The newly appointed CEO of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), Marissa Mayer, is planning to hire her one time boss and now the head of Twitter’s international operations, Katie Jacobs Stanton. Yahoo may offer Stanton a big media position, according to All Things D. Stanton was the boss of Mayer at Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), when she (Stanton) was the project management leader during the launch of Google Finance.
In her previous stint at Yahoo from 1999-2002, Stanton had launched Yahoo’s most successful portal so far – Yahoo Finance. Even when Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) was going through a turmoil, its finance portal remained a big hit. Stanton knows media inside out. Two different sources told All Things D that she could either be offered to run the Home page of Yahoo, or even bigger responsibilities.
So far, Mickie Rosen has been looking after Yahoo’s media and commerce operations worldwide. Mayer has been overhauling the top management with the executives of her choice. She has already reshuffled the communications team, and is now focusing on the product leads and human resources.
Under the leadership of Stanton, Twitter’s international popularity is growing by leaps and bounds, especially in high profile ways such as Arab Spring and Japanese Earthquake. Before coming to Twitter, Katie Stanton worked at the State Department in Washington D.C., where she raised over $32 million in donations to help the Haiti earthquake victims.
Stanton did her graduation from Rhodes College, and went on to pursue a masters degree from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
Hiring Stanton is not the only game plan in the cards for Marissa Mayer. She is re-evaluating the entire Yahoo strategy to give shareholders better value in the long-term. Mayer is analyzing the previously announced restructuring plan, cash position, capital allocation strategy, acquisition strategy, and the share buyback program. Yahoo may also sell up to 40 percent of its stake in Alibaba, a Chinese search engine.
Yahoo hasn’t been clear in the past to identify itself, whether it would be a Web firm that competes with Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Google, or a media firm that rivals News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) (NASDAQ:NWS) and CBS. Mayer plans to give Yahoo the image of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), a Web company.
