Yahoo!’s EVP of the Americas named one of world’s leading media strategists 

Just twelve months after joining Yahoo! as the Executive Vice President of the Americas region, Ross Levinsohn has been recognized by Ad Age as a 2011 Media Maven. The annual Media Mavens awards fete the world's leading media strategists for their creative thinking, leadership and innovation. At an event in New York today honoring the award winners, Levinsohn was in very good company with honorees from brands like Apple, P&G and Warner Bros.

During his year-long tenure, Levinsohn has created a strong track record for championing unique content experiences and new partnerships that benefit Yahoo!’s consumers and advertisers. He’s committed to pushing the boundaries and ensuring Yahoo!’s continued leadership position as the premiere digital media company. Here’s a look back at some of the company’s key accomplishments under Levinsohn: 

• Yahoo! remains the top-ranked site in an amazing 13 U.S. categories, including sports, mail, news, finance, entertainment-news, shopping, TV, real estate, autos, instant messaging, and photos. 

• The Royal Wedding was the largest video event in Yahoo!’s history, surpassing the funeral of pop star Michael Jackson by 21 percent, and totaling 27 million video streams and 2.6 million live video streams over the 24-hour period from Friday to Saturday. 

• The death of Osama bin Laden marked new traffic records on Yahoo! News, surpassed only by March’s earthquake in Japan. More than 45 million pages on Yahoo! were viewed about bin Laden’s death those two days—more page views than these Websites got for the entire month: NPR, Salon, TechCrunch, The Atlantic, or Google Reader. 

• Yahoo! had all the top 10 original shows on the Web in August. Calling Yahoo! "the broadcast network of the digital age," Yahoo! Media Network senior VP Mickie Rosen announced a slate of eight new video series aimed at the 13 million women who watch Yahoo! video.

• To commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Yahoo! partnered with National September 11 Memorial & Museum (9/11 Memorial) and co-produced a memorial microsite which included tools for users to tell their own stories.

• Yahoo! and ABC announce a new partnership that will bring both consumers and advertisers a treasure trove of premium video content.
• Yahoo! is named the official, and only broadcast destination for “A Decade of Difference” –a concert celebrating the philanthropic work of President Clinton and The William J. Clinton Foundation, featuring an all-star group of the most influential and socially responsible artists, including Bono and Lady Gaga. Yahoo!’s Decade of Difference microsite received more than 200 million page views. 
•Yahoo! announced a partnership with Microsoft and AOL to offer each other’s premium non-reserved online display inventory to their respective advertising customers. 
• Yahoo! was the official live-streaming partner of the premier of “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1”, churning out wall-to-wall coverage of the scene at L.A. Live’s Nokia Theater, including star arrivals and fan reaction. The live stream was syndicated internationally, ensuring that fans all over the world could get a glimpse of the event. An exclusive “Breaking Dawn” trailer on Yahoo! shattered records with 2.9 million streams in a single day.

In an interview earlier this fall, Levinsohn told Ad Age, "I don't want to look back and say, 'Gosh, we had a chance to be innovative and bold, but we just felt comfortable and scared to do something different.'"Today’s award and the list of accomplishments above indicate he doesn’t need to worry about that. 

Just over a year has passed since Yahoo! established its full-fledged office in Cairo, Egypt. That’s not much time, but given the eventful recent months in the country, Egypt’s Yahoos have grown closer to each other, the company, and what it stands for, and one of the things that has truly contributed to this bond is the Yahoo! Employee Foundation (YEF), which helps employees make a bigger difference for the causes they care about.
My name is Mohamed Sabe and I am the Arabic Editor in Chief for Yahoo! Middle East. I was chosen to be the representative for YEF in Egypt in January 2011, only two months after joining the company.Despite starting the year with less than forty employees in the Cairo office, new Yahoos were determined to do good as soon as they found out that Yahoo! encourages its people to make positive contributions to their community.
However, YEF initiatives had to be halted due to the Egyptian revolution, and the office had to be shut down for several weeks for security reasons. In spite of this setback, as soon as things were back to normal, we were again focused on planning for our first initiative and working with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to decide on what would be the best way to contribute to development in Egypt. Little did we know that our first initiative would cross boundaries and reach beyond Egypt.
In mid-July 2011, a severe drought hit the entire ‘Horn of Africa’ region on the Eastern side of the continent, resulting to this day in over 29,000 deaths among children under 5 in Somalia.
Given the magnitude of this tragedy, local initiatives took a back seat and YEF Egypt members decided that contributing to the well being of Somali families was crucial, and in mid August we approached the Union of Arab Doctors who were collecting money to buy food supplies and send them to Somalia.
Four hundred Egyptian Pounds (67 US dollars) was all that was needed to support a Somali family for a month, so we started a collection campaign that lasted for two weeks.
Around thirty Yahoo! employees (out of sixty in the Cairo office) contributed their money to this cause and we ended up collecting 6,550 Egyptian Pounds (around 1,100 US dollars). While the amount may not seem like much, it meant that we ended up helping over 16 Somali families overcome this crisis for a month.
I remember walking through our small office in Cairo collecting donations and seeing the spirit that Yahoo!’s employees in Cairo displayed in competing with each other to give more money and encouraging each other to contribute. It was really breathtaking!
I personally believe that the beautiful and collective spirit of this small startup office had a strong impact on us. This great start for YEF initiatives in Egypt only increased the appetite of Yahoo’s employees to contribute more and encouraged new Yahoos to take part in upcoming projects.
YEF Egypt will next be teaming up with local NGOs who work on supporting orphans and developing education.
From where I stand, I can proudly say that the culture of doing good and contributing positively to the community is alive and growing in Cairo’s Yahoo! office.
To learn more about YEF or find out how you can make a difference, check out http://howgoodgrows.yahoo.com/.
Best Regards,Mohamed SabeArabic Editor-in-Chief Yahoo! Middle East

