Start-up vet to run Yahoo's greenhouse

Yahoo hasn't officially announced its Brickhouse program dedicated to launching innovative new products, but word has leaked that it has hired a start-up veteran to head up the program.

Salim Ismail, chairman of Confabb.com, a directory of conferences, and co-founder of PubSub, confirms on his blog on Thursday that he's joining Yahoo.

"At Yahoo, I'll be running the Brickhouse, the program spearheaded and created by Caterina Fake, inside Bradley Horowitz's Advanced Development Division," that is launching products like Yahoo Pipes, an interactive feed aggregator, he writes.

"While I've gotten used to launching start-ups--Confabb was number seven and I had two others in production, the opportunity to do the same thing at the world's largest Internet company was too much to pass," Ismail writes. "Google is, well, amazing in its own right, but Yahoo's mission of connecting people to their passions and communities hits closer to my own view of how technology should be leveraged."

Amid market pressure from search powerhouse Google, Yahoo has been struggling to get its footing back. The company reorganized late last year, getting rid of some execs and re-aligning its businesses around two main focuses: advertising and consumers. One of the complaints about Yahoo has been that Google out-innovates it. Even Microsoft is stepping up its advertising and content efforts, further heating up the space.