Yahoo! Screen hosted a live show with Bill Maher called Crazy Stupid Politics on February 23rd!  If you missed out, you can still watch it here.

We are pleased the White House is holding a privacy event today. It is encouraging to see such high level attention from the Administration as it helpfully looks to elevate the U.S. voice and perspective within the broader global discussion of privacy frameworks. It is critically important that modern privacy protection frameworks recognize that innovation in our global information economy will require thoughtful and responsible collection and use of data. It is also critical that self-regulatory structure play a large and growing role within these frameworks.

Let’s focus on self-regulation for a moment. Industry has made incredible strides in just a few years – implementing a code to give users contextual notice and controls over online behavioral advertising. This effort requires advertisers, publishers, ad networks and many other players to take responsibility and to accept a role in presenting consumers with an Ad Choices icon which, when clicked, tells them more about what is going on behind the scenes in ad delivery and gives them an opportunity to opt out of the use of their data for this kind of customized advertising. With a single click, the opt-out can apply to the vast majority of systems serving such ads today. No more need to opt out from every website individually or ad serving entity. This is a huge improvement for consumers uncomfortable with this practice. These icons are now nearly ubiquitous across the web, and certainly across Yahoo.com.
But industry players did not stop there. We have clearly and demonstrably answered the call from policymakers to bring more certainty to an understanding of the use of Do Not Track technology while providing consumers the services and innovation they expect and demand.
The Digital Advertising Alliance has introduced a new code on the collection and use of Multisite Data which addresses these issues. This code has strict prohibitions on the collection, use or transfer of such data to determine adverse terms or ineligibility for employment, credit, housing or insurance. It further touches on sensitive data including the personal information of children, health records, and financial account records. It acknowledges there are some operational or systems management purposes for which companies will always need to collect data like fraud prevention, billing, or consumer safety. Yahoo! is proud to have been a key advocate for many of the provisions of this new code. Once again, industry’s proactive efforts on privacy have raised the bar.
As industry moves forward to address new issues in the marketplace through codes of practice, consumers benefit from timely implementation of broad-based changes that can be readily enforced by the FTC. We are gratified to see Administration and FTC statements embracing these self-regulatory efforts as an important step in protecting consumers’ privacy online, which signals that we are on the right track. While there is a lot to be worked out and the devil is always in the details, we appreciate the work they’ve done and the recognition that self-regulation has been working.
We understand the online landscape is constantly evolving. As an innovator in the online space, Yahoo! will continue to be at the forefront of industry best practices and self-regulatory initiatives. It is the best and quickest way to introduce protections into the marketplace without sacrificing innovation and value creation for consumers. We commend the Administration for its understanding that such codes are a key ingredient in a successful privacy framework for the information age. Yahoo! will continue to be at the very front of efforts to give consumers the transparency and choices they want while continuing to create innovative, free products every day.
Leslie Dunlap,VP, Privacy, Policy and Trust at Yahoo!

Editors Note: Article originally posted on the Yodel Anecdotal blog.

All TV is better with IntoNow from Yahoo!. Almost three million people are regularly using IntoNow as their second screen experience of choice when watching TV, whether it’s sports, their favorite reality shows, dramas or comedies. But if there’s one type of television experience that’s really transformed with a second screen app, it’s big live events, like the Super Bowl, Grammy’s or this weekend’s Oscar’s broadcast.
That’s why we’ve cooked up some special experiences on IntoNow for this weekend’s big show. And the festivities, like the event itself, start long before the opening credits. You’ll be able to:

• Rate the looks of everyone as they head down the red carpet with a thumbs up or thumbs down;
• Get information about nominees and synchronized polls about nominees/categories;
• Pick the winners in each category as the nominees are introduced and compare your picks against friends and the Academy;
• And as always on IntoNow, connect with friends in real-time conversations – why gossip after the fact when you can do it live!

Here's what it will look like on Sunday:
So if you don’t have IntoNow yet, you can download the app for free here for iOS (iPad and iPhone) and here if you have an Android phone.
Careers will be made on Sunday night. Enjoy the show.

Imagine being able to help someone follow their passion and bring their dreams to life. It feels great in your imagination, doesn't it?

