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Departing Mansueto Digital Head Forms New Drupal-Based Social Publishing Firm
We reported earlier today about Fast Company's merging digital with print operations, and Ed Sussman, the president of Mansueto Digital, leaving as a result. He is now starting a new company, as yet unnamed, that will take the Drupal publishing platform, build on top of it, and help other online publishers develop sites. I spoke to him a bit earlier on this today.
He is tying up with two other companies in the sector: Lullabot, a web dev company working with Drupal, and Bond Art + Science, a web design agency based in NYC and founded by Jeff Dachis, the former founder of Razorfish. For now, the project is self funded among these partners.
Both companies partnered with FC on the development of the new FastCompany.com site, which was relaunched on Drupal earlier this year with an intent to make it more social. Taking lessons from that experience, the new company will be launching a platform for groups, individuals and businesses to create social websites. The intent is taking the power of the rather complex module structure of Drupal, and develop easy drag-and-drop tools on top of them, for users to develop beyond blog sites. He told me it will take another three months for the project to go into private alpha, so this is a bit far out.
Of course the competition in this rather generic sector is fierce, from all kinds of social networking and web publishing plays, including Ning, Kickapps, Wordpress, and plenty of others. With an economy in a tailspin, who needs another easy-to-use web publishing tool, powerful or otherwise? Too early and easy to say without actually testing out the platform, but we'll find out…
It's also not the first time someone's trying to commercialize the Drupal platform. Late last year Acquia raised a $7 million first round to commercially develop Drupal, though that is more on the enterprise side of things.
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Fast Company Lays Off 20 As Digital Folds Into Print Operations; Sussman Leaving
Layoffs at Mansueto Ventures, specifically the digital side of Fast Company, the result, we're told, of a decision to fold Mansueto Digital into the company's print operations. At the same time, digital head Ed Sussman is leaving to be CEO at a start-up. Twenty employees, primarily in online and marketing, have been laid off, according to Valleywag. Also, from the memo sent out by CEO John Koten to employees, other cost cuts include shelving Upstart, a planned magazine devoted to new businesses; closing the Atlanta office except for sales; cutting IT help desk coverage; and curtailing perks like tuition reimbursement, gym and free snacks. Employees will keep their free sodas and subsidized massages...really.
In addition 20 layoffs, including three of 12 executive committee posts, he said sales and editorial staffers would handle digital as well as print.The creative services department would also close.
Earlier this year, Fast Company ramped up on digital, hiring high-profile Robert Scoble and launching Fast Company TV. At the same time, Fast Company launched a sweeping social media initiative. Scoble stays on but will report to Fast Company magazine editor Bob Safian, who adds responsibility for fastcompany.com. Scoble wrote about the news this afternoon.
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Industry Moves: MSLO Hires InStyle.com's Horwood To Chart Online Editorial Strategy
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO) has named former InStyle.com exec Gail Horwood to the new role of SVP Digital Programming and Strategy. Horwood will oversee MSLO's digital properties, including MSLO sites marthastewart.com and wholeliving.com. In addition to guiding the sites' editorial strategy, Horwood will work with the merchandising team on driving the online retail business.
Horwood is the first major digital hire since Wenda Harris Millard and Robin Marino were named co-CEOs after Susan Lyne stepped down this summer. (The company has made one other executive hire since the Millard and Marino took over: Patsy Pollack was brought in as EVP of Merchandising in August.) Before serving as executive director at InStyle.com, Horwood was executive director, creative development at Time Inc. Interactive and VP, global content at Zagat Survey and editor-in-chief of CondeNet's food site Epicurious. Release
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Industry Moves: Penton; LiveDeal; Babelgum; Tsavo; Passenger
-- Penton Media: Former president and CEO of Thomson Financial will now take on the role of CEO at Penton Media as well as join its board of directors. Before serving in various management roles, including COO, at Thomson Financial, Rowlands ran the North American operation of FT Information. She succeeds John French, who resigned from the chief executive post in July but stayed on the company's board. Release.
-- LiveDeal: The company has made Mike Edelhart's CEO status a permanent one. For three months, he had been leading the online classifieds site as interim CEO. Currently, he serves as an adviser to Infovell and chairman of the board of Olive Software. Prior to joining LiveDeal, Edelhart was CEO of Inman News. Release.
