Digital Media

As the CEO of Adobe Systems, Bruce Chizen was credited with turning that company into a software powerhouse. Now Chizen will bring his experience to a new role as a venture partner for Voyager Capital, a top venture capital firm.

Voyager Capital invests mostly in start-ups involved with early-stage digital media, software and servers, wireless, and Web infrastructure. Previously a member of Voyager's advisory board, Chizen will expand his role by working with budding technology entrepreneurs in the areas of digital media and software.

"Bruce possesses a rare combination of valuable market insight and senior business experience," said Bill McAleer, managing director at Voyager Capital. "His strong industry reputation, connections, and background in digital media and software will benefit our ventures."

Chizen made his mark in the industry as CEO of Adobe. After six years with the company, he took over the CEO reins from co-founder John Warnock in late 2000.

During his tenure, Chizen was the driving force behind Adobe's expansion into new markets. He oversaw the growth of the company's customer base beyond the graphic arts niche into the enterprise and general consumer arenas. He helped transform Adobe from a software vendor into a platform company, branching out onto the Web and open source, among other areas.

With Chizen at the helm, Adobe made some key deals, notably the acquisition of Macromedia in 2005.

After having tripled Adobe's revenues as CEO, Chizen exited the company in late 2007, placing it in the hands of then president and now CEO Shantanu Narayen. In an interview with CNET News, Chizen spoke about his decision to leave Adobe at the time.

Prior to his role at Adobe, Chizen served in several executive positions at Claris. He also worked in the merchandising group at Mattel Electronics and as a regional sales director at Microsoft.

Mediafly is coming to the Roku Digital Media Player later this year. The Mediafly channel will aggregate free-of-charge audio and video podcasts from a variety of providers, including Comedy Central, CNN, ESPN, and NBC. While these programs are easily available on a PC, the Mediafly channel should provide a quick and easy way to enjoy them on a TV or living room audio system as well.

Currently, Mediafly allows users to organize podcasts into customized feeds that are then available on a variety of Web-connected devices, including the iPhone, Zune, and Blackberry. (Check out CNET's coverage of the recently released Mediafly iPhone App for an explanatory video.) However, the Mediafly experience on the Roku will include streamlined access to the most popular 500 shows across 20 topics without the need to set up an account or manage any subscriptions. For example, the promo screenshot (above) highlights the comedy genre, and shows at least two Comedy Central stand-up podcasts, along with "Ask A Ninja."

The capability to access audio and video podcasts exists on competing products such as Apple TV and TiVo DVRs, but both of them are considerably more expensive than the $99 Roku box. Originally introduced as a Netflix-only playback device, the "Roku Netflix Player" has since expanded its roster of content providers, adding Amazon Video-on-Demand as well. Mediafly is the first of 10 new channels that the company has pledged to add by the end of 2009.

Internet advertising revenues reached a record $23 billion last year, rising modestly during the fourth quarter as the economy headed further south, according to an Interactive Advertising Bureau report released Monday.

During the fourth quarter, Internet advertising rose a modest 2.6 percent to $6.1 billion during the three-month period, according to the bureau.

"Though some categories in the fourth quarter slowed or even dipped, reflecting the current economic challenges, the overall performance is up, confirming interactive's ever-growing importance to the successful marketing mix," David Silverman, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, said in a statement. PricewatershouseCoopers conducted the study on behalf of the IAB.

Last year, Internet advertising revenues rose 10.6 percent to $23 billion over the previous year, according to the report.

Retail, financial services, computing, and automotive were the largest industries to capture the attention of online advertisers.

Search advertising continued to drive growth, with a 19.8 percent increase last year over the previous year. And while digital video accounted for only a $734 million slice of the entire Interactive advertising pie, it posted steep growth--more than doubling.

Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer reiterated his interest in landing a search deal with Yahoo during a midyear strategic update with analysts Tuesday, according to a CNBC report.