It does in reality, too. I can tell you this firsthand, because it's what Yahoo! Small Business gets to do every day for our customers.
As I write this, we're in the midst of one of the busiest and most exciting times of the year for many of these folks: the holiday shopping season. Whether you’re a Merchant Solutions customer selling online using our store platform, or you’re a Web Hosting customer with a bricks-and-mortar retail business using your online presence to expand your customer reach, this time of year is crucial.
We know this, and delivering products, resources, and experiences designed to help our customers grow their businesses and be successful during the holidays and throughout the year is what we do year-round. For me, one of the best parts of this is knowing who will use what we deliver. In many cases, I mean faces and names, and not just business names. Something that makes Yahoo! Small Business unique is the face-time we get with our customers—not only at industry conferences like Internet Retailer, but also at our very own Yahoo! Merchant Summit.
Talking to our customers is my favorite part of the Summit. Some have businesses that have been life-changing not only for them, but also for their customers. Here's just one example: After her son was diagnosed with autism, one of our customers turned her experience finding ways to help him communicate into what she calls the best job she's ever had. She created National Autism Resources, a site where parents and teachers can find easy-to-understand information along with affordable autism teaching materials and products that can help children on the autism spectrum. If you’d like to hear more of her story, you can watch this video. We get a lot of direct feedback from our customers at the Summit and through other channels about what they need to thrive and how we can delight them, and we incorporate what we learn into the products we launch. I’m lucky enough to be part of all the action, and am excited to tell you about a few of the products and features that Yahoo! has launched for our small business customers in recent months:

• For our Merchant Solutions customers, we launched a customer registration system that uses social login, where customers can sign in using their credentials from Yahoo!, Google, and AOL (we plan to add Facebook and PayPal to this list in the first part of 2012). Our system also allows customers to save their credit and debit card information. This is designed to make checkout faster and easier for shoppers, which can help to increase sales. The ability for shoppers to save card information is also a feature that most hosted competitors don't offer.
• Also for Merchant Solutions, we launched a new ecommerce site search that lets us leverage our Yahoo! Search technology. The new site search provides a better, more engaging search experience, allowing shoppers to add items to their carts from the search results page, refine search results with filters, search only specific product categories, and more.
• For our Web Hosting customers, we added a number of great new template designs to Yahoo! Site Solution, which makes it easy to design a professional-looking web site with little or no web design experience. We've also launched widgets that help customers customize their pages by inserting badges, banners, and HTML for custom widgets.
  

The dreams we help our customers achieve is what inspires me every day. It’s truly rewarding to hear our customers’ stories and to be able to deliver products that set them up for success, so they can continue to make their dreams real.

Jennifer FarwellSr. Manager, Product ContentYahoo! Small Business

Editors Note: Article was originally posted January 10th on our Yodel Anecdotal Blog.

An in-depth look at The Signal, the Yahoo! News prediction blog.

Editor’s note: Yahoos are known for producing great work in a pinch. But do you ever wonder what it takes to make the impossible possible? In our new behind-the-scenes series, we take a look at the people and teams for whom no obstacle is too big. This time we’re taking a look at The Signal, a Yahoo! News predictions blog featuring real-time forecasts and sentiment on politics, economics, and more. Yahoo! Economist David Rothschild and Yahoo! Principal Research Scientist David Pennock keep readers up-to-date on the very latest in the 2012 race to the White House.  
We interviewed David Rothschild to learn more about the work he and David Pennock do for The Signal. This Friday, February 17, follow @YahooInc on Twitter for a special interview with @pennockd and @DavMicRot at 1:30 p.m. (Pacific).
Q: The Signal has been referred to as the “mother of all political prediction engines.” What does your team do that’s different from the standard polls we hear about?

A: Standard polls provide very useful raw data points for predicting elections, but are not themselves predictions. Polls ask people how they would vote if an election were held that day. But, we actually know a lot about how the world will change between the poll and Election Day. First, there are known biases between polls and outcomes such as the anti-incumbency bias; polls for incumbents are systemically lower than how incumbents perform on Election Day. When we utilize just polls to create a prediction that is just one of a few biases we can address. Second, we know things like how much money the candidates have left; a candidate with access to a lot more money should be expected to shift voters his/her way before Election Day. We know about scandals and unique policy positions that may not have trickled down to the average voter yet.

Our models incorporate this extra information by utilizing—along with polls—prediction markets, fundamental models, and Yahoo! Games/polls. Think of a prediction market as a stock exchange where people trade candidates instead of companies. Prediction markets incorporate polling data, but also disaggregate data about the candidates and the campaign; further, it does it in real-time. Fundamental models use information such as past election results, economic indicators, ideological indicators and biographical information about the candidates. They are remarkably accurate at predicting elections, even though we create the forecast with data that is available several months prior to the election. Yahoo! Games/polls are new interactive games that will harness the information of Yahoo! users to further refine our predictions.

Combined, our predictions stand out for several reasons. First, they are the most accurate prediction available, with the wealth of information we utilize. Second, they are going to be updating in real-time. Third, they are versatile covering many topics and displaying many different applicable predictions on the same events. Finally, they are going to be displayed in an easy to understand way with data visualizations.

Q: How long has it taken you to perfect The Signal? In other words, how long has it been from concept to now?