Livestand is now available! A personalized living magazine, Livestand weaves together content from leading third-party publishers and Yahoo!'s global media network to create a visually stunning and deeply personalized digital experience tailored to each people's interests and passions.

Visit Livestand on Facebook! 
Hear from one of the Livestand Engineers
Like most engineers, Daivak Shah likes building things from the ground up. So naturally, when presented with the opportunity to help create Livestand for Yahoo!, Daivak jumped at the chance. The Senior Engineering Manager for Livestand describes the initiative a “content eco-system,” weaving together the vast amount of content that Yahoo! has at its disposal into a rich, custom-tailored experience for consumers, advertisers and publishers. Being able to take an active role in building this game-changing user experience has kept Daivak invested in Yahoo! “I feel passionate about what I’m building and I’m enjoying what I’m working on.”

As the regional director of public policy in APAC, I have many conversations with regulators on best practices in the Internet space. During these conversations, I am always proud to profile the leadership that Yahoo! plays in the area of Internet safety and the websites we have launched around the world.  As a team, there are many of us working hard on this and the results in APAC are world-class.
One of the most important projects that has happened this year was the launch of Yahoo! Safely in Vietnam, to promote online safety among children and young people in Vietnam. The launch roped in Vietnamese celebrity Ha Anh (also Unicef’s local Ambassador) and up-and-coming local boy-band “365” as Yahoo! Ambassadors to help spread the word. Leveraging the Yahoo! Safely website and plans to extend to offline activities such as a “train-the-trainer” programme, road shows and school visits, the initiative is the first of its kind in Vietnam.
Yahoo! is the first Internet company to establish a presence in Vietnam when it entered the market in 2007 and enjoys a very positive brand image. The launch of Safely in Vietnam, to me, was testament to Yahoo!’s commitment and responsibility to the market. Vietnam is a burgeoning new-to-net market brimming with huge potential and business opportunities – and everyone wants a slice.  31% of the population is currently online, and Vietnam has experienced the fastest growth in Internet in the region in the last 10 years. Yet, online safety is largely overlooked.
While online safety is important all across the world, it is critical in emerging markets in Asia as the majority of new users are youth aged 15 and above, where the Internet is an uncharted landscape, not just to them, but to their parents and educators.
Yahoo! has robust online safety programs in every major market. Above Yahoo! Safely which has been launched is in most markets, there are also online safety initiatives in the region outside the umbrella that push strong similarly strong agendas.
In India, the online safety programme led by colleagues from Yahoo! India comes under Learn with Yahoo!, an initiative to educate users about the Internet, and like Vietnam, targets new-to-net users. In Taiwan, a mature market where Yahoo! enjoys a 98% reach, the Internet Security Program for Children aims to educate users as early as elementary school.
Reaching out in India
India’s online safety program kicked into high gear when its school program, upon travelling to 27 schools in Delhi last year, found that while 98% of this school’s growing audience knew about the Internet and considered it a destination for learning, fun and entertainment, net safety was not a feature on the kids’ radar. Awareness about Internet safety was virtually non-existent.
This insight shaped a new focus for the team, who took the safety message outside of the original program framework. Harnessing the reach and popularity of animated cartoon characters, Yahoo! India aired vignettes on Internet safety on kids’ channels such as Cartoon Network and Pogo, with the characters sharing tips, along with an interactive quiz on TV through SMS, to effectively get the message across to kids and parents.
Now, Yahoo! India reaches 82% of the Internet audience in India and is a market where users are growing exponentially. Today, above leveraging kids channels and school programs, Internet safety tips are shared across 2,500 Internet cafés in 50+ Indian cities, helping a brand new audience make smarter, safer choices online.
Keeping Kids Safe Online in Taiwan
In Taiwan, Yahoo!Kimo’s partnership with the government and academy brought to bear its Internet Safety Program for Children in 2009. It is estimated that 1.6 million Taiwanese children under 12 use the Internet. The project addressed kids aged 12-14 and touched on three main areas: managing time spent online, befriending strangers on the Internet and giving out too much personal information.
The campaign started in Taipei with camps, blogs, online material and an ambassador programme, and extended islandwide the following year. Materials were developed for classroom use, and Yahoo!Kimo travelled to 2,650 elementary schools across the country to spread the message. This year, teen idols were invited to speak on the program together with the launch of fun videos and competition. And the kids noticed – making over 100,000 downloads of the material. Yahoo! Kimo’s efforts have seen them win the Taiwan PR Awards- Corporate Social Responsibility Campaign of the Year, and  the Outstanding Award – Education, in the annual CSR awards presented by Global Views, a leading current affairs publication in Taiwan.
And the online safety push isn’t over in Vietnam. In July, the PC for Life campaign, in partnership with Dell and Intel, saw 2,000 youth journeying across the country on foot to spread the word on internet safety, and educating villagers along the way on how to use the Internet. The Yahoo! Safely partnership with Unicef also saw an MOU signed, partnering on various children issues.
To say the least, I’m very proud to be working for a company which understands the need to better the community it serves.
Kuek Yu-Chuang, Yahoo! APAC’s regional director of public policy


