Receives highest Clean Energy score amongst peers

Greenpeace International recently issued a report titled “How Clean is Your Cloud?”  Aiming to uncover the energy choices of the largest IT companies in the race to build the cloud, Greenpeace found that Yahoo!, Google and Facebook are leading the way by moving toward powering clouds with clean energy.

Yahoo! received the highest Clean Energy Index score amongst our peers, at 56.4% (Google’s score was 39.4% and Facebook came in at 36.4%), which was not lost on NPR who noted that we were the “only major Internet company in the study to get most of its electricity from renewable or clean energy sources.”

Greenpeace specifically noted Yahoo!’s environmental responsibility in the areas of site location decision-making and energy efficiency.  The report highlighted Yahoo!’s leadership in building some of the world’s most efficient facilities.

When Yahoo! identifies sites for our data centers, we take into account the presence of clean power, great workforces, and weather conditions. One of the reasons we love Lockport, New York so much is it was the perfect location for our unique “chicken coop” design. The temperate climate there lets us run the data center almost entirely on free cooling. The result is a data center that consumes 40 percent less electricity and 90 percent less water than a conventional data center. We’re now duplicating that design in our Quincy, Washington location.  As the report comments, we at Yahoo! are in a great position to help move the industry towards a clean and efficient energy future.

In addition to the recognition in the Greenpeace report, the Uptime Institute named Yahoo! a finalist in the Facility Design Implementation category of its 2012 Green Enterprise IT Awards, which recognize pioneering advancements for significantly improved energy productivity in IT and data center operations.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Read more about our commitment to environmental responsibility on Yodel Anecdotal.

Experience a bit of what Yahoo! employees celebrate from this look back at our 2011 Employee Events. From Lunar New Year, Gay Pride, Oktoberfest, Diwali and more ... our Yahoos embrace their individuality and cultures.

In the US, The Yahoo! homepage has the third largest audience on the web with over 100 million unique visitors and 2.3 billion total visits in January 2012 alone. Naturally, the team behind this valuable piece of online real estate has a lot to be proud of -- especially David Katch, the Director of Strategy and Innovation for the homepage. David works with the sales, editorial and product teams to help generate the tremendous amount of demand that the site enjoys. For David, joining Yahoo! was his opportunity to make a difference on what he refers to as “the world’s biggest Internet stage.” And he hasn’t been disappointed. “The name [Yahoo!] gives you access to any company, to any person, to any level at any organization,” David says. “The access, the passport that Yahoo! is, has opened up tremendous opportunities for me.”

Ever wonder what our employee events look like at Yahoo!  Check our latest video and see for yourself!

The Yahoo! Safely team is deeply committed to ensuring the online safety of Yahoo!'s 700 million users—and now they are getting a little help from their new mascot! This friendly robot is full of great advice about privacy settings, coping with online bullying and the best ways to use Yahoo! products safely. But before he starts sharing his valuable advice, he needs your help finding a name and a message!

Want to help make this friendly robot a success? From now until April 27th, enter the Name the Safely Bot Twitter contest by following @YahooSafely on Twitter and tweet:

- A name suggestion, and/or- Our new mascot’s first safety message

Don’t forget to use the hashtag #SafelyBotContest so we can track your entries. You can enter one name and one message per day.
Our judges will pick one winning name and one winning message. The winning contributors will get a Yahoo! Safely shirt, a shout-out on Twitter, and recognition on the Yahoo! Safely site.
The contest is open to U.S. residents 13 and older. If you’re under 13 but still want to put your naming skills to good use, ask a parent or guardian to help you enter. Get started now. Visit Twitter and submit your entry today!

Editors Note: Original article was posted in Yodel Anecdotal.

Today, only on Yahoo! Music, fans can enter to win exclusive VIP tickets to experience Madonna live and up close during her highly anticipated global tour.  These “in the pit” tickets are for fans only and cannot be purchased; they can only be won on Yahoo! Music. Just upload a photo of yourself with the album cover from MDNA to the Flickr group below.  Winners will be selected at random from all photos uploaded.

