Perhaps no man is braver than Ross Levinsohn, at least at Web 2. First of all, he’s the top North American executive at a long-besieged and currently leaderless company, and second because he has not backed out of our conversation on Day One (this coming Monday). I spoke to Ross yesterday, and wanted to wait on asking your input on what I should ask him till we had spoken.
On stage next week, Ross and I will have to discuss Yahoo’s top leadership, or lack thereof, save Ross and his interim-CEO boss Tim Morse, who was Yahoo’s CFO up until the abrupt firing of Carol Bartz late this summer.
Since that time, the daily rumor mill has swirled around the company (it was only weekly before that). Today’s news, for example, was that Yahoo stock is up, because potential buyers are “circling” the Internet giant. One of those buyers is Alibaba, the Chinese giant, another is Newscorp, where Ross worked in another life. A third is private equity, which would mean Yahoo ceases to be a public company, at least for a period of time. A long shot fourth is Microsoft, but we’ll get a chance to ask Steve Ballmer about the on Day Two….
It’s got to be hard to focus on the real work at hand – creating great products, taking care of advertising clients, competing with other web giants. But that’s Ross’s job. And that’s what he wants to talk about – the impending launch of Livestand, the value of content (Yahoo is investing in mobile and video platforms and content), the integration of social features into just about everything at Yahoo.
That’s all well and good but…what do YOU want to hear from Ross?
As an extra incentive, I’ll be picking the best three questions from these series of posts (see below and watch for more). The authors of those questions will get complimentary passes to Web 2 – a more than $4000 value. So get to commenting, and thank you!
Previously: Mark Pincus, John Donahoe, Marc Benioff, Dick Costolo, Michael Dell, Mary Meeker, Michael Roth, Steve Ballmer, James Gleick, Vic Gundotra.
Next up: Charlie Cheever and Adam D’Angelo, founders, Quora.
It seems increasingly in this age, people are looking for the “next great thing.” Sites only have so long to be cool, then interests shift.
Yahoo had its day. Can you come back, like Apple did in the product business with the i-phone, i-pod, etc, keeping your same brand … or do you need to rebrand yourself to make yourself more relevant for today’s users?