-- Babelgum: Indie film vet Karol Martesko-Fenster has signed on as GM and publisher, according to Variety. Responsible for increasing acquisitions and partnerships, he'll also manage the company's online film festival and expand programming. Martesko-Fenster previously co-founded and served as publisher for indieWire and Filmmaker magazine.
-- Tsavo Media: The new content delivery service has appointed Steve Schepke as GM. With years of Internet marketing experience, Schepkeis the former co-CEO of Proceed Interactive, a search and interactive marketing agency, and earlier founded Terra Firma Marketing. Release.
-- Passenger: The on-demand customer collaboration provider has brought on Samantha Skey to take on the role of SVP of business development and GM of the eastern region. She joins from Alloy Media + Marketing, where she served as EVP of strategic marketing.
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Industry Moves: Newsweek; LIN TV; MySpace; Spotzer
-- Newsweek: The Washington Post Co. mag has named Pamela Raley, a former online ad sales exec at Hearst, Disney and Revolution Health, to the new post of chief revenue officer. Raley will be responsible for overseeing all ad revenue and the magazine's ad sales teams, but her main focus will be on wringing more revenue out of Newsweek's online operations. Release
-- LIN TV: The local TV and digital media company announced one new hire and a promotion: Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS) exec Richard Schmaeling has been appointed SVP and CFO, succeeding Bart Catalane, who left in August to sign on as CFO of webloyalty.com. Previously, Schmaeling served as SVP-finance at Dow Jones. Robert Richter has been upped to SVP-new media from his previous post as SVP-Internet. Both of them will report to president and CEO Vincent Sadusky. (Via AP)
-- MySpace: Valeh Vakili is the latest exec to join the social net giant as SVP-sales strategy and operations. In this new position, she'll oversee the account management team and focus on pricing, packaging and inventory management. Prior to joining MySpace, Vakili worked at Yahoo, where she helped lead the integration of the company's search, display, Blue Lithium and Right Media sales teams as director-U.S. sales ops.
-- Spotzer: The video ad group has hired Yellowbook exec Gordon Henry as president of the North and South American businesses. With over 20 years of ad and publishing experience, he was previously CMO and SVP of Yellowbook, and earlier held marketing and busis dev positions at Knight Ridder/Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. Release.
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Industry Moves: Facebook Co-Founder Moskovitz Leaving To Start New Company
Facebook co-founder and chief engineer Dustin Moskovitz is leaving the social net to found a new company with another departing Facebook engineer, Justin Rosenstein, Valleywag reported and CNET confirmed. Moskovitz served as head engineer for Facebook, having served a more behind-the-scenes role in the recent years. It's the most recent in a series of exec departures.
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Industry Moves: Venrock-eMusic CEO; ESPN; Linden Lab; Evri; WSJ; eBay
-- Venrock-eMusic CEO: Outgoing eMusic CEO David Pakman is joining the venerated VC firm Venrock as a Partner in New York City, where he will be part of the recently enhanced Digital Media team led by David Siminoff in Palo Alto. He announced his departure from the online music service earlier this week, though he will be there until end of this year. Pakman will be looking at investing in digital media startups, as he explains here.
-- ESPN: ESPN appointed Renee Plato its VP of digital video distribution . She'll now oversee multiplatform distribution efforts for ESPN Media and Disney (NYSE: DIS), including broadband, electronic sell through, ITV and VOD, and report to SVP-digital distribution, Matt Murphy. Plato joins from Sony) BMG, where she served as senior director of business development.
-- Linden Lab: The company behind Second Life has appointed Tom Hale its chief product officer, reporting directly to CEO Mark Kingdon. Hale most recently served as SVP and GM-knowledge worker business at Adobe. Release.
-- Evri: Former Facebook general counsel Rudy Gadre has joined Evri to take on the new position of VP-business operations. He'll be charged with overseeing legal and intellectual property, building audience and driving customer acquisition. Before spending two years at Facebook, he held tech and IP law positions at Beacon Law Advisors, Amazon and others.
-- WSJ & DJ: Tomaso Capuano has been promoted to lead design across online and print platforms as the company's design director, having previously served as creative director for the recently launched WSJ magazine. Prior to joining Dow Jones, he was the art director of new projects at The Times of London, and was instrumental in several launches and redesigns.
-- eBay: Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen has joined the company's board of directors, effective immediately. Currently, his other focus is social net platform Ning, which he co-founded in 2004 with Gina Bianchini. He also sits on Facebook's board and has invested in entities like Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn, Meebo, FunnyorDie, Scribd, among several others. Release.
Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
Industry Moves: CBS; Bravo; Guardian; X1 Technologies
-- CBS: CBS (NYSE: CBS) Television Distribution has named Scott Koondel president of distribution. Leading sales of off-network programming to cable and digital media platforms, Koondel will be responsible for programming assets from CBS Paramount Network Television, CBS News and Showtime as well as original programming. Most recently, he served as EVP-off-network, cable and interactive media. Prior to the Viacom/CBS split, Koondel oversaw distribution for Paramount Pictures. Release.
-- Bravo Media: Aimee Viles is joining Bravo as its new SVP-digital and new media strategy, where she'll supervise the new media department, including wireless, interactive TV and gaming. Before joining the company, Viles honed her creative skills as director-creative services at Ensequence. Release.
-- Guardian News & Media: The company is adding the new post of multimedia head and has given the role to current guardian.co.uk network head Tom Happold. It's a move GNM digital director Emily Bell (via Guardian.co.uk) said signals "our growing commitment to and investment in multimedia." More at paidContent:UK.
-- X1 Technologies: John Maxwell is joining the search solutions provider as VP-worldwide marketing. He most recently was VP-marketing with MTI Technology and led similar positions at veritas Software and Sun Microsystems. Release.
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Industry Moves: BBCWW Confirms Microsoft's Dobson To Run Global Ad Sales
BBC Worldwide has now confirmed Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) UK's online services group VP Chris Dobson is joining it, as we reported last month.
His job title's a big one - EVP and general manager of global ad sales. Dobson will oversee advertising across TV channels and online including BBC World News, and will sit above both Jonathan Howlett and Mark Gall, who were brought to head digital ads for international and US respectively in November, when BBC.com launched with its controversial advertising. Dobson, who will report to Darren Childs, has a remit to grow advertising income from the BBC's commercial arm, which reinvests in BBC content. BBC.com made £1.5 million from ads between November and March, and BBCWW plans to grow that significantly.
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Industry Moves: MSFT's Mehdi Upped To Lead Much Of Online Services—But Not As President: Report
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) vet Yusuf Mehdi will now lead much of the company's online services, including marketing, business development, product management for MSN, and search, according to Kara at AllThingsD. However, CEO Steve Ballmer has yet to appoint an overall replacement for Kevin Johnson, who left his post as president of the platform and service division in July. We suggested earlier this month that Mehdi and Brian McAndrews, SVP-advertiser and publisher solutions, were the most likely contenders to fill Johnson's shoes. Mehdi, along with McAndrews and Satya Nadella, SVP-search, portal & advertising, will be heading up different aspects of advertising in the company. Formerly SVP-strategic partnerships, he'll now be responsible for part of the portfolio of SVP Bill Veghte, who will focus on leading Windows and Windows Live.
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MSFT Vet Yusuf Mehdi Upped To Lead Online Services—But Not As President: Report
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) vet Yusuf Mehdi will lead much of the company's online services, including marketing, business development, product management for MSN, and search, according to Kara Swisher at AllThingsD. However, CEO Steve Ballmer has yet to appoint an overall replacement for Kevin Johnson, who left his post as president of the platform and service division in July. We suggested earlier this month that Mehdi and Brian McAndrews, SVP-advertiser and publisher solutions, were the most likely contenders to fill Johnson's shoes. Mehdi, formerly SVP-strategic partnerships, will now be responsible for part of the portfolio of SVP Bill Veghte, who will focus on leading Windows and Windows Live. He's also joining McAndrews and Satya Nadella, SVP-search, portal & advertising
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Yahoo Reorgs Connected Life Division; Next Phase Focused On Making Money On Mobile
Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is reorganizing the Connected Life division with the intention of actually making money. The reorganization, announced internally today at an all-hands meeting, includes a management shuffle and the new goal of contributing to Yahoo's bottom line by 2009, according to an email we obtained. The email was sent out today to employees by Marco Boerries, Yahoo's EVP of the Connected Life Division, who also made the announcement at a meeting this morning.
