Yahoo executive gets key role in generating traffic
Yahoo Inc. is trying to engineer a comeback in Santa Monica, the hub of its media and entertainment operations.
The Internet giant has consolidated virtually all of its Southern California-based projects under Scott Moore, a senior vice president, in a move to streamline Yahoo’s business and increase collaboration.
Moore is the de facto successor to Lloyd Braun, the former ABC executive and Hollywood heavyweight who left Yahoo a year ago. Moore and Vince Broady, both Braun hires, had shared oversight of the Santa Monica office, but Yahoo said Monday that Broady was exploring other options inside the company.
The ascent of Moore is part of a broader strategic overhaul that’s being led by Chief Executive Jerry Yang. He co-founded the Sunnyvale-based company in 1994 and took the helm in June as Yahoo faced growing turmoil and withering public criticism that it had become too slow and bureaucratic to compete with the runaway success of Google Inc. and younger rivals such as Facebook Inc.
One of the key tenets of Yang’s vision to compete for online advertising: that Yahoo become the home page of choice by connecting computer users to what they care about.
“This is a huge push for the company,” Yahoo Executive Vice President Jeff Weiner said in an interview here Monday.
Moore will play a key role in achieving that goal, Weiner said. Moore reports to Weiner.
“No question, this is an intensely competitive landscape,” Weiner said. “We have some areas we need to improve upon, most notably to make sure the network is more social and more open. In doing those things, we will make the network more relevant as a starting point for consumers.”
Weiner leads Yahoo Network, which encompasses all of Yahoo’s consumer Web offerings such as search and the home page. He assumed the post in December 2006, when Braun resigned. The group operates in concert with Yahoo’s growing advertising network, with the goal of appealing to marketers by connecting all of the company’s sites with thousands of distribution partners.
Moore, who joined Yahoo from Microsoft Corp. in 2005, was tapped for an expanded role after success in overseeing some of Yahoo’s most popular properties, including news, sports and finance. Now, he also will oversee entertainment, including games and video, among other things, taking over for Broady.
Whereas Braun had ambitious plans to develop online shows and other original programming, Weiner said, Moore will focus on delivering other forms of content that traditionally have generated much more Web traffic.
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