Chinese internet company Alibaba, which adds uncertain value to Yahoo's holdings.

Yahoo! shares have declined by 7% since the company turned down Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people )'s buyout offer in May of 2008.

Competitively Yahoo! still has the numbers. According to the latest data released by comScore, in August Yahoo! had 179 million unique visitors, compared with Google's 178.8 million.

Yahoo's stock declined after hours on the announcement, after trading in a downward slump during the day, along with most of the market. It closed at $15.49 Tuesday and lost 12 cents after the bell.

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Yahoo Huddles as Firms Show Interest - Wall Street Journal

Yahoo Inc., its stock rising on news that potential suitors are exploring deals for the company, is sounding out the seriousness of the interest, people familiar with the matter say.

In recent weeks, several private-equity firms—including Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group LP—have been toying with the idea of taking Yahoo private, including a scenario where they join forces with AOL Inc. to acquire Yahoo, according to people familiar with the matter. The firms have discussed the scenario with AOL.

Getty Images A Yahoo billboard in San Francisco.

Yahoo stock rose 6% Wednesday in unusually active trading. Then, after news reports about the interest, the shares spiked 10% Thursday morning, before slipping back and ending the day at $15.93, up 4.5%.

The interest among financial firms is preliminary and the parties have yet to approach Yahoo about any deal, people familiar with the matter say. They cautioned that a deal would be especially difficult to pull off given the complexities involved in spinning off Yahoo's Asian assets and avoiding a tax hit.

Yahoo has asked Goldman Sachs to find out if the expressions of interest are credible and—if any approach becomes formal—what steps to take, a person familiar with the matter said. The person characterized these discussions as routine in response to market speculation.

Yahoo has an existing relationship with Goldman, which helped fend off Microsoft Corp.'s advances in 2008.

The situation compounds the management challenges facing Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz, who has been hit with a wave of executive departures and who some shareholders and board members feel isn't acting fast enough to turn around the Sunnyvale, Calif., company.

Yahoo declined to make Ms. Bartz available for an interview.

The barriers to any deal remain high. Yahoo has a market capitalization of roughly $21 billion and even if the company sold off some businesses, the price of a deal could be higher than many private-equity firms would stomach, they said.

Private-equity firms have been discussing one scenario that would entail Yahoo selling its valuable stake in Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group back to Alibaba. Some analysts peg the value of that 40% stake at about $10 billion. The remaining company could be merged with AOL and taken private.

Bloomberg News AOL's CEO, Tim Armstrong, left, has been focusing on generating original content to package to advertisers. He has suggested Yahoo should do the same.

Some analysts said Yahoo could end up selling that stake on its own to appease some shareholders who have long agitated for such a move.

Alibaba sounded out eBay Inc.'s interest in a deal for Yahoo in September, according people familiar with the matter, but there were never serious discussions.

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The potential suitors believe a Yahoo-AOL combination could yield big cost savings, boosting the profitability of their online advertising businesses. AOL and Yahoo both run businesses that sell graphical ads, and offer email and instant-messaging services and a range of media properties on subjects ranging from celebrity gossip to news.

AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong has said privately that he thinks Yahoo could benefit from pursuing the strategy he is pushing at AOL: focusing on generating lots of content to package to advertisers. An AOL spokeswoman declined to comment.

Analysts say a Yahoo-AOL merger could create a strong competitor in the market for online display ads, which include video, banner and interactive ads. That market is expected to be roughly $20 billion world-wide this year, but many companies believe it could grow to $50 billion over the next few years as more video content moves online.

Bloomberg News Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is under pressure to speed up turnaround efforts. The company also has suffered a recent wave of executive departures.

The market is fragmented, with no dominant player.

Yahoo and AOL both sell display ads for their own Web properties, with Yahoo on track to sell about $2 billion worth this year and AOL on track to sell $500 million, according to Marianne Wolk, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group.

Yahoo's Right Media display advertising exchange could also benefit from an influx of AOL inventory. The stock-market like system provides a way for advertisers to buy graphical ads across an array of websites through an auction.

—Amir Efrati contributed to this article.

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Yahoo Agrees To Buy Online-Ad Technology Firm Dapper - Wall Street Journal

(Updates throughout with background, company comment, analyst comment, latest share price)

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) said Tuesday it agreed to buy Dapper Inc., a startup that has developed technology to dynamically create and target personalized ads at Internet users.

The acquisition will help narrow the gap between Yahoo and Google Inc. (GOOG), which acquired similar technology when it bought startup Teracent last year.

"Yahoo needs to be competitive in terms of the pairing of content and advertisements," said BGC Partners analyst Colin ...

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