A: I pitched The Signal to Yahoo! News during my first week at Yahoo! this summer. David Pennock and I began writing articles on the data about three months after I arrived at Yahoo! and we launched The Signal about five months after I arrived at Yahoo!. We have been refining and adding to it ever since then

Yet, in actuality, The Signal is an outgrowth of the work that David Pennock and I have been doing for years. The models and theories that form the basis of the project have been our life’s work.

Q: Now that football season is over, do you think people will be addicted to Fantasy Politics just like they have been to Fantasy Football?

A: Yes. The game we are developing from the Predictalot platform is going to have some really exciting hooks. There will be two distinct levels one for casual users and one for hard core users. Both will allow people to gain some ownership in the election which we hope to lead to even more engagement in the campaigns. First, since our games are all tied to real-time action, users will be able to see their portfolios move in real-time, during debates, after major gaffes and scandals, and during Election Day. Second, there will be interesting contrasts that users will be able to debate about, like “Will Obama win Florida?” or “Will Obama win Florida and Ohio?” or “Will Obama win Florida if the unemployment rate is above 8 percent?” Third, our unique scoring structure will make it easy to play both head-to-head with your buddies, in small groups, or against a universal scoreboard. Whatever is most exciting to the user.

Since you mentioned Fantasy Sports, we are very excited that we have been able to converse regularly with the folks at Fantasy Sports while we build our Fantasy Politics game. What an amazing asset it is for us to get advice from the leaders in the industry. We’re working to see how we can integrate some of their expertise in our work moving forward.

Q: Who do you think will win the Republican nomination, and further, who will be our next president?

A: As of February 7 at 3:47 PM ET Mitt Romney is 72.8 percent likely to be the Republican nominee and Barack Obama is 61.5 percent likely to win reelection. Further, you did not ask, but I think the Philadelphia Phillies are 15.5 percent likely to win the World Series, with the New York Yankees close behind at 12.8 percent.

Q: What other events does the Yahoo! Predict team work on that Yahoos may not know about?

A: We are starting on the major political elections but we will be expanding rapidly into other events. We have already spoken about sports in several columns (and the previous question). We are adding economic indicators and financial indicators soon. And, to answer the most pertinent question, The Artist is 83.5 percent likely to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, which I really enjoyed, so I recommend you see it before the awards show!

Q: What inspires you to do your best work? Or, more generally, what inspires the team?

A: We have two intertwined goals: become a meaningful property for Yahoo! and utilize Yahoo! Signal for research.

First, Yahoo! Signal is an amazing way to showcase the work many talented people in Yahoo! Labs and Yahoo! News who are interested in bringing objective data analysis to our 700 million users. We have some of the top machine learning computer science PhDs in the world working on new backend algorithms for our Fantasy Politics. We have leading data mining computer scientists PhDs working on new ways to utilize social data. We have sociologist PhDs thinking about what goes viral and marketing, psychologist, and computer scientist PhDs thinking about design and how people understand probability. We have economist PhDs working on prediction models. The list goes on, but it is tied together with excellent Yahoo! News editors who help us communicate cutting edge research to the general Yahoo! audience.

And, it’s working! Our traffic over the first few months has been strong. Our real-time interest index, sentiment index, and predictions are just coming online now. We expect that that will not only drive readers, but engaged readers, who will come back often during major events. 

Second, Yahoo! Signal is a functioning laboratory for Yahoo! Labs. It allows us to run field experiments on cutting edge polls and prediction games. These allow our users to not only engage themselves, but actually advance our academic work in these fields. Further, we are always looking for new tools to engage our users, new ways to get them to understand and test Yahoo!’s cutting edge work.

by Jessica Roland

Yahoos were out in force at the Feb 13 TechWomen briefing, held at Microsoft's Mountain View facility, after a similar session earlier in the day in San Francisco. TechWomen is a program sponsored by the US Department of State, in conjunction with the Institute for International Education and the Anita Borg Institute. Its purpose is to bring talented technical women from the Middle East and North Africa regions to the US for a life-changing professional and cultural mentoring experience.

The goal of the TechWomen briefing was to inform potential Silicon Valley mentors about the benefits of the experience and how to apply. The briefing event began with a stellar line-up of officials from the Department of State and IIE, and a personal video plea for involvement from Hillary Clinton. The main event was a panel discussion led by Sheila Casey of the State Department, with former mentor panelists from NetApp, Juniper Networks, startup Survivify, and our own Yahoo Fabiola Addamo, who was a cultural mentor last year. As Fabi says: "From my own experience as an immigrant, coming to this country with a bagful of dreams, I wanted to share (with mentees) that here it is possible to create your career."
There are 1500 potential mentees currently completing applications for the program, in 8 MENA countries. They will go through a rigorous selection process with expert panels and their local US embassies, getting checked on their educational and professional background, their communication skills (via essays) and whether they are "giving back" to their communities and cultures. 84 women out of the 1500 will be selected, and then paired with local mentors for a transformational 5-week program of professional projects and cultural immersion, starting September 10. The mentees have generally moved heaven and earth, in cultures where women's paths may be limited, to be able to take time from their jobs, their startups, their theses, their spouses and children to be part of this experience. They are carefully matched with the most compatible mentors in order to create the most fruitful and productive mentor-mentee learning partnerships.

