hires
If Facebook Needs Faux-Documentary Recruiting Videos, It's Already Lost
Owen Thomas · 04/15/09 02:45PMGoogle Designer Heads to Way Cooler Job at Twitter
Owen Thomas · 03/30/09 07:21PMAOL Outcast Jon Miller to Join News Corp.'s Soap Opera in Progress
Owen Thomas · 03/27/09 11:50PMObama's Facebook Genius Lands Venture Capital Gig
Owen Thomas · 03/17/09 03:47PMAOL Boots Loser CEO for Google's Tim Armstrong
Owen Thomas · 03/12/09 05:11PMTwitter Claims Valley Crown by Poaching Google's Top Designer
Owen Thomas · 03/12/09 04:57PMCarol Bartz Gets New Yahoo Org Chart Half Right
Owen Thomas · 02/26/09 03:11PMWSJ Conference Organizer's Wife Secretly Running Google
Owen Thomas · 02/24/09 01:37AMPortfolio's Loss Is Political Blog Empire's Gain
Owen Thomas · 01/19/09 05:55PMCarol Bartz, the Woman Everyone but Yahoo Forgot
Owen Thomas · 01/15/09 08:48PMYahoo CEO's First Job: Fire Her No. 2
Owen Thomas · 01/13/09 02:18PMYahoo's Depressing Backup Plan
Owen Thomas · 01/08/09 05:25PMDisabled vet nominates self for Yahoo CEO
Owen Thomas · 12/02/08 04:40PMEx-Facebook COO takes Project Playlist CEO gig
Owen Thomas · 11/11/08 02:00AM![](http://d20hvt89h2l7r8.cloudfront.net/18m7y9y78470sjpg/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800.jpg)
Be careful what you wish for. Owen Van Natta, the former Facebook COO who left the social network in February, has gotten the CEO job he said he wanted — as the new chief of Project Playlist, an online-music startup. (It's been widely reported that MySpace wooed him to run its MySpace Music spinoff. He also had conversations with social-news site Digg and shopping search engine Nextag, among others.) Van Natta's an investor in Project Playlist, and the company has just announced funding from former AOL CEO Bob Pittman's Pilot Group. But powerful backers won't change the toxic business environment all online-music startups face.A group of record labels sued Project Playlist in April — which is, sad to say, the music industry's usual approach to beginning talks. Van Natta has a reputation as a skilled dealmaker, and he led talks with the labels while at Facebook. But sources who have had recent negotiations with labels say they have been granting only short-term licenses for music — typically a year in length. Their strategy is to give startups a year to grow — and then shake them down for most of the profits they generate. Does Van Natta think he can get a better deal? Since he's taking the job, he must be betting on it.
Apple's CEO-in-waiting
Owen Thomas · 11/10/08 01:40PM![](http://d20hvt89h2l7r8.cloudfront.net/18m7yhalemwlyjpg/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800.jpg)
Some days it seems like Steve Jobs will be CEO of Apple until he dies. But after a bout with pancreatic cancer and a health scare earlier this year, peope are starting the grieving process earlier. Part of that involves playing a guessing game about who will take his place. Fortune convincingly argues that Apple COO Tim Cook is the only real candidate.Cook is paid more than anyone else at Apple, and he's the only executive allowed an outside board seat (Cook is a director at Nike). More importantly, he's humble enough not to push for a CEO job that can never be his as long as Jobs is in the saddle. True, Cook is an operations expert, not a product genius like Jobs, but he could surround himself with Apple executives like Scott Forstall and Jonathan Ive to make up for that lack. Only one wild card: Mark Papermaster, the IBM chip executive whose recruitment by Apple has embroiled the companies in a lawsuit. if the hire goes through, Papermaster will report to Jobs, not Cook.