But while Ballmer is apparently willing to re-engage in a dialogue with Yahoo regarding a potential search deal, the software giant has been "rebuffed and ignored" by Yahoo's new CEO, Carol Bartz, on any overtures it has made to initiate discussions, said a CNBC reporter, citing anonymous sources.

Yahoo was up 5 percent to $12.57 a share in pre-market trading.

Yahoo, meanwhile, apparently is operating without a top M&A executive, following the departure of Gerald Horkan, the company's senior vice president of corporate strategy, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Horkan, who spent most of last year as Yahoo's dealmaker in Microsoft's failed bid to acquire the search company for as much as $33 a share, left Yahoo a few weeks ago and has not been replaced, the Journal reports.

Update at 11:21 a.m. PST with more information on Yahoo's challenges over the past year.

Yahoo has offered the chief executive post to former Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz and she intends to respond to the offer "quickly," said a source familiar with the talks.

Bartz, should she accept the post, would take over the role held by Yahoo's co-founder and embattled CEO Jerry Yang, who came under fire after failed buyout negotiations with Microsoft.

Although Yahoo has not received word that Bartz has accepted the post, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that she will take the position.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment on Bartz. An Autodesk spokeswoman also declined to comment.

Bartz is a well known, respected executive within Silicon Valley, who led the drafting and design software maker Autodesk for 14 years, before , as part of a planned transition of the company.

During Bartz's tenure, Autodesk largely outperformed the broader markets and particularly gained ground in mid-2003 to late 2004.

On Tuesday, Yahoo shares fell about 2 percent to $11.94 in mid-morning trading, despite reports of Bartz's impending appointment.

Bartz comes to a company that has been embattled over the past year.

Early last year, Microsoft launched an unsolicited bid to buy the company, later walking away after a $33-a-share offer was rejected by Yahoo. The search pioneer was also the target of a proxy fight by shareholder activist Carl Icahn, who eventually joined Yahoo's board as part of a settlement with the company. And as the year came to a close, Yahoo's hope of ramping up its revenue with an advertising search partnership with Google fell by the wayside. The search giant walked away from the deal when the U.S. Department of Justice notified the companies it would challenge such an arrangement under antitrust grounds.

Shortly after the Google deal collapsed, Yang announced he would step down as CEO as soon as a replacement was found.

In addition to Bartz, other strong contenders the company had considered included Yahoo President Sue Decker, as well as former Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Friday said a search deal with Yahoo would be better if done sooner than later, but noted it wasn't a factor in the hiring of former Yahoo search executive Qi Lu, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft announced Thursday that it had hired Lu as president of its online services business. Lu was formerly the vice president of Yahoo's e-commerce and search business. Microsoft has repeatedly expressed interest in acquiring the latter.

In responding to the Journal's question on whether Lu's hiring will make any potential integration of Yahoo's search assets easier for Microsoft, should a deal be done, Ballmer said:

I think a search deal makes great sense for Microsoft, and Yahoo, and I think I've been very open about that. That's as true with Qi joining us as it was before Qi joined us. Obviously, the logistics of any such integration...can only be simpler by having somebody who will know both sides. But that was not a factor in hiring Qi.

Our focus on portal and search is super-strong, and even if we never do a Yahoo deal or anything else, I wanted to have Qi come on board. It is kind of a bonus that if something happened with Yahoo I'm sure it's somewhat simpler.

Ballmer noted the two companies are not currently in any talks about a search deal and Microsoft is under no pressure to act on such a transaction.

He added, however, it would be "advantageous" for the two companies to team up on search:

Look, the fundamental basis for doing the search deal with Yahoo has to do with critical mass in the advertising marketplace. It doesn't have to do with technology, or any of these other things, it really is a market phenomenon. Together we would have more advertisers...which means we'd have more relevant ads on our page. We'd have higher monetization levels possible in front of us because there would be more people bidding on more key words. Most importantly, Google would have perhaps a real credible competitor sooner.