Yahoo! Safely around the world - click the link for your region to learn more:
Argentina : Asia : Australia : Brasil : Canada : Chile : Colombia : Deutschland : España : France : 香港 : India : Indonesia : Italia : Malaysia : México : الشرق الأوسط وإفريقيا : New Zealand : Perú : Philippines : Québec : Singapore : 한국 : 台灣 : ประเทศไทย : United Kingdom : United States : en Español : Venezuela : Việt Nam

When people ask me how I’m doing at Yahoo! lately, I tell them I think I have the best role at the company, and I’m not just being politically correct. As the head of video, I‘ve inherited an amazing existing business and an incredible team of professionals—so part of my job is just spreading the word about what we already do so well. The other part of my job is to take this existing success and build on it—and luckily, my team and I have the support of the entire organization as we attempt to make a bigger, bolder mark in the online video space. I am tired of hearing only Netflix, YouTube and Hulu named as the big movers in online video. We deserve to be among those ranks and I won’t rest until we are.

Today, the video market is crowded, chaotic and moves at a frenetic pace. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. With our scale, leading media properties and premium advertising business, Yahoo!, by all accounts, should be a leader in premium online video. After all, Yahoo! has been showing consumers what is interesting, important and entertaining online as long as any player out there. Leading in consumer media experiences is in our DNA and is our birthright.
So about that existing success: Today, Yahoo! produces and/or distributes up to 26 original video series on our network and reaches nearly 27 million people a month.* Yahoo! has ALL 10 out of the top 10 original programs on the web.* Yahoo! original programs are more visited than all of hulu.com. And recently, Yahoo! Studios received an Emmy nomination, an Edward R. Murrow award and a Webby Award for its original program “Second Act,” sponsored by General Mills.
And now, about the future: We are taking our success in original video and building on it, adding unique voices, known personalities and experiences you will only be able to get on Yahoo! A preview of what’s to come:
Female-Centric Programming Slate: The television networks were not alone in announcing their fall programming line-ups this year. Yahoo!, the premier digital media company, will be launching its own first full slate of original, premium, TV-quality web shows. Each of the eight new original shows is designed to reach a predominantly female audience and will cover a variety of lifestyle topics, such as healthy living, relationships, celebrity, entertainment, and more. The programs are being produced both by our award-winning in-house Yahoo! Studios team and by leading industry partners, including Ben Silverman’s Electus, Fishbowl Media, and Morgan Spurlock. What makes these shows especially exciting is that Yahoo! is financing production and will program and promote the shows as never before. With a creative canvas that enables advertisers to reach and immerse digital video audiences with relevant messages and out-of-the-box ad formats, marketers can now participate in “share of voice” buying along with audience-focused programming. This offering complements our existing offerings in video, which include award-winning branded entertainment programs as well as inventory targeting a specific audience in an unparalleled way.
A Decade of Difference: The Concert for the 10th Anniversary of the William J. Clinton Foundation: On October 15, 2011, Yahoo! will be the only place to watch the live concert event of the year: A Decade of Difference, The Clinton Foundation 10th Anniversary Concert event, featuring the biggest musical acts in the world, including Lady Gaga, Bono, the Edge and Usher. Yahoo! is bringing this event to a global audience in partnership with Control Room, the producers of other world-class events like LiveAid. This is sure to be an unforgettable experience and Yahoo! is the place to bring it to life for a global audience.
Original Voices Only on Yahoo!: We are continuing to expand our content offerings by working with unique global voices and world-wide partners to bring the best premium content and original programming to Yahoo! We have some exciting upcoming projects featuring top Hollywood talent and unique storytelling we will unveil in the near future!
We will succeed, but as importantly, we will fail. The web is about experimentation, and fun. We don’t need to be anyone else—Netflix, Hulu, YouTube—there is room for all of us; we can and should be a place for premium contextualized content and video.
Erin McPhersonVP & Head of Video * Source: comScore Media Builder Custom Report, US, August 2011, among a set including more than 75 original video programs, as custom-defined by Yahoo!, on the following properties: Yahoo!, YouTube, Hulu, MSN, AOL, Forbes, PopSugar, IGN, TMZ, New York Times, Smosh.com, ABC News, Sugar, Funny or Die, She Knows, CraveOnline.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” that will give Yahoo employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!.

