The deck chairs at Yahoo are a-changing once again, with the company's chief communications officer, Jill Nash, stepping down in the next few weeks, a company spokesman confirmed.
Nash, who joined Yahoo in January 2007 as its PR head, will assist in the transition once her replacement is found, said Brad Williams, a company spokesman, noting that she is not leaving to take another job.
Nash's resignation announcement comes less than three weeks after Yahoo named its new CEO, Carol Bartz.
Her pending departure follows that of Yahoo President Sue Decker, who announced in mid-January plans to resign after she was passed over for the CEO post.
Nash, however, did not have her hat in the ring for the CEO job and it's not clear what her future plans will entail. Nash was not immediately available for comment.
The departure of Yahoo's PR head was first reported in AllThingsD.
Another high-level Yahoo executive is leaving the troubled search company.
Toby Coppel is expected to announce Thursday that he is stepping down from his position as executive vice president and managing director of Europe and Canada, according to a report by AllThingsD's Kara Swisher. The departure has reportedly been in the works for months and is unrelated to the recent announcement that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is stepping down once a replacement is found.
Coppel told Swisher that he has no firm plans for the future, other than welcoming his third child into the world very soon.
"I have been transitioning our European business, restructuring it and making it stronger, as Yahoo is moving to product development on a global platform," Coppel told Swisher.
Coppel joined Yahoo in 2001 and had been running its European operations for the past 18 months.
The departure is the latest in a months-long exodus of executives from the troubled search company after its rejection of Microsoft's unfriendly attempt to acquire Yahoo. Last week, Microsoft announced that it had hired Yahoo search executive Sean Suchter to be general manager of its Silicon Valley Search Technology Center.
After reporting a 64 percent drop in net income and warning that the advertising market is softening, Yahoo announced in October a layoff of at least 1,430 by the end of 2008. The cut follows another in which about 1,000 Yahoo employees lost their jobs in February.
Benjamin Ling, who was recruited from Google to lead Facebook's developer platform product marketing team, plans to leave his job at the social-networking site, the fourth key executive to depart in recent months.
Benjamin Ling, leader of Facebook's developer platform product marketing team, plans to leave his job at the social-networking site.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News)Ling's departure, which was reported by VentureBeat's Eric Eldon and BoomTown's Kara Swisher, was confirmed by Facebook in a statement Tuesday.
At the Graphing Social Patterns: East conference in June, Ling confirmed that Facebook would be launching a widely rumored payment system for application developers, but declined to provide a time frame at the conference. Before joining Facebook last fall, Ling was the head of Google Checkout.
Ling's move to Facebook was followed by that of Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and public affairs at Google. Apparently there was some speculation that Ling wasn't happy with Schrage being installed over him at Facebook, but Ling denied that rumor to Swisher, saying, "I have huge respect for Elliot and work well with him."
Ling, who told his staff about his departure Tuesday, told Swisher that he was leaving the social-networking site to pursue "another opportunity." He added, "Facebook is a tremendous organization and I would not leave it if it were not for a great opportunity."
From Facebook's statement on the departure:
Facebook confirms that Ben Ling will be leaving the company in the coming weeks to pursue other interests. We wish him well and appreciate his great contributions to the early success of Facebook Platform.
Other key executives who have left Facebook in recent months: Owen Van Natta, Facebook's chief revenue officer and vice president of operations, announced his departure in February; Matt Cohler, Facebook's No. 5 employee, left for venture firm Benchmark Capital in June; and Adam D'Angelo, Facebook's chief technology officer, announced in June he was leaving the company to take some time off.
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