Enter on Flickr here: http://flickr.com/groups/MDNA

Join this Flickr group and after agreeing to the rules post a picture of yourself posed with Madonna’s new album cover from MDNA – which you can find on iTunes. Winners will be selected at random from all the photos uploaded. Winner may select a Madonna 2012 World Tour concert date/location from a pre determined list of concerts. Click on the link to the official rules for more details.

Contest begins Monday, March 26th and runs through April 23, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. ET

Return to Yahoo! Music for more exclusive content from Madonna as she prepares for her global tour.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on Yodel Anecdotal.

by Jessica Roland

This is the first of a series of profiles on Yahoo! Women in Technology members. WIT women and men come from all areas of the company and all functions. Their roles differ widely, but they have a common commitment to helping women succeed in their careers at Yahoo!.

Meet WIT member Irene Lai!
Irene is an Internal Tools Engineering Manager in SE&O's Rewire group. She heads a team consisting of User Experience Design, Front End Engineering, Technical Documentation, and Tech Support, and has been with Yahoo! for 11 years.

WIT: Irene, tell us how you came to Yahoo!.

Irene: I was at UC Berkeley studying anthropology and was recruited by Yahoo! in 2001. It’s hard to believe that was 11 years ago! I first started working in Customer Care and was there about four years, supporting Membership and Account Services. In that role, I worked closely with the Legal, Privacy, Product Management, Security, and Abuse Prevention teams. I became more involved with the Abuse Prevention engineering team and eventually moved into that group as a project manager. I spent about four years in that role, and along the way learned about software development lifecycle management and Agile methodology. That led to my next role as a program manager in Developer Tools. I started leading a small team, including Tech Support and Documentation, and later took on the engineering management role for User Experience Design and Front End Engineering for the group. It’s been a fascinating role that’s allowed me to acquire more technical depth and experience managing a team.

Over time, the Developer Tools group morphed into Rewire, which now includes service engineering, project managers and finance as well as tools. The Rewire group’s charter is to increase operational efficiencies at Yahoo! by targeting two areas: Infrastructure Rewire involves consolidating all our web servers into a few Yahoo! owned and operated energy-efficient data centers. Process Rewire involves streamlining the end-to-end deployment of hardware and software.

WIT: What do you like best about working at Yahoo!?

Irene: There are so many things I appreciate about working here. I really enjoy working with smart, talented, passionate people with a great sense of humor. I’ve had many opportunities to learn and grow as well. Yahoo! invests in employee career development, and you can see that in how my career has progressed here.

WIT: How did you get involved with Yahoo! Women in Technology, and how has it helped you?

Irene: Yahoo! WIT was founded in 2006, and I joined in 2008. I was initially attracted by their events and volunteer opportunities, such as their K-12 outreach program. I got more involved by joining the WIT committee’s Events team and organizing seminars and networking events. One thing I'm especially proud of is program managing the first Yahoo! Global Career Week, which took place in Sunnyvale, Southern California and Bangalore. The events included the first ever Yahoo! Girl Geek Dinner, which was attended by women from all over the Bay Area. It took a ton of work but was really satisfying. I then took on the WIT co-president role with Kim Capps-Tanaka in 2010 and 2011.

The most important benefits of WIT have been meeting women from all parts of Yahoo! and learning aspects of Yahoo!'s business outside of my day to day responsibilities. It's been a great opportunity to practice leadership skills and build experience in recruiting, budgeting, and strategy – all of which I’ve been able to apply to my career . Exposure to Yahoo! executives is also part of the WIT experience, as well as attending exciting external networking events, such as the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and the Professional Business Womens' Conference.

WIT: What have been your key lessons learned through the years at Yahoo!?

Irene: I'm passionate about helping people – helping them develop and get where they want to be. Fortunately Yahoo! and WIT have given me an outlet for that. I've learned (and am still learning!) many lessons here, including that your career development falls within your own hands – you need to proactively manage it.