What does "amazingly ordinary" mean? Yahoo Alan Brightman explains the idea behind Independence-2011.

In this article, we meet Alan Brightman. As a leader in the Global Accessibility Team, Alan opens our eyes to what a Yahoo! user with disabilities may feel, and how we can all learn about the humanity of accessibility during Yahoo!'s Independence-2011.

Be honest. If you were able to picture our hundreds of millions of users, how often do you think that picture would include individuals with disabilities?
Never? Yes, that’s pretty much the average. And understandably so. After all, most of us have almost no direct experience with disabled people so if we ever do think about kids or adults with disabilities, we usually think about them as being somehow “special” - as being very different from who we usually think of as Yahoo! users.

Just Plain Ordinary

Many years ago, a friend of mine told me from his wheelchair that the toughest thing about being disabled is, “I’m never perceived as just plain ordinary. I’m either noticed too much or noticed not at all.” That’s a strange place to be, not being able to simply blend in—to be invisible—whenever you want.

And that is how the idea for Yahoo!’s Independence-2011 came about.

The Humanity of Accessibility

More than a thousand Yahoos have toured our Accessibility Labs in Sunnyvale and Bangalore and, as a result, have learned a lot about the technology of accessibility. What we haven’t been able to teach well enough, though, is the humanity of accessibility or what I think of as the ordinariness of disability. So we’re bringing that amazing ordinariness to the Yahoo! campus. We’re giving Yahoos the opportunity to better understand the disabled experience in a comfortable, engaging, and non-threatening setting.

Independence-2011 Activities

There will be a lot going on during Independence-2011. A nationally known chef, who happens to be blind, will display his culinary talents in an activity called “Cooking Without Looking.” An organization known as the AbleGamers Foundation will show how kids and adults with profound disabilities use various assistive technologies to play the same video games on the same consoles as everyone else. The National Center for Accessible Media will be on hand demonstrating a variety of technologies, including one that they invented, which enables people who are deaf to watch captioned versions of first-run movies while sitting right next to someone—in a mainstream movie theater—who isn’t seeing any captions at all.

Other activities and demos will be arrayed across the Yahoo! campus, including what many Yahoos see as a rare opportunity to show off their basketball prowess. They’ll be playing in wheelchairs on our courts against a professional wheelchair basketball team from Berkeley.

Las Vegas odds have yet to be posted for the wheelchair basketball competitions, but I think it’s safe to say that the guys in the purple shirts will be humbled. And trounced.

Alan Brightman
VP, Global Accessibility Team

I’m pretty sure you will have heard many times before, but it’s true, in the internet and media world: content is king.

