Core Business

What's The Real Story With Yahoo CEO Candidate Arun Sarin? (YHOO) — We don't know much about former Vodafone (VOD) CEO Arun Sarin other than what it says on his resume, which doesn't help much. Now that the Wall Street Journal says he's a candidate for the Yahoo (YHOO) CEO gig, it's time we learned the real story. So, those of you who have observed Arun in his work habitat, please let us know. Is he as good as the Yahoo board thinks he is? Or not? Leave a comment or create a fake email address and email us at tips@alleyinsider.com, or just call 646-747-1539. An anonymous reader -- one who claims... [Tags: acquisitions, anonymous reader, core business, ebay, email address]

Don’t Forget to ElfYourself — It’s true, eCards are soooo ’90s, but that’s only because most of them look terrible, aren’t specific or personalized enough, and/or cost money. But OfficeMax’sElfYourself campaign? TIMELESS. Send your own ElfYourself eCards The holiday campaign, in which users attach a photographed head to an animated dancing elf, is up for its third season. Last year, OfficeMax brags, the site had 193 million site visits in six weeks. That’s huge. This year, OfficeMax ditched the ElfYourself creators at Toy New York and EVB to work with online video shop JibJab, whose is core business is selling personalized eCards (it calls them... [Tags: core business, creators, dances, dancing elf, ecards]

eBay: It Ain’t Rocket Science — My wife is a power seller on eBay but lately not so much, in fact she’s even been getting phone calls from eBay asking why. She continues to express amazement that they don’t seem to get the message. eBay’s (EBAY) core business continues to fall apart. Some of the decline is likely the result of the declining economy. The rest of it is likely the result of the trends that have been clobbering eBay for the past two years: competition, overpricing, and the deterioration of eBay’s value proposition. eBay’s efforts to turn around this business do not appear to be... [Tags: amazement, core business, decline, declining economy, deterioration]

eBay Traffic Plummeting — eBay's core business continues to fall apart. Some of the decline is likely the result of the declining economy. The rest of it is likely the result of the trends that have been clobbering eBay for the past two years: competition, overpricing, and the deterioration of eBay's value proposition. eBay's efforts to turn around this business do not appear to be working. Check out the year-over-year decline in U.S. unique users to eBay.com, per Nielsen data below (year-over-year declines in lower right corner). Note the acceleration in declines since the summer.... [Tags: acceleration, core business, decline, declines, declining economy]

"The Guild" Season Two Forces Fans To Try Microsoft Video — A Web TV hit called "The Guild," a comedy about videogame players which reached 9 million views over 10 episodes during its first season, will start its second season Tuesday. Microsoft scored the exclusive and will distribute the shows over Xbox, MSN and Zune. Sprint will sponsor the 12-episode season. Show creator Felicia Day -- a "star" in the Web TV world known for her appearance opposite Neil Patrick Harris in Joss Whedon's "Dr. HOrrible's Sing-Along Blog" -- will retain intellectual property rights of the show, reports Reuters: A key component of the deal allows for Day to retain the... [Tags: appearance, business sides, core business, episode season, group product manager]

Lessons learned from Google's Lively experiment — Not all Google endeavors turn into gold. Case in point: Lively, a virtual world launched less than five months ago, albeit in "beta." Google announced on its blog late Wednesday that it would shutter the product at the end of the year to focus on its bread-and-butter search business. Here's an excerpt from the post: Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it's the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people's lives. But we've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet... [Tags: austin texas, bread and butter, chris sherman, core business, endeavors]

Lively from Google going the way of the dodo — Filed under: Fun, Internet, Google Not that we were huge fans of Lively to begin with, but I'm sure someone out there loved it. Right? No? Perhaps that explains Google's announcement that, "despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year." So grab those screenies before 2009 and your avatars and rooms go dead.One or two of you may cry out in anguish as a few million vertices are silenced with the click of a mouse: "why... [Tags: anguish, animal crossing, apps, avatars, chat clients]

Germany’s SolarWorld Wants To Buy…A Car Company? — OK, so here is the weirdest story of the day. SolarWorld (SWV.F), one of the largest solar companies in Germany, today declared that they want to buy several sites in Germany that now belong to the Opel division of General Motors. In short, they want to expand from solar modules into the auto business. As noted in an AP story picked up by the Wall Street Journal, SolarWorld said it intends to offer 1 billion Euros, including 250 million in cash and 750 million in credit lines, for four German production facilities and Opel’s development center and headquarters in Ruesselsheim.... [Tags: 1 billion, ap story, auto business, auto company, car company]

Image via CrunchBase I have written several posts here and at Mashable regarding what Yahoo has been doing lately on the development side. Today, I want to look at Yahoo as a whole. I do this because Yahoo is taking a beating from many blogs and media outlets. They also do not seem to be responding to anything except the latest merger or acquisition rumor. Let me state that I am not an economist or financial advisor or even an MBA. I am a software developer by trade with some management experience. I have been in this industry for... [Tags: acquisition, brain drain, consulting industry, core business, death spiral]

SAP ships fourth ERP enhancement pack — SAP released the fourth enhancement package for its ERP 6.0 application on Wednesday, furthering a recent shift in product strategy that forgoes periodic full upgrades and adds new functionality on an incremental basis.SAP is using the enhancement packs to entice customers to move up from older ERP platforms. The latest release includes all the features from the initial three, plus hundreds of new ones.[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]Areas of improvement include finance, human resources, plant and operations, procurement, and product development, as well as specialized features for various verticals, including automotive, defense, banking,... [Tags: berkeley california, center areas, core business, demand software, driving force]

