Amazon may be prepping fix or six new tablet models; one week into Marissa Mayer’s new Yahoo stint.
Question for a C.E.O.: What is Yahoo? [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
I’m going to take a whack at it and say that Yahoo is a media company, mostly by accident (more on that in a bit). Yes, its headquarters in Silicon Valley are filled with technologists and have the familiar trappings of a digital enterprise — foosball, anyone? — but for most Americans, Yahoo is where they get news.
Amazon’s mobile ambitions grow [REUTERS]
Amazon is to introduce up to five or six tablet SKUs, or stock-keeping units, according Demos Parneros, president of U.S. Retail for Staples Inc., which sells the Fire.
One week of Mayer at Yahoo [ALLTHINGSD]
“Let’s be clear, she is our last hope,” said one board member to me, a sentiment that I also heard from another; and so, too, from a lot of execs and rank-and-file around the company. I am entirely not clear what comes after “last” — but I presume it ends with “sale.”
Disruptions: Looking beyond Silicon Valley’s bubble [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
The money here is obscene. The newly minted rich are obsessed with outperforming their rivals. One industry party I attended had a jungle theme. This included a real, 600-pound tiger in a cage and a monkey that would pose for Instagram photos. A prominent Googler’s Christmas party in Palo Alto had mounds of snow in the yard to round out the festive spirit. It was 70 degrees outside. Sean Parker, a founder of Airtime, threw alavish, $1 million party that included models he hired to roam the room and a performance by Snoop Dogg.
Former Yahoo Chief Scott Thompson hired as new CEO of ShopRunner [THE NEXT WEB]
Hired in January to replace its previous CEO Carol Bartz, Thompson had misstated his credentials in regulatory filings and other places, claiming he had a computer science degree from Stonehill College in Massachusetts on his résumé, while in fact he only had an accounting degree.