It sounds simple, but what this statement doesn’t do is capture the innovation, the passion and the strives in technology which help Yahoo! deliver the most relevant content to 92 million users in Europe alone by a combining unique technology with human expertise.
First off, you may ask who am I? I am Noelia Fernández Arroyo, VP, Head of Audience in EMEA. I’ve been at Yahoo! for over 13 years. Jerry and the team initially hired me to launch Yahoo! Spain back in 1998. I joined the company because it had the ambition to improve the World through great technology and services, with editorial at the core and you know what, the principle still remains the same today. Yes, I’ve seen changes and have experienced challenges but I firmly believe in Yahoo!’s commitment and passion to create deeply personal experiences on the Web. Yahoo!’s passion, is my passion.
To that point, we have been investing in the right areas and focusing where we can win, and where we are winning! Did you know in Europe’s five largest markets Yahoo! reaches 92 million people, up over 7 million or 9% year on year against a market growth of 2% and we’re ranked number one or two in five categories across Europe: News, Finance, Sport, Flickr and Answers. We are in a unique position where we can leverage our innovation and technology with our European users to deliver compelling content to a mass audience, every day.
We have the best technology combined with talented, global editorial teams who help us turn around events and news that people care about on a global basis. Let me give you an example, the London riots were big news here in Europe, as it was globally. We were seeing a lot of activity on the streets, which was both prolific and sensitive in nature. The flexibility of the global publishing platform allowed our News and Front Page teams to respond quickly to create around the clock coverage and exclusive content in real time and through people’s own eyes. Interestingly, in August, the UK video streams rocketed by 191% on Yahoo! News showing the demand and consumption of rich content in parallel to news stories.
So, how do we do this?
Firstly, we keep investing strongly in our new global content publishing platform. It’s called the Yahoo! Publishing Platform. It’s global but puts power in the hands of local teams here in Europe working for local audiences; it allows us to act much faster to world events and activities and provides a platform for easy integration of rich video content.
So what does the Yahoo! Publishing Platform actually mean for the life of our Editors in Europe?
- In Italy, where Yahoo! Movies is on the Yahoo! Publishing Platform, it took just one hour to create recent coverage of the Cannes Movies Festival which delivered double the performance from the previous year
- We can create and publish original content easily and quickly: in Yahoo! omg! alone we publish over 35 original stories per day unique to Yahoo!
- The Yahoo! Publishing Platform recently launched for Yahoo! Video, Lifestyle and News. A combination of coverage of key events using the new platform led to a 20% increase in Yahoo! News page views in Europe[iv]
- omg from Yahoo! has also launched in Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK
- Yahoo! Movies in Italy launched onto the platform leading to a 60% increase in page views
- So far we have launched 95 products already onto the Yahoo! Publishing Platform
Through our science and technology, we can make informed decisions, based on scientific data rather than predictions and estimations. It allows the editors I work with to get ahead of the game and be first with the right content. This is where C.O.R.E. (Content Optimization and Relevance Engine) comes in, a technology that was developed by Yahoo! Labs a couple of years ago. Sophisticated algorithms and machine learning technology, combined with human expertise allows us to carry out deep personalization to our 674 million users globally and 92 million in Europe.
Did you know?
- Our Editorial team appropriately delivers on average, 35 stories per week day, per market, targeted to our users individual interests based on our own technology
- Yahoo! personalizes 2.2 billion content module experiences on our pages per day
- We show 13 million personalized homepage versions per day and the click through rate in the Yahoo! Magazine on the frontpage has increased by more than 700% in Europe as a result of this technology
So you can see why I am committed, focused and excited to be a Yahoo! and this is just a taste of what we are currently doing here in Europe. I know we have plenty of innovation and new products up our sleeves over the coming months, so watch this space!
Gracias and keep up the purple!
Noelia Fernandez ArroyoProud to be a Yahoo!

USA Today posted an article about the Clinton - Decade of Difference Concert!
Replay the Decade of Difference concert online here.

Yahoo's big streaming event for President Clinton
By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY

The stars were out in Hollywood on Saturday night -- former President Bill Clinton, Lady Gaga, Bono and The Edge, Stevie Wonder, Usher, to name a few -- but the pressure to perform was on Yahoo.
It was responsible for live streaming a gala Hollywood Bowl concert to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Clinton Foundation, and flawlessly deliver three-and-a-half hours of entertainment without a hitch. It did.
Hundreds of thousands worldwide tuned into the rare Yahoo-streamed concert, and they have another six months to watch all or parts of it...

...to read the rest of the article click here.

At the risk of stating the obvious: in the Internet business, mobile is huge. At the risk of stating a fact that many people seem not to understand as obvious: Yahoo! is huge in mobile.

With the headlines around our company recently, I understand why many pundits want to weigh in with their own ideas and storylines about Yahoo!. Yahoo! is both an iconic brand and a major Internet player. In fact, with 680 million users globally, we are the premier digital media company in the world. So it makes sense that everyone has an opinion on Yahoo!. But when it comes to mobile, I think some of the prevailing opinions haven’t been capturing the full picture. So, in my own words, I feel compelled to offer my perspective on why Yahoo! is a major mobile player.
First off, though, who am I? Good question. My name is Paul Cushman. I’m very proud to have worked at Yahoo! for the past four years as head of mobile ad sales. I’ve been in mobile advertising for 11 years. In that time, I’ve witnessed the amazing evolution of the mobile Web first hand. When reports like this week’s from IDC predict that mobile Internet users will exceed those from traditional PC channels by 2015, it’s exciting for me, because it’s a vision I’ve believed in for a long time. It’s also a world in which Yahoo! will absolutely have a major role to play globally.

