Marissa Mayer: Yahoo Now Gets 12,000 Resumes a Week

SAN FRANCISCO -- The clearest sign yet of Yahoo's turnaround? People are clamoring to work there again.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said Wednesday that the company now gets 12,000 resumes a week, about a fivefold increase since she took the top job in July 2012. The tech giant currently has 12,000 employees, so "for every job we have, we get a resume each week," she said.

The increase in applications is a reflection of Mayer's efforts to make Yahoo cool again, and to return the company to growth. Employee perks like free food and iPhones -- hallmarks of her former employer, Google -- don't hurt the recruitment efforts, either.

Mayer attributed the company's latest success to a focus on four areas: people, products, traffic and revenue. Doing well in one leads to greater success in the others, she says.

"They are a chain reaction," she said in an interview on stage at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference. "You have to get the right people there before you can build the right products. Once you have that usage," it's easier to attract advertisers.

On the traffic side, Mayer said Wednesday that Yahoo has surpassed 800 million monthly active users worldwide. The surge, about a 20 percent increase since Mayer took over, is largely due to increased traffic to the company's mobile offerings. Yahoo has about 350 million mobile users. Mayer said the company is also seeing higher traffic to its email, homepage and search products. (The spike does not include the social blogging site Tumblr, which Yahoo purchased this year.)

Another sign of success: Employee attrition is down markedly, and people who left the company are coming back. Mayer said she has focused on attracting former Yahoo'ers, whom she calls "boomerangs." About 10 percent of Yahoo's hires this year have been Yahoo alumni.

The turnaround efforts are also reflected in Yahoo's stock price, which has risen 88 percent since Mayer joined. Some of the gains can be credited to the company's investments in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, and its joint venture, Yahoo Japan.

But an additional focus on the company's products helps, Mayer said. She pointed to the redesign of Yahoo News and the decision to buy the exclusive streaming rights to past episodes of "Saturday Night Live" as examples of products she's happy about.

And, as expected, she defended the company's controversial logo change after interviewer Michael Arrington asked, "What the f--- happened here?" Mayer quickly pointed out that, prior to the redesign, about "87% of our employees wanted something different."

The new logo, she said, represented the company's "scrappy" culture. Yahoo didn't hire an outside branding agency or an expensive marketing firm. Instead, Mayer hunkered down with other Yahoo employees to redesign it over a weekend.

"We really pride ourselves at Yahoo as being the world’s largest start-up," she said. "We didn’t spend millions of dollars doing it. ... We did it in a way that came from a very authentic place."

first appeared on linkedin.com

Nigerians Win International Cyberspace Competition

Nigerians continue to raise the ante in the international community as three individuals recently won the Global Essay Competition For Seoul Conference On Cyberspace 2013.

The winners, Awele Chikwelu Oguejiofor, Akachukwu Nnaemeka Okafor and Uzoamaka Udumelue Unachukwu won in the Economic Growth and Social/ Cultural Benefits category with their essay titled ‘The Internet: An Engine of Holistic Development in the Developing World.’

As part of their winnings, two members of the three-man team earned an all-expense paid return trip to Seoul where they were panelists during a youth forum where youths from different parts of the world gathered to discuss and share innovative ideas on a range of issues related to cyberspace.

Other winners in the category are: Lee Suhyoon and Koh Kyungwoong, both Koreans.

One of the winners, Akachukwu, told Channels Television that “personally it is a source of motivation and inspiration to me as an individual, not to give up on any of my aspirations.

We all can attain our goals no matter how ambitious, we just have to keep tiring, staying focused,” he said.

The Nigerian delegate’s submission will be shared at the Seoul Conference which will take place on October 17-18, 2013, where approximately 800 delegates from more than 80 countries are expected to attend.

The conference themed, ‘Global Prosperity through an Open and Secure Cyberspace – Opportunities, Threats and Cooperation’, will focus on six areas: Economic Growth and Development, Social and Cultural Benefits, Cyber Security, International Security, Cybercrime, and Capacity Building.

first appeared on channelstv.com

meanwhile in Nigeria: EFCC head sacked!

Almost two years after firing the Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Farida Waziri, from her post, President Goodluck Jonathan has given reason for wielding the big stick against the former police commissioner.

Jonathan explained that he had to sack Waziri from the headship of the anti-graft agency because she no longer enjoyed the confidence of Nigerians as chairman of EFCC.

The President's comments are contained in a publication by EFCC entitled Zero Tolerance, to mark its first decade of existence.

Jonathan said in the publication, which was made available to Vanguard, yesterday, that contrary to claims that he was interfering with the work of the commission, he had no interest in doing so and would not stop any agency from exercising their duties.
Farida Waziri, former Chairperson of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commisssion.


The President said: "When I give you a job, I will give you time to do it. Assuming somebody, who is heading an agency that is supposed to handle corruption, is not doing that and says it is because of the President's body language, that person is not competent.

"I am one Nigerian that has the privilege of holding this office that gives these people the latitude to do their work.

Confidence in Lamorde

"I am happy that Nigerians have confidence in EFCC and in its chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde and I also have confidence in him.

"I have no personal relationship with Lamorde. He even investigated me while I was the governor of Bayelsa State. But I have confidence in him, given his track record.

"Of course, there was a lady who was there. There were lots of complaints. Some may be right, some may be wrong, but perception matters so much when handling matters like corruption.

"The confidence of the people must be there. I had to remove her and that does not mean that she is guilty of the allegations, but because I saw that Nigerians no longer had confidence in her."

Ribadu

Meanwhile, the former chairman of EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu, has said that there are many other criminals in Nigeria still walking the streets free because of their smartness or connection to certain influential persons.

According to him, EFCC, which had worked assiduously to stamp out corruption within the first five years, was deliberately weakened by corrupt persons in high places, who handed over the agency to those who were brought to justice by it.

Ribadu said: "Those that were brought to justice by EFCC were the same people that EFCC was handed over to, and they did what they liked with it.

"It was the group that was worst in our country that was given back EFCC. A lot of them are in prison in Nigeria and outside the country.

"Those that even attempted to kill me are still there. Maybe if I meet one former governor today, I will hug him and shake his hands like so many others that I am doing daily now. It was never personal.

Conspiracy theory

"The attempt to destroy and mess up EFCC was a conspiracy of so many people, including those that pretend to be honest or good people now; including those that made money from EFCC, and they are so many.

"They turned EFCC into a money-making outfit, while destroying the work itself, because they are so afraid of what EFCC could do.

"They would rather have a weak or a completely compromised organisation. So if we narrow it down to that former governor alone, then we are actually underestimating the way corruption fought back."

Obasanjo lied, says Atiku

Meanwhile, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, yesterday, took a swipe at former President Olusegun Obasanjo, noting that his former boss lied in an interview he granted a magazine published by EFCC.

Obasanjo reportedly claimed that Atiku risked jail if he travels to the United States of America, USA.

A statement issued, yesterday, by Atiku's Media Adviser, Garba Shehu, said: "The former President is wrong. It is widely known that Atiku didn't enter government broke.

"He declared his assets at the commencement of his tenure as Vice President and did so at the end of his term as required by the constitution, which is a sacred document to Atiku."

He noted that when the former Vice President left office shortly before late Musa Yar'Adua was inaugurated as President, Atiku spent three months in the US, adding that if they (US authorities) wanted him for anything, they would have met him.

first posted on: http://9janewss.blogspot.com