Yahoo had 5 mentor participants in 2011, and one mentee, Rayya Abu Ghosh, a Yahoo! employee in Jordan. Rayya says: " TechWomen gave me great exposure to people, references and tools to use in my career. TechWomen was explosively filled with inspiration and positive energy that spread from the mentors and organizers to the mentees and right back!... (It's a) great cultural exchange... where Arab women meet American women from different cultural backgrounds and share each others' personal beliefs and traditions".

What do the mentors get out of the program? That was an easy question for the panelists, who universally spoke of the mentee's contagious energy and desire to learn, their camaraderie, their amazement at our freedoms and variety of lifestyles. Because they are paired with these high-profile mentees, the mentors also benefitted from exceptional networking opportunities both within and outside their companies. On a larger scale, our country benefits from the people-to-people relationships created by the program, which helps inspire the mentees to be professional pioneers in their home countries and trailblaze a brighter future for women everywhere.

If you are interested in becoming a mentor, please visit the TechWomen website to learn more.

Editors note: Blog post originally posted in the WIT blog here.

Quoted from the SF Chronicle article:

Two years ago, Blake Irving had more time to spend mornings surfing on the Malibu coast. That was before Yahoo's then-Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz lured him back into the corporate world, as chief product officer of the Sunnyvale company.

Now the industry veteran stands at the center of the efforts to turn around the struggling Internet pioneer.

For months, the public chatter surrounding Yahoo has focused on executive turnover and exploration of its "strategic options." Those themes continued last week with the departure of four more board members - following Bartz and co-founder Jerry Yang out the door - and the emergence of details about how the company might unload its lucrative stakes in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan.

But the real war in the technology space begins and ends with products. Without new ways of drawing users and advertisers, the rest won't add up to much.

That's where Irving comes in. He helped Microsoft build its vast online operations as vice president of the software giant's Windows Live Platform group, before becoming a business professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu.

In an interview with The Chronicle, he laid out his vision for creating "deeply personal digital experiences" that deliver on five points: personal relevance through science and data; premium user experiences; a mobile-first mind-set; social features that better resemble how we interact in the real world; and an "ecosystem" that allows other companies to work within Yahoo's tools...

To read the entire article click here.
To hear what Blake has to say about Livestand and Living Ads click here.

Visualizing How Yahoo! Serves Up 13,000,000 Unique Story Combinations, Every Single Day
Ever wondered how Yahoo! decides which stories to put on its front page each day? Or why your Red Sox team scores or daily omg! fix usually appears up front?
That’s because the Yahoo! page you see each time you visit yahoo.com is likely different than the person sitting next to you. In fact, more than 13,000,000 personalized story combinations are delivered every day on the Today Module (the little box at the top of our homepage displaying featured stories), and it happens within milliseconds of you visiting our site. The minute you log into your Yahoo! account, personalization goes a whole level deeper.
We just unveiled an innovative way to visualize the magic that makes it all work, and what it means for you.
Go ahead and click here to check it out. The tool is populated in near real-time, so you can discover what the most popular story is, right now. For instance, you might be interested to learn that today more than 12 million people have seen an article on the $26 billion mortgage foreclosure deal reached between the U.S. government and leading banks. Or that 92 million people saw a video on a test driver’s close call with a deer while filming a commercial.

Yahoo! creates uniquely meaningful experiences for every single person, at this scale. How? It’s simple, really. We do it with deep science and great engineering.
The Magic Behind It: C.O.R.E.
Initially developed within Yahoo! Labs, the award winning science and research group within Yahoo!, C.O.R.E. (Content Optimization and Relevance Engine) is an innovative suite of technologies that allows us to feature the stories most likely to be interesting to you.
Today, C.O.R.E. powers content on many Yahoo! properties, including Yahoo! News and the Today Module. There, editors write and gather the most important and engaging stories of the day, and C.O.R.E. determines how stories should be ordered, dependent on each user. Similarly, C.O.R.E. figures out which story categories (i.e. technology, health, finance, or entertainment) should be displayed prominently on the page to help deepen engagement for each viewer.
What’s unique here is not just the innovative C.O.R.E. algorithms that crunch this amount of data all day, every day - but that it’s also the perfect marriage of deep science and a world-class editorial team.
Editors use C.O.R.E. and their editorial judgment to ensure that