In fact, we’ve been a major player for years. Did you know that Yahoo reaches 56 million unique mobile web users a month in the US alone? That’s 51% reach for the overall US mobile market. That makes us the #3 mobile brand. If Yahoo! mobile were a website on a PC, its audience would be larger than ESPN or LinkedIn. That’s a.) not too shabby and b.) a position we believe we’re primed to improve.
No one has the combination of audience size, innovation, mobile partnerships, or support of CMO-level client relationships we have at Yahoo!. As a salesperson who wants to help advertisers make an impact on mobile, it’s a thrill to work at this company.
If you still have your doubts, and because everyone likes lists, here’s my recap of the impact Yahoo! has had on mobile:
- We were the first major search company to launch a search product designed for mobile FIRST: that was oneSearch in 2007.- Yahoo! Go was an awesome product, way ahead of the market when it first launched in January 2006 (18 months before the iPhone!). It enabled email, uploading photos, mapping, search via Yahoo’s oneSearch and Yahoo! Answers service, stock quotes, and breaking news.- We were ahead of the curve integrating interactive rich media ads onto search results pages for mobile, which delivered a 15 times increase in click-through rates.- We have more than 100 partnerships in mobile around the world, and recently AT&T made Yahoo! its homepage on all Android and RIM devices.- Yahoo! is the #1 U.S. mobile property in Finance and Entertainment, and #2 in five other categories.- Yahoo! Weather AND Finance are built-in iPhone experiences.- Yahoo! Sportacular is in the “iPhone Hall of Fame” and 40% of our Fantasy Football audience, which broke all kinds of traffic records this past opening weekend for the NFL, accesses our site from mobile devices.- And then there are all the cool ads we’ve run on our mobile homepage, including our “Rango” campaign for Paramount where Rango the chameleon changes color when you swipe. That’s mobile innovation in ad creative and interaction.
Sometimes I think we at Yahoo! are a little too humble in promoting our achievements – mobile and otherwise. I fully realize we’re not without challenges, but from my vantage point, we have a tremendous amount of new innovation, products, and ad solutions in the works for this fall and beyond, and a lot of committed Yahoos like me who want to continue making a difference.
Cheers,Paul CushmanStill Proud to be a Yahoo! Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” that will give Yahoo employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. Feel like yodeling your own? Post your Yahoo! story on your social networks using the hashtag #myYahoostory.

Photo Caption: For Search Direct, we put real gusto into the focus of ‘answers, not links’ by surfacing answers and structured content directly into what I call the “Search Box of Awesome.”

Amidst never-ending stories about “Yahoo! exiting the Search game,” or “…stopping innovation in Search,” I feel compelled to share why Yahoo! Search has always been and remains committed to changing the face of search – with adrenaline pumping and arms swinging.

As the lead of a skunkworks-esque group that focuses on radical new experiences beyond traditional search, I can tell you that Yahoo! is in the most exciting phase of its entire 16-year history. My view is that it’s fight, not flight, for the company and there has never been a time where so many people have wanted to fight like today. Yahoo! Search has some product experiences that are so radically different, you’ll sit back in your seat thinking, “what the &$%# just happened?”
Before we get into it, let’s clear the air about the Microsoft Search Alliance deal. It was simple: instead of three different search engines spending millions of dollars in R&D and hardware crawling and indexing the entire Web – a corpus of data that grows faster than most competitors can keep up with – we decided to outsource the back-end services. The decision was easy. Focusing only on crawling, indexing, ranking and serving at web scale wasn’t, and isn’t, the way for Yahoo! to win the Search game. If we could have a provider that was on par or better than our technology, we could focus more attention and resources on the experience side of search. When fully implemented around the world, we stand to save significant sums in hardware and R&D and instead focus even more on delivering a stellar user experience: seems like a win-win to me.
So that’s what we’ve been doing with great zest, cleaning up the experience, introducing new architectural feats, and setting the stage for some big swings in the pipeline – in line with our Search strategy of “Answers, Not Links.” With this cleanup effort we’ve not only stabilized our place in the market but we are steadily growing. Some of these initiatives, just in the past six months, include Search Direct, an innovative answers-as-you-type experience; our new, super clean look for Image Search results; and our recent enhancements to the Search results page.
What Search looks like to us over the next 18 months:
From destination to companion: Access and convenience are two key components in the search game. In the next 18 months, Search will be a companion experience that gives you answers immediately and instantly without leaving the page you are on – effortlessly.
From fragmented to seamless: Consistency and simplicity are two key components in the search game. Users are increasingly searching on multiple devices. In the next 18 months, your devices and platforms will be seamlessly connected, allowing you to start an experience on one device and continue effortlessly onto another, with simple access to any information on any other devices. Search will be evolving into a beautiful and consistent multi-modal experience that simply integrates into your everyday life.
From more information to better information: Relevancy and depth are two key components in the search game. When you search for something — say, Adirondack chairs — do you really care that we returned 9,150,000 results? Probably not. In the next 18 months, Search will focus on a deep experience that gives you only what you want to know, taking into account your search history, click behavior, demographics, social graph, and browsing history to provide you with a 1:1 experience. It will tell you why it served you the results it did and allow you to pivot on a number of aspects to further tune the page. It will no longer be a search engine designed for the masses, it will be a search engine tailored just for you. Some call it a results page; I call it an intent satisfaction experience.
I can tell you, from the inside I see more focus on unifying our portfolio, fast-tracking big bets, truly innovative thinking, and a deep, aggressive hunger to not only fight, but to really go for the jugular. You can expect a different beast to emerge in the coming months.
Proud Yahoo,Ethan BatraskiDirector of User Intent & Experiences, Yahoo! Search
Ethan is very proud to have worked at Yahoo! for the past two years as head of product for an experience group within Yahoo! Search. He has been in product and design for more than 10 years, and in search for the past six years, where he has done everything from founding startups to leading product & design for billion-dollar portfolios at Fortune 100 companies.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” that gives Yahoos the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. 