I think good ideas are usually better done quickly than slowly, so it would probably be better for both of us, and certainly for Yahoo, if we were to do it sooner than later. But at the end of the day, that would have (to) be something Yahoo would be interested in as I have expressed our interest.

Lu, who begins his Microsoft job on January 5, said he plans to zero in on such areas as "talent, core infrastructures, and basic processes," that will improve the quality of the company's products and user experience.

Yahoo and Microsoft outperformed the U.S. search industry's 7 percent increase in search results for the month of October, while AOL slipped further behind, according to a ComScore report released Wednesday.

During the month of October, 12.6 billion searches were conducted at home, work, and universities, up 7 percent from September results. Yahoo led the way in growth with a 9 percent increase to 2.6 billion searches, while Microsoft gained 8 percent to 1 billion.

That performance outweighed Google, which posted a 7 percent increase, and far outstripped the struggling AOL unit of Time Warner, which declined by 2 percent in October.

Google, however, still retains a sizable slice of the ever-growing U.S. search pie, holding 63.1 percent of the market share, according to ComScore. And that slice slightly grew last month by 0.2 percent.

Yahoo retained its No. 2 market share position with a 20.5 percent slice, up 0.3 percent. And Microsoft remained status quo with 8.5 percent.

AOL, however, not only saw its U.S. search count decline last month but also its market share, which dipped 0.4 percent, according to ComScore.

Yahoo fell into a new dollar range on Thursday, pushed into the high $8 a share bracket as the broader markets took a beating.

Yahoo closed at $8.95 a share, down 2 percent, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average cratered 444.99 points to close at 7,552.29.

For Yahoo, its shares have not traded at this point since February 2003, while the S&P 500, which fell 6.71 percent to 752.44, has not seen these levels since 2002.

The markets reacted late in the session as signs pointed to a delay in moving a massive bailout for the automotive industry forward.

Last week, Yahoo's shares moved in the $9 a share range and the day before that the $10 a share range.

Updated 1:30 p.m. PST, with Yahoo's closing price and additional information on Microsoft-Yahoo-Yang.

Yahoo shares went into a free fall Wednesday, plummeting 20.9 percent following comments from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that the software giant is interested in a search-only partnership and not a buyout of the entire company.

The Internet search pioneer fell $2.41 a share to close at $9.14 a share, during the regular trading session. And at one point in the trading day, Yahoo's shares dipped as low as $9.07 a share.

The stock went into shock after Ballmer reiterated that Microsoft has no plans to acquire Yahoo and that its interests mainly lie in a potential to do a search-only partnership with the company.

Ballmer's comments were made during a question and answer session at Microsoft's annual shareholders meeting.

That disappointed Yahoo investors, who were holding out hope that Microsoft would come back to the negotiating table after the Internet search pioneer announced Monday that CEO Jerry Yang would step down as soon as a replacement was found. Many investors had blamed Yang for the failed Microsoft buyout talks, when the software giant walked away from its previous offer of $33 a share to acquire the company.

Yahoo's stock has undergone two rounds of whiplash this week, soaring as much as 16 percent in intraday trading on Tuesday after the Yang announcement.

Over the past 10 months, Yahoo's stock has repeatedly been whipsawed whenever Ballmer or Yang have made a reference to a deal or no deal.

Earlier in the week, after Yahoo had announced Yang would be stepping down, one influential Microsoft source had told CNET News that Yahoo investors who were still "lusting" after a Microsoft buyout would be disappointed.

The source had noted that the topic of a Yahoo buyout has not come up in Redmond for months and months now and that the two companies are not talking.

And another source quoted in the story, who is familiar with Yahoo's thinking, noted it was unlikely the Internet search pioneer would consider any search-only related deals until Yahoo had a new CEO in place, allowing that person to weigh in on the topic. Yahoo is expected to make a decision on its next CEO within the next six months.