I’ve learned an important aspect of career development is “managing up” – you need to understand what it means and apply it to your interactions with leaders. For example, when you raise a problem, you also need to present a solution. Another key part of managing up is promoting your accomplishments and especially those of your team, which ensures they get visibility and helps advance their careers.

WIT: What do you think are the keys to continued WIT success?

Irene: The keys to WIT success are providing relevant content for members, opportunities to network and make connections, and grooming the next generation of young women in technology. We’re a completely volunteer-driven organization, so we have to keep it fun, and Yahoo! has shown its commitment to investing in and supporting WIT. We need a diverse membership as well – we are all working at a Tech company, whatever our role, so we are all Women in Tech.

Thanks Irene!

Today despite a running nose and sore throat, I am here with my e-commerce team brainstorming on the exciting offers paving way for the 1st Anniversary of Yahoo!Deals.  
Hong Kong is well known to be a small city where people can easily buy anything they want within 10 minutes of walking distance. One could hardly imagine why online purchase is made possible here.
The culture and affinity for e-commerce could be traced back to 1999 when Yahoo!Hong Kong first rooted in this international Finance hub. Yahoo! here has been growing with the local community during the first decade of internet development in town including the introduction of Yahoo!Auctions by then. Yahoo! Hong Kong has therefore been a trusted environment for e-commerce with the best localization and relevance. This undoubtedly paved the way for the Yahoo! Deals.
To me, it has been eye-opening everyday discovering the huge market potential for Yahoo!Deals, the No. 1 group-buying platform in Hong Kong. There is so much fun and so much to learn which could only be possible within the trusted portal enjoying over 90% portal reach in Hong Kong.
Yahoo!Deals is NOT the first market mover in offering group buy in Hong Kong. Nonetheless, leveraging the proven experience on Yahoo!Auctions established over a decade and the over-whelming traffic for the portal, I am pleased to witness Deals growing from scratch to ranking top in user reach in just one month since its launch in June 2011. Amazing milestones kept rolling in since then. The first exclusive offer was launched successfully last August followed by the very first group buy offer partnering with HK Disneyland in September.
The daily number of offers scaled up from 12 last June to 320 on Yahoo!Deals today. The more the users indulge in the convenience brought about by Yahoo!Deals, the faster we see the trend of the hottest buy moving up from impulsive buying of Food & Beverages, Tuition Classes, Beauty items to Consumer/Household durables such as dehumidifiers and even travel packages costing USD 900 per head! Recently, we achieved yet another record high for Deals - over 5,400 pair of kids’shoes were all sold out in 3 days, this is something that could not have happened for any physical retail store as complimented by the merchant.
I have been with telecom and airline industries before joining Yahoo! Hong Kong. Although the momentum for the two industries has been robust and competitive across Asia Pacific, I find the beauty and power of the internet incomparable. This is especially true with e-commerce of Yahoo! Hong Kong. I am so proud to take part in this new wave of group buying which has changed the game for the entire e-commerce marketplace in addition to enriching the online shopping convenience. So, you see why I am empowered to give my best shot everyday.
Mark Liu,e-Commerce Director, Yahoo! Hong Kong

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” that gives employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. 

Following a successful first season of original premium Web shows targeted at women, Yahoo!, the premier digital media company, today launches the second season of its women’s slate on Yahoo! Screen. The second season includes three new shows: “Style Studio with Rebecca Minkoff” hosted by the famed fashion designer (coming May 2012), “The Yo Show on Yahoo!,” featuring entertainment news reporter Michael Yo (launching today), and a new version of “In the Dressing Room with Cat Deeley” hosted by the fashion expert and TV personality (coming spring 2012). Yahoo! has also renewed five shows from the original women’s slate including “Let’s Talk About Love” with Niecy Nash, “Reluctantly Healthy” with Judy Greer, “Ultimate Surprises” (formerly known as “Ultimate Proposal”) with Cameron Mathison, “Chow Ciao!” with Fabio Viviani, and “Blue Ribbon Hunter” with Allison Fishman – all of which originally debuted in October 2011. Morgan Spurlock’s “Failure Club,” launched in November 2011, will continue documenting its year-long project; “omg! NOW,” Yahoo!’s daily entertainment news show will continue as well. Plus, new shows will be added to the slate in the coming months.