Career Profile: Noelia Fernandez Arroyo

Posted March 21, 2011
What’s the best way to build a terrific career? There isn’t a simple answer to this question, but a number of Yahoos have discovered their own keys to career success. Learn what advice they have to offer in our new Yahoo! Career Profile series.  Noelia Fernandez Arroyo, head of editorial and content for Yahoo! EMEA, was recruited nearly 13 years ago to set up the new Yahoo! Spain property. Since then she’s had a variety of roles and currently works in the European HQ in Rolle, Switzerland.

Why do you stay at Yahoo!?
It’s a combination of various things. I strongly believe in entrepreneurship and one of the things I love doing –and that I think that I’m good at –is defining new opportunities and creating an atmosphere where people can flourish and make something happen. Yahoo! is the perfect place if you have the spirit of an entrepreneur because it gives you the room to explore and to bring things to reality. I also strongly believe that in Yahoo! you can be a leader and also be yourself.  Because I started early in my country – early on the Internet and at a young age - I became a role model for female leadership. I have feminine values that I use a lot in my day to day – like empathy, building relationships and emotional connections and I think it’s great that women in the company feel they can grow as much as they want. The only limits are those we set for ourselves.

Can you talk about a specific scenario that created an extraordinary career experience for you?
I was recruited in Pamplona in September 1998 as a senior producer to launch the Yahoo! Spain property. I moved to Madrid, and we launched the site on November 11. It was very much a Yahoo! experience- lots of action, tight deadlines and a great team of people.  We had set up media interviews for the morning of November 11, so we had to be ready. We pushed the button at 3 a.m. that morning!
 What have been some of the key good fit opportunities for you over the last 12.5 years?
One great opportunity came a little over than 3 years ago. I suggested an idea about content and programming to the European leaders and that was the seed for the editorial and programming team in Europe. This business didn’t exist before. The tasks existed in separate departments but we needed a different way to look at it. I thought creating a single team was the most effective way of using the talent we have in the region and being more aligned with the Yahoo! strategy So I started that by myself and found a group of people who could help me to make it a reality. Right now it’s a huge success, and now that the company is really focusing on content and editorial it has amplified the impact that my team has.

Why do you think our career development philosophy of finding the intersection between what you love and Yahoo!’s mission is such a good match for who Yahoo! is –
Yahoo! is a place that allows you to become yourself in a very complete way – as a person and also as a professional.  Of course I’m not saying that it’s easy – it takes a lot of discipline and a lot of hard work but Yahoo!  has a great atmosphere and it allows you to be who you want, and create the impact that you want to without putting barriers in your way. My progress has happened absolutely without following  a necessarily traditional career progression. The roles I’ve had have developed from my own ideas and passion for improving the business and managers who were there to listen and ensure we could develop both of those - Yahoo! offers the opportunity to turn those ideas into reality.

What examples of the career development philosophy do you see in EMEA?
Whether I’ve been in Madrid, or Barcelona or London and now Switzerland, I’ve always had opportunities to go to training that helps you to become more aware of who you are, both as a person and as a professional.  I find the more I get to know about myself, the more I get to know about the impact that I make on the business, and the better I’m able to identify those opportunities. The training is available to everyone at Yahoo! and we recently launched a program impacting most of Yahoo!’s managers. Everyone goes to the same program relating to goals, alignment, culture and accountability. That’s huge! When your colleagues all do that, you kind of take it for granted - but when I sit with my friends I find that other companies don’t always offer that kind of training.

What should others know about career development at Yahoo!?
Firstly, you have to be accountable for and deliver what you’re responsible for.   Then you have to be willing to progress and make and impact and, subject to what’s going on in your life, to give 150%.  But the big question is what you want to do.  I’ve found that in Yahoo! it’s much more up to you to decide on your next career move than in other companies.  You have to start by trying to understand what you want to do, what you love doing that you’re really good at.  Then you’re in a position to have a great conversation with your manager around how your manager can help you to create more impact. If you have these conversations, then your manager also has the opportunity to tell you about roles they think would be a perfect fit for you. You have to listen, to pay attention to what you’re good at, and ask yourself what you want to do about it.

What’s the next step for you?
Between the world of content, the science and technology that Yahoo! has, our becoming more and more of a global company, and figuring out great solutions for mobile and tablet users I could do so many things!  But, first, I really need to make sure my team is successful. We’ve have a great couple of years and  I want to make sure  we’re at place we need to be and then focus on how we can make this 10 times bigger or more successful. I sat down recently with my team leads and took a piece of paper to draw what the business should look like 3 or 4 years from now. Now I have to abstract myself a little from that and ask myself how we can make that happen.  So I don’t know exactly -- but I do know it will be fun. Fun is one of the core values of Yahoo! - and you need to live it!