Microsoft takes over Yahoo
Owen Thomas · 11/06/08 04:40PM![](http://d20hvt89h2l7r8.cloudfront.net/18m7z7vjb3owcjpg/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800.jpg)
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang publicly pines for another bid from Microsoft. On stage at the Web 2.0 Summit conference yesterday, he said, again, that he was open to talks. Microsoft has taken pains to say it's not interested. But really, besides corporate raider Carl Icahn, who cares? A new leadership team, all with lengthy Microsoft resumes, has taken over key parts of Yahoo.Joanne Bradford, a longtime sales chief at MSN who later headed up Microsoft's content operations, now runs U.S. sales. Jeff Dossett, after a protracted job dance with both Microsoft and Yahoo, just took over Yahoo's "audience" group, which oversees its media websites. And Eric Hadley, another longtime Microsoftie, has just gotten a job running marketing. The three all know each other well from MSN and form a tight-knit cabal. And one thing drove them from Microsoft to Yahoo: Microsoft's senseless obsession with Google. MSN has always been an oddball operation at Microsoft. Is it not, at its heart, a media company. That Google figured out a way to turn attracting an online audience and selling advertising into an algorithm infuriated Microsoft's leadership — but the thought that the Web might be a software business after all held a deep attraction to them. Google's strength is in search advertising. And search advertising is bought, while display advertising is sold. Keyword ads practically sell themselves, while banner ads require the careful cultivation of human links between Web publishers and advertisers. In their display-ads sales, Microsoft and Yahoo both took their eye off the ball, distracted by Google. Microsoft will remain distracted, possibly for all time. But Yahoo is beginning to rebuild an ad-sales operation badly wounded by Yahoo president Sue Decker's mishandling of sales chief Wenda Harris Millard. That's what Bradford, Dossett, and Hadley have figured out. If there's still a role for humans in the packaging of audiences for advertisers, it's going to be filled at Yahoo, not Microsoft. It is a chancy, contrarian bet; running up against both Google and Microsoft takes guts. But it's no coincidence that so many Microsoft executives are now at Yahoo.
New MySpace Music chief Courtney Holt is a dude, okay?
Owen Thomas · 11/05/08 08:40PM![](http://d20hvt89h2l7r8.cloudfront.net/18m7zh4zpg1s5jpg/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800.jpg)
I feel sorry for Courtney Holt. Partly because the MTV executive is rumored to be taking a terrible job running MySpace Music, a feature of the social network masquerading as a separate company. But mostly because of his name. In a previous article, I was enough of a bonehead to refer to Holt as "she." Trying to do my part to promote the role of women in the tech industry, okay?
Another MySpace Music CEO candidate stalls on the job
Owen Thomas · 11/04/08 07:20PM![](http://d20hvt89h2l7r8.cloudfront.net/18m806og5tu5djpg/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800.jpg)
Why is it that Courtney Holt, the MTV executive reportedly offered a job running MySpace Music, has yet to take the CEO position there? Because, like the other candidates, he figured out that running a feature of a website is not a real job. v10_medium" alt="Another MySpace Music CEO candidate stalls on the job" title="Another MySpace Music CEO candidate stalls on the job" />
Another Microsoftie joins Yahoo's new cult of personality
Owen Thomas · 11/04/08 04:00PM![](http://d20hvt89h2l7r8.cloudfront.net/18m809ytwudtnjpg/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800.jpg)
Heavy.com continues to get lighter; Eric Hadley, who only joined the funny-videos-for-guys startup a year ago as chief marketing officer, has joined Yahoo as its VP of advertiser and partner marketing. He'd previously worked for a decade at Microsoft. We see the hand of Joanne Bradford in this; she's the former MSN chief who now runs ad sales at Yahoo. The pattern here?Yahoo has lacked a strong sales leader since the departure of Wenda Harris Millard, whom President Sue Decker disgracefully drove out of the company. With the hiring of Hadley to run marketing and Jeff Dossett to run media, Bradford is assembling her own team of loyalists, from Microsoft and elsewhere. In sales, personality rules. And every cult needs its leader. (Photo by Andy Plesser)