“In the Dressing Room with Cat Deeley,” “The Yo Show on Yahoo!” and “Style Studio with Rebecca Minkoff”add to Yahoo!’s existing industry-leading video programming, which currently reaches 61 million unique visitors per month (comScore Video Metrix, February 2012). In February 2012, Yahoo! had 21 of the top 25 original online video programs*; the top 25 Web shows include all the Yahoo! women’s slate shows with “omg! NOW” as the most visited show on the Web (nearly 13 million unique visitors per month*). From October 2011 to February 2012, the women’s slate shows have been streamed over 200 million times. All of the shows in Yahoo!’s women’s slate were designed specifically for a female audience and cover a variety of lifestyle topics, such as relationships, fashion, healthy living, cooking, entertainment, and more. The entire slate of shows will continue to be promoted throughout the Yahoo! network on omg! from Yahoo!, the most visited entertainment news Website, and Yahoo! Shine, the leading Website for women’s lifestyle content.

Editors Note: Original article posted on Yodel Anecdotal.

by Jessica Roland

On March 20, Yahoo!'s Women in Technology group held its 2012 kickoff. We're a global group that, with 1100 members, is Yahoo!'s largest Employee Resource Group. We welcome Yahoo! women and men from across all company functions. Building on the successes of 2011, such as our Girl Geek dinners and partnership with the Anita Borg Institute, we enter 2012 with a great new executive sponsor, Yahoo! VP of Engineering, Cloud Services Elissa Murphy, and a full slate of planned activities. Co-presidents Kim Capps-Tanaka and Niru Anisetti opened the kickoff and introduced the keynote speakers, Tim Parsey, SVP of Design and Jessica Jensen, VP of Yahoo! Shine and Yahoo! Health.

Both speakers have a fabulous sense of humor and an easy way with the audience - it was very enjoyable and informative. We started out with some background: Tim talked about some highlights of his amazing design career, which has even included designing bobsleds for the US Olympic team, in addition to his well-known stints at Apple, Microsoft and Motorola. Jessica, whose current role puts her at the heart of creating vision, strategy and innovative content for women's initiatives, also talked about her experiences as a BCG consultant and as an entrepreneur.

Q: Why is it great for women to be in Technology today?

Tim: Industries get commoditized, so I try to always see what's next. As technology brings the power of personalization, the idea of one fit for all is fading. Yahoo! brings the power of big data to the game. This new frontier of consumerism requires empathy - listening, learning, responsiveness, inclusiveness. These qualities, which many women have in abundance, allow us to not only innovate things that enable feelings but then to elevate to meaning-based innovation, that aligns people in groups.

Jessica: During my years at BCG, I had a view into many different industries. The US technology sector today truly is a meritocracy, where the sky's the limit. Women can have a rich and varied career in technology companies - engineering, product management, marketing, finance, you name it. Color your own rainbow!

Q: Why is Yahoo! a great company for women?

Tim: Talking specifically about Design at Yahoo!: we cannot achieve our goal of radical personalization by designing in the traditional way. We need to innovate both the design context AND the concept, which requires understanding mindsets and hopes. Women have natural strengths that enable them to operate well in this new reality...and there are plenty of opportunities for them to exercise those strengths in our Design team.

Jessica: When I joined Yahoo! 3 years ago, I went through an interview process with 24 people, including lots of senior women. At a another company I considered, there were zero women in the interview process. Yahoo! is full of strong, successful women. It's important to look around the company and see if there are senior women there, women you'd like to resemble...and whether there is support for parenting, for both moms and dads. I've found Yahoo! to be such a place.