Victor Tsaran is one of those people who leaves people with a long lasting impression. He grew up in a Ukrainian orphanage and is now a talented computer engineer in the U.S. He’s an accomplished musician and songwriter. And he also happens to be blind.

Victor runs Yahoo!’s accessibility program. He helps make it easy for people with all kinds of disabilities to use our sites. When I first met Victor, I had the same naïve reaction most people have – dumbfounded by how he could crank open his laptop and be fully self-sufficient reading email and surfing the web. That’s because I was clueless about all the remarkable ways that people with disabilities use technology.

Victor’s made it his mission to educate our designers and engineers, helping change their assumptions that accessibility somehow requires sacrifice or compromise. On the contrary, Victor argues that accessible design is better for everyone. Just as curb-cuts were designed for wheelchairs, they’re also a great convenience for strollers, luggage and shopping carts, right?

But driving the point home sometimes means making someone walk a mile in his moccasins. Enter the Yahoo! Accessibility Lab, which has been toured by more than 75 product teams to date. It’s filled with a wide array of assistive technologies – screen readers, onscreen keyboards, interactive Braille displays, etc. When Yahoos arrive, they’re told they’ve just had a stroke and can’t type with their fingers. They’re given a rubber ball and asked to type their name. Um… Next, they’re fully paralyzed. “OK, try to send an email.” Uh… After they’re introduced to the technology solutions, they watch videos of disabled people in action.

All this leaves developers making accessibility a goal before they write their first line of code. It’s why anybody can access rich features and tools on products like Yahoo! Sports, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone. It’s why third-party websites that are inaccessible in their own right are now entirely accessible via the new “favorites” area on the Yahoo! Homepage. Victor has helped Yahoo! make enormous strides since joining us four years ago, but there’s still more to come.

We spent some time following Victor with a video camera to not only understand his work, but to appreciate his daily experience. Commuting by train. Playing guitar. Making lunch with his wife Karo Caran, a fellow student from the Overbrook School for the Blind. We watched as sighted people had their first awkward interactions with him. He laughs when he describes how often people raise their hands when he asks questions during his new hire orientation briefings. Well-meaning commuters sometimes escort him to the wheelchair zone on the train platform. It took me a while to realize he’s not offended by questions like “Did you see my email?”

Spend any amount of time with Victor and you realize that his blindness doesn’t really make him all that different from anyone else – except that his computer talks to him. Really, really fast.

Originally posted on the WIT blog.  By Karen Bruner.

Yahoo! has been hosting company-wide Hackdays two or three times a year now for several years, and while Yahoos in the Southern California offices were welcome to work on hacks, they didn't have the support of an organized local event. That changed for Summer Hackday 2011. The SoCal chapter of Yahoo!'s Women in Tech group, with funding from the Yahoo! Developer Network, put together a great environment for local hackers to collaborate and concentrate on their hacks.

Prospective hackers listen to pitches over pizza

A week before Hackday, potential hackers came together to pitch ideas and find interested hackers. Hacking wasn't limited to engineers who fit the traditional definition of computer hacking. The Southern California offices have a large proportion of people in the advertising and business side, but they still have many of the necessary hacking skills: ideas, aesthetic input, and enthusiasm.

By the time Hackday rolled around, 19 hackers worked on several local projects that had come together. Hacks ran the gamut from ideas that could someday appear on the front pages of Yahoo!'s sites to internal tools that would make the behind-the-scenes run better. While most hackers were local to the Burbank office, Yahoos from the Santa Monica office also came to join the hacks. WIT volunteers kept them energized with drinks, munchies, and pizza.

SoCal Summer 2011 Hackers

For another first, the teams in Burbank got to present their hacks in the Friday afternoon demos via teleconferencing with Hackday HQ in Sunnyvale. Several dozen people, hackers and supporters alike, crowded in a boardroom over pizza and beer to watch the local demos. The enthusiasm and excitement from everybody was tremendous. Second-time Burbank hacker Srikanth Bangalore said this was a big improvement over his first Hackday, when he worked from his desk and had to record his demo so it could be replayed in the Sunnyvale demo session. Doing the demo live and having an energetic audience made for a very different experience.

A first: Burbank Hackday demos teleconfereced live with Sunnyvale 

Mariena Quintanilla's hack was related to her day-to-day work, a monitoring tool she had been needing for awhile but hadn't had time to work on. Hackday gave her the perfect chance. She found another would-be hacker to help out, and her tool will have an immediate impact.

With one successful Southern California Hackday under WIT's belt, the plan is to make this a regular event, allowing local Yahoos to tap their hacking talent more easily, which can only benefit Yahoo! as a whole.