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Marissa Mayer Shuffles Yahoo Leadership Team

Marissa Mayer Shuffles Yahoo Leadership Team

By Vindu Goel, The New York Times | Updated: 11 April 2015 12:40 IST

Simon Khalaf, who joined Yahoo in July when it bought his mobile analytics company, Flurry, will oversee many of Yahoo's consumer-oriented products.Credit Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's chief executive, announced a major reorganization of the company's product teams on Friday, promoting the head of one recently acquired company and effectively demoting the chief of another.

Under the new structure, Simon Khalaf, the Internet company's data-spouting prophet of mobile, will become a senior vice president and oversee many of the company's consumer-facing products, including the Yahoo home page, its portals devoted to themes like sports and movies, and related Yahoo apps.

Mr. Khalaf joined Yahoo in July when it bought his mobile analytics company, Flurry, for about $300 million. Flurry, which offers data and advertising services to mobile app developers, has since become the core of Yahoo's efforts to compete with Google, Facebook and Twitter to persuade developers to use its tools. Mr. Khalaf, a rapid-fire speaker with a knack for presenting complex information simply and clearly, has become a crucial Yahoo ambassador to the outside world and played a starring role at Yahoo's recent mobile developer conference.

As part of the reorganization, the blogging platform Tumblr and its chief executive, David Karp, will report to Mr. Khalaf, according to an internal announcement made at Yahoo Friday morning.

Although Mr. Karp will remain part of the executive team, he will no longer report directly to Ms. Mayer, which he has done since he sold Tumblr to Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013. The move reflects Tumblr's struggles to broaden its appeal beyond its core audience of of artists, teenagers and 20somethings looking for a platform to express themselves. Tumblr has served as the technology behind Yahoo's digital magazines, but it has faced challenges in luring advertising. Tumblr's top ad executive, Lee Brown, recently left the company and joined BuzzFeed after Yahoo integrated Tumblr's ad sales with Yahoo's.

Mike Kerns, the senior vice president who previously oversaw Yahoo's home page and verticals, is leaving the company to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities, the company said in its internal memo. In a goodbye tweet, Mr. Kerns said that in his five years at the company, he had "learned a lot and met/worked with great people. Made a positive impact and can't wait to get to what's next."

Two other executives are also taking on different roles.

(Also See: Yahoo, Microsoft Extend Search Partnership Talks for 30 Days)

Adam Cahan, who spearheaded Ms. Mayer's crash effort to remake Yahoo as a mobile contender, will now oversee the company's video efforts. Like other big Internet companies, Yahoo sees how eager mobile users are to watch video, and it is trying to figure out how to serve those desires and make money from them. Mr. Cahan, a trusted lieutenant to Ms. Mayer, will also focus on user interface and product design, a topic that Ms. Mayer takes special interest in.

Jeff Bonforte, who leads the company's e-mail and messaging products, will now supervise mobile apps in those areas. He will also oversee Flickr, the company's photo-sharing service.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment on any specific management changes but said in a statement, "As we continue to look at ways to accelerate our growth, aligning our product teams to enable tighter collaboration is critical to drive innovation and deliver consistent and enjoyable user experiences across all Yahoo products. In order to achieve that alignment, we made a number of organizational shifts to emphasize our focus on the growth businesses of mobile, social, native and video (aka "Mavens")."

The tech news site The Information first reported many of the changes in an article this week.

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