Q: What qualities have made you successful at Yahoo!

Tim: In my career, I have had to go through failure and shock and just pick myself up...these things help you empathize with others. Another key is to always think forward. I focus on next-gen design strategy and on building a work culture that allows the team to get into a "flow state".

Jessica: So much is serendipity and timing! From back when I was in college and basically made up my own degree to combine my interest in Japanese, art and history, I've known that you have to go after what you love and what excites you, focus on your strengths , and be open to serendipity.

Q: What do you do to coach and inspire women in your team?

Tim: I try to coach and inspire ALL my team , and show sensitivity to their values. In the overall business landscape, though, I do think women have not been encouraged to lead, except in imitating men, and this has led to a kind of suppression. I work to avoid this in my own teams.

Jessica: I encourage them to get a good support system. As Sheryl Sandberg has been pointing out in her recent speeches, women need partners that will meet them at least halfway on the housework and childcare front. When you have this, you can then "lean in" to your career, to show you can take on more responsibility. "Life is short but work is long" - you have to have a lifestyle that makes your pace sustainable and keeps you from burning out. And while I require top performance from all my team members, I am very flexible with where the work happens, to accommodate family needs.

Q: What's your advice to new employees on how to get things done at Yahoo!?

Tim: Create hope, focus and urgency in that order. Many people do the opposite. To get started on this myself at Yahoo!, I traveled to visit teams and customers, listened, detected excitement...and used that to get to the first step of building hope. We're also really feeling the energy from our team's new cross-functional project studio, created to bring that sense of focus and urgency to everything we do.

Jessica: Particularly for women employees, you need to make sure you speak up, that you voice your opinions. You also need to be analytically rigorous -it's not enough just to have a good idea; you must bring solid data on what the benefits are for Yahoo!. And if you're trying to fit in with a primarily male team, you don't have to be a sports expert, but you do have to learn to use humor and find pockets of shared interest to create camaraderie. It also really helps to understand different parts of the business; for example, by "job mirroring" where you spend a day with an employee in another department.

Q: What sources do you draw inspiration from?

Tim: I learn most from people, not books. I watch what's happening in politics, for lessons on how to build hope on a bigger scale. I also am inspired by the jujitsu idea of little changes that let you leverage a greater force. As a designer, I'm poised in the middle between artist and engineer. What I've found as my experience has deepened over the years is that I'm able to intuitively sense what to do, rather than having to think through step by step. I listen carefully, pick up the essence of the issue, broaden it, and then see the gaps and the potential for hope. It's a lot like my flute playing - when you have practiced enough, you stop thinking through each step and start sensing.

Jessica: Women's networking groups provide a level of professional camaraderie, feedback and partnership that is priceless. When I was based in Southern California, we had a very active BCG women alumni group. When I moved up here, there wasn't a chapter, and I missed the support so much I had to start one! It's very important to seek out networking opportunities, and WIT is a great vehicle for that at Yahoo!.

Q: How do you think about Yahoo! on the global front - what lens do you use for your global view?

Tim: As part of Yahoo!'s focus on personalization, we need to reflect the essence of different cultures around the world. We need to understand what's magical about each place. When I go to visit my India team, one thing we always do is take a motorcycle ride together, out of the city and into new and wonderful places. I get so enriched by this immersion. This is the feeling we want to bring back to our customers.

Jessica: Having studied and worked abroad, I definitely agree on the importance of a global view. I would encourage you all to get some kind of international work experience. It helps your career, and at Yahoo! it definitely helps us understand our customers better.

Thanks to Tim and Jessica for a wonderful session!

Editor: please visit our Yahoo! Women in Tech blog for the original article and more!

by Jessica Roland

Yahoo! CPG Cloud Services attracted an excellent turnout for an open-house Demos and Drinks evening on March 29, at our Sunnyvale headquarters. Pizza, beer, raffle prizes and great technology were the draw. A full crowd of both Yahoos and external guests were on hand as intro videos rolled, intermixing vignettes of product leaders and Yahoo!'s flash mob dancers.