BIDZ Shrs Plunge As Core Business Shrinks — Bidz.com (BIDZ) shares have taken a big hit today, on investor disappointment with both Q3 results and the company’s full year guidance. As I noted in a post yesterday, the company reported Q3 profits that were ahead of guidance, while revenues were toward the low end of the forecast range. But the company cut its full-year revenue forecast to $215 million to $225 million, from its previous guidance of $240 million to $245 million. Full year EPS guidance remains 56-59 cents. A close read of the company’s 10-Q shows that wholesale merchandise sales accounted for 31.1% of revenue in the... [Tags: argento, business merchandise, citron research, core business, craig hallum]

Blogging 2.0 services coComment and JS-Kit has announced a strategic partnership that will see both promote each others products. Under the deal, coComment will automatically track comments from all sites using JS-Kit commenting on a opt-in/out basis, allowing users to follow comments on more than 600,000 sites. coComment will also offer JS-Kit commenting, rating, reviews and polls to its members. Existing users of coComment’s comments engine will see no immediate difference, and will continue to be supported, although JS-Kit will eventually transition all existing coComment publishers to its platform. coComment is announcing a new service call coComment PRO that will... [Tags: 6 million, blogs, ceo, change hands, cocomment]

Downturn-Busting Venture Round For iSkoot: $19 Million — One thing’s for sure - the cream rises to the top in a downturn. And San Francisco/Israel based iSkoot, which has built technology that lets mobile users access Skype via normal mobile handsets, look like it’s the cream. The company has raised a third round of financing - $19 million from new investor Vision Opportunity Master Fund. Existing investors Charles River Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Jesselson Capital Corporation and ZG Ventures also participated in the round. Total capital raised by iSkoot is now over $32 million. iSkoot is best known to U.S. consumers as the company that brought Skype to the... [Tags: charles river ventures, consumers, core business, crunch, downturn]

When Uncertainty Makes Your Core Business Feel Like a Startup — For many years, I've been studying and researching how companies can drive organic growth and innovation. An argument that is central to this line of work is that one needs to use different disciplines when operating in an environment in which one has to make many more assumptions than one has knowledge (see McGrath RG, MacMillan IC. 1995. Discovery Driven Planning. Harvard Business Review 73(4): 44-54). I've always thought of these situations as ones involving a company getting into a new area, such as exploring a new technology, getting into a new geography or developing an offering for a new... [Tags: business model, conventional tools, core business, core businesses, customer segment]

Tesla's Elon Musk: I'm One Of Best Entrepreneurs On Planet — Tesla founder and now-CEO Elon Musk chats with Mary Kathleen Flynn of TechConfidential. He's bet $55 million on Tesla so far. He's never failed before, and he's not about to start now: You're Tesla's fourth CEO. Why has it been so difficult to find the right person to run Tesla, and why do you think you're the right person for the job?[Tesla founder] Martin Eberhard was definitely not the right person. That became clear when after the Series D investors did additional dilligence we discovered that Martin was wrong about important elements of the business. He had misled us about... [Tags: cash flow, chats, core business, elon musk, emergency basis]

Netflix Getting Out Of Used DVD Sales (NFLX) — Smart move by Netflix: It's getting out of the used DVD business. No surprise: As a revenue stream, selling used DVDs on its Web site was at best a side show compared to its core business of renting DVDs by mail. We assume it'll continue to sell its old inventory of no-longer-needed DVDs to wholesalers, which provide movies to DVD stores, street stands, etc. Meanwhile, there's no reason Netflix (NFLX) won't outsource the "buy this DVD!" function on its Web site to a company like Amazon (AMZN) -- which can use any boost it can get for its DVD business... [Tags: amazon amzn, commissions, core business, dvds by mail, netflix]

Developing the Future of Transporation: Chevy Volt — Earlier this week, PSFK was invited to view the production version of the 2010 Chevy Volt at a debut event in NYC. The car was officially unveiled last month in Detroit. The Volt is classified as an E-REV or extended range electric vehicle. Power comes primarily from batteries on board the car which can be recharged by plugging the vehicle in to an outlet. The vehicle does have small a flexible fuel engine which drives a generator to recharge the batteries when the charge gets low. The gas engine will only turn on in instances when more electricity is... [Tags: advanced technology, automotive industry, boniface, car companies, cars in the future]

Apple's iPod is no Longer a Cash Cow — Apple's core business has shifted to being driven by computer, iPhone sales...... [Tags: apple, cash cow, core business, iphone, ipod]

SAP Mulling Future of Hosting Business — SAP may divest its hosting division to focus instead on its "core business" of software and services.... [Tags: core business]

Zuora lands $15 million for online billing services — Zuora, a company that offers an on-demand subscription billing and payment service, announced Tuesday that it has secured $15 million in Series B funding. According to the company, the round was led by Shasta Ventures and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. Benchmark Capital and Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com, also participated. Zuora's funding round comes amid concerns that venture capitalists aren't as willing to invest cash in start-ups as they were just a few months ago. But as Jason Pressman, managing director at Shasta Ventures points out, maybe that fear is unwarranted. "Now is the time for investors... [Tags: benchmark capital, billing services, business model, core business, gold standard]