At the top of the list for new executive appointments, Boerries named David Ko as SVP of Mobile. Previously, he ran Connected Life in Asia, and will be moving back to the states from Singapore to head global operations and business activities. Ko is replacing Steve Boom, whose departure was reported last month. Boerries wrote: "I am super happy to announce today that David Ko, our rock star from Asia who led the Connected Life Mobile team to dominate in that region, has been promoted to SVP of Mobile. Also, as part of the restructuring, Boerries said he will now oversee all of the various groups, such as oneSearch, oneConnect and IPTV. Previously, those groups reported to Boom, who reported Boerries. Full details at mocoNews.net…
Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
Yahoo Reorgs Connected Life Division; Next Phase Focused On Making Money On Mobile
Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is reorganizing the Connected Life division with the intention of actually making money. The reorganization, announced internally today at an all-hands meeting, includes a management shuffle and the new goal of contributing to Yahoo's bottom line by 2009, according to an email we obtained. The email was sent out today to employees by Marco Boerries, Yahoo's EVP of the Connected Life Division, who also made the announcement at a meeting this morning.
At the top of the list for new executive appointments, Boerries named David Ko as SVP of Mobile. Previously, he ran Connected Life in Asia, and will be moving back to the states from Singapore to head global operations and business activities. Ko is replacing Steve Boom, whose departure was reported last month. Boerries wrote: "I am super happy to announce today that David Ko, our rock star from Asia who led the Connected Life Mobile team to dominate in that region, has been promoted to SVP of Mobile. Also, as part of the restructuring, Boerries said he will now oversee all of the various groups, such as oneSearch, oneConnect and IPTV. Previously, those groups reported to Boom, who reported Boerries. Full details at mocoNews.net???
Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
Industry Moves: eMusic CEO Pakman Departs; Joins Unnamed VC Firm
The search for MySpace Music CEO just got a bit more competitive: The longtime CEO of online music service eMusic David Pakman is leaving, and joining an as-yet-un-named venture capital firm as a partner. The music company, owned by Dimensional Associates, the private equity arm of JDS Capital Management, has retained a search firm to find a new CEO. Likely candidates would probably include some of the names MySpace has looked at over this year as the CEO of its newly launched music service.
Pakman will remain with the company through the end of this year and will remain on company's board, and as an advisor. Pakman joined eMusic as COO in 2004 and was elevated to CEO in August 2005. eMusic has positioned itself over the years as an MP3 and indie-focused music service, and says it has bout 400K subscribers. The company has about $70 million in yearly revenues, it disclosed in the release...this is the first time it disclosed its revenues, likely to attract a big-name candidate who can scale the business.
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Industry Moves: Howard Handler Joins EMI Music To Head North American Marketing
A bit of news you're reading here first—EMI Music is bringing on Howard Handler as EVP/Head of Marketing for North America. Expect the announcement this morning. Based in New York, Handler will oversee all marketing function in U.S. and Canada; he'll report to Sam van der Feltz, President of Global Marketing and will be on the exec management team. Handler, whose expertise is in his youth marketing and brand-building expertise, most recently was CMO at Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) USA; he joined soon after launch in 2003 and left in January 2008 following the IPO. His resume includes executive marketing posts at the NFL, MTV, and Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video Entertainment. He also was president and CEO of start-up Burly Bear Network, which sold to National Lampoon.
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Kinsey Wilson Leaves USAT, Joins NPR As Digital Head
NPR has finally found a new digital head, after Maria Thomas left in April. Kinsey Wilson, the executive editor of USA Today and previously the editor of USAToday.com has left the paper and joined NPR as its digital head, according to the internal memo posted on Romenesko. Wilson had been instrumental in last year's relaunch of USAT's website. He also spoke on a panel at our EconSM conference in April.
This still leaves the CEO position at NPR up for grabs...interim CEO Dennis Haarsager is still in place as the head of NPR since March this year, with the mandate to find a permanent CEO within the next six months.
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Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