Yahoo's technical women had a big part in the evening's success! Shobana Radhakrishnan, Yahoo! Cloud Services Director of Program Management and Engineering Excellence, welcomed the attendees to the event and introduced Elissa Murphy, VP of Cloud Services, whose team hosted this event as a showcase of the cloud technology that powers all the Yahoo! applications users know and love…and also as an event to attract new recruits to Yahoo!'s most creative and fast-paced development groups. "Enjoy yourselves tonight," Elissa concluded; "We have food, drinks - and JOBS!".

Participants were ready for a good time, as they circulated among technology stations placed around the fabulously architected URL's Café, surrounded by all the legendary trademarks of Yahoo!'s campus - the gourmet cafeteria, free-flowing espresso bar, gym and games tables. Cameron Johnson, Product Director, was showing off IntoNow on the big screen, demonstrating how it listens to the TV program you're watching, serves you up related content on your iPad, and lets you interact with friends who are watching the same program. "My team is small," Cameron said, "but we are working on a fun, exciting application that is having a lot of impact in the market. It's a great team."

Christine Ying, Senior Product Manager and Johanna Hoadley, Product Director showed us how their beautiful Livestand application turns your iPad into an easy to use, natural gesture-based media reader with over 230 great titles available. "Our developers created this application on top of Yahoo!'s innovative Cocktails technology.” We also spoke with Lie Yang, Director of Engineering for Cocktails, Yahoo!'s technology stack designed to work across all devices. Lie said, "We have ambitious goals, and we are looking for developers with high standards who share our vision." Nellian Solaiappan, a Quality Engineering Manager in Yahoo! Cloud Services, echoed the cutting edge theme. "All requests to Yahoo! from the outside world go through our Cloud Services platform. The scale at which we serve up content is incredible. We're looking for people who want to be having that kind of big impact."

Thanks to all who attended - we had a wonderful time talking and making new contacts. For more information about opportunities at Yahoo! please check out Yahoo! Careers.

Editor: please visit our Yahoo! Women in Tech blog for the original article and more!

This spring marks the fifth anniversary of Yahoo! Sports’ acquisition of the Rivals.com business. It’s a big milestone, and one I’m very proud of as the head of Rivals.com. So I want to share with you where we’ve been along the road, where the business is now, and where it’s going. Rivals.com is a subscription product that blends content and community. Our business offers a place for hard-core football and basketball recruiting fans to consume, discuss and share content and analysis about their favorite teams.

Rivals.com is a consortium of 160 local team sites, including Orangebloods.com, TheWolverine.com, Warchant.com, TideSports.com, IrishIllustrated.com and more.

This incredibly engaging mix of content and community tools for avid fans is why Yahoo! initially partnered with—and ultimately acquired—Rivals.com.

At the core of the deep slate of free and premium content we deliver to Rivals.com subscribers is our Prospect Recruiting Rankings. The ranking of the country’s best high school football & basketball players via the Rivals100, Rivals150 and Rivals250 dates back to the 2002 recruiting class and is highlighted by a decade’s worth of current and future NFL and NBA players first ranked and discovered by Rivals.com—that’s a lot of players, and the result of a lot of hard work.

Rivals.com also has the most in-depth Recruiting Database available, with more players, photos and videos of top high school prospects than any other site, once again dating back to 2002. Subscribers to Rivals.com can look back and follow the recruiting process of numerous current NFL players like Adrian Peterson, Percy Harvin or Tim Tebow.

Similar to our player rankings, we deliver historical, accurate and in-depth Team Rankings dating back to Texas’ No. 1 class with Vince Young in 2002, which won a national title. In fact, one of the things we’re so proud of is that each team ranked No. 1 in the annual Rivals Team Rankings after National Signing Day went on to win a national championship within the next few years of that ranking. Texas (ranked No. 1 in 2002), LSU (2003), USC (2004, 2005 and 2006), Florida (2007) and Alabama (2008 and 2009) won national titles in large part because of their recruiting effectiveness, and our rankings speak to that. No other site can boast such accuracy.

Exclusive video is another key Rivals.com offering, and a big draw for any football recruiting fanatic like myself. If you want to see a player such as Andrew Luck, the likely No. 1 pick in the upcoming NFL Draft, work out at a U.S. Army All American Bowl practice, a NIKE camp or the VTO Camp, Rivals.com is the place for amazing video of today’s college and NFL stars back in their high school days.

Our video is part and parcel of the huge amount of multi-media content that Rivals.com produces.As most everybody knows, Yahoo! Sports Radio launched in August 2011, and we are broadcast by 200 radio stations across the country, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Rivals.com has its own radio show six days a week: Rivals on Yahoo! Sports Radio, which is a three-hour nightly show that gives our network of 300 publishers and staff a chance to discuss recruiting and team site coverage. Each player, coach, and analyst audio interview is available online on the Rivals.com network.

I don’t mean to brag (ok, maybe a little), but it’s no secret that Rivals.com produces far more national, regional and local content than the competition. In the first two months of 2012 alone, the Rivals.com football recruiting team has produced 1,178 stories –an average of more than 18 stories per day. In that same time span, our video team has produced nearly 250 original videos, mostly writers and analysts providing commentary on certain player signings, coaching changes or spring football, in addition to the enormous volume of player highlights we’ve secured.

Rivals.com also has the distinction of being a selection partner with the U.S. Army All American Bowl, the premier football all-star game in the country, helping select the 100 players. If you’re not at the game, or don’t catch it live on NBC, Rivals.com gets exclusive access to the 700 recruits and all events so we can bring you the most in-depth coverage. Our team produced 250 editorial pieces and 120 original videos over a seven-day stretch this past January’s event (combined and all-star game).

Looking ahead, in the next two weeks, I will be proudly announcing the first-of-its-kind Rivals-branded Football Camp, the premiere camp and combine focusing on the Rivals100 and Five-Star recruits. I hope you’ll stay tuned for the announcement.

With the content value of this deep slate of offerings and its pay wall business model, Rivals.com is re-shaping the sports “premium content” business. Rivals.com has proven to be an incredibly unique offering for Yahoo! that no competitor has replicated and we continue to grow our paying audience year over year—and I am honored to be managing a fantastic group of professionals.

Thanks,
Eric Winter

Senior Director, Sports & Entertainment

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” on Yodel Anecdotal that gives employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. Feel like yodeling your own? Post your Yahoo! story on your social networks using the hashtag #myYahoostory.

Our VP of Entertainment gives a sneak peek at the live premiere on Monday, March 12.

We’d be lying if we said our latest “Hunger Games” promotion isn’t kind of a big deal. The best-selling-book-turned-movie, which premieres today, is slated to be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year—and Yahoo! Movies is at the forefront, partnering with Lionsgate studio to provide exclusive experiences for fans. The excitement began the week of the Super Bowl with an exclusive debut of the “The Hunger Games” trailer, and at 5:30 p.m. (Pacific) today Yahoo! Movies will livestream the red carpet premiere in Los Angeles. Yahoo Sibyl Goldman, VP of Entertainment, called us from Santa Monica to give us a sneak peek at what we can expect from the big event. 

What made us choose “The Hunger Games?”
People are super excited about the movie. It’s seen as the next hot movie franchise, following in the recent footsteps of “Twilight,” which we also partnered on. It has such a wide fan base, from the young adults for whom the books were originally written to adults and everyone else. The film has a really broad appeal. It tackles a lot of the social and political issues, as the film is set in a grim future state, where kids fight for their lives. Fans are really connected to this story, and we’re just super excited about being part of this movie franchise from the start.

How would you compare this program to the one we did with the blockbuster “Twilight?”
It’s different. “Twilight” is a mature franchise, where there were fans who were camped out at the premier and already really plugged into things. This is the first movie in the “Hunger Games” franchise. It’s a fun place to because it’s about generating that excitement, as people get to know these characters and the actors behind them. So it’s different from “Twilight,” but equally as exciting for us. It’s also a great early kick-off to the summer movie season, which officially starts May 1. But “The Hunger Games” is already going to be one of the biggest movies of the year.

What kind of brand opportunities does this open for us?
There are two great things about this. First, we get to put the Yahoo! brand and Yahoo! fans as close as they can possibly get to the excitement of a huge movie franchise. So regardless of where you are, you can feel like you’re at the premiere— you can see the stars and get into the whole spirit of it. We break down the velvet rope so that fans can access what’s going on in real time.

And, we will have some of our talent hosting on the red carpet. So it gives us a chance to get our talent out and get them exposure and get this video experience out to fans everywhere.

We’ve noticed that Yahoo! is starting to do a lot of these live events. What is our goal in that?
As the premier digital media company, we know that it’s important for us to be bringing—exclusively and in real-time—content that our fans can’t get anywhere else. We do a great job with exclusives around things like movie trailers, but we’re also bringing live events to our fans—things they can’t get anywhere else like the comedy show with Bill Maher. Or like the Independent Spirit Awards, red carpet experiences that they can’t get anywhere else. Or like the Clinton Concert, music experiences they can’t get anywhere else. We are creating that access and creating that buzz. And for the fan bases that are, say, really into movies or entertainment we are providing the hottest thing out there right now. We are making sure that the people who love movies are getting a taste of the hottest things live and in real-time.

What kind of legacy are we starting to build with these live events?
I think we’re starting to build it now. We started it with the Clinton Foundation Concert in October—that was really getting it off and getting deeper into these live experiences. We did Clinton, then we did the “Twilight” premiere, then we did the Bill Maher live show, then we did the Independent Spirit Awards for the Oscars—so all together, that’s five with “Hunger Games.”

And the thing is, we always deliver a really high-quality experience. The Bill Maher event was so polished it could have been on any TV network. We bring the polish, and we bring the talent—both our own hosts and other top talent like Bill Maher and like the musicians on the Clinton concert.

The piece we’re still working on is establishing that we are the place to come for this content and creating a cadence where people know a big event is coming and say, “There is probably something really cool that I can see on Yahoo! that is something I can only get there.”

So, if you look ahead at our programming schedule, you can see that we are really committed to creating a steady, reliable cadence of tune-in events. That’s something people will see over the next couple of months.

So, we should expect Yahoo! to do more live events like these?
You can definitely say there will continue to be music events, like the Clinton Concert. We are very close on additional music opportunities. I know that the plan for content is to do quarterly events like Bill Maher. So more comedy, more music, more red carpet. We’ll do more, and we’ll do them more regularly, to really drive that tune-in awareness and that tune-in habit for our audiences.

by Jessica Roland

Yahoo! Women in Tech gals were very pleased to be invited to Applied Materials' annual Women's Professional Development Network external event on the evening of March 1st. What a classy soiree! It was held at the beautiful San Jose Museum of Art, and the theme was, naturally, Network and Artwork! In addition to excellent food, drink and prizes, we were treated to talks by the museum's executive director, as well as the curator of the current exhibit: This Kind of Bird Flies Backward: Paintings by Joan Brown. After the introductory talks, we were able to wander the exhibits, admiring this beloved local artist's work. Joan Brown started painting in the '60s, and her abstract expressionist themes were proto-feminist, reflecting how she viewed herself and her role as a woman, a mother, a "cosmic nurse", a person seeking inner evolution. Here's a link to the exhibit website. Hurry and look, because the exhibit is almost over! This was a really excellent networking event. It was a pleasure to meet our Applied Materials sisters, their Community Outreach team, and their other guests. We're looking forward to continuing the connection!

Original post from the Yahoo! Women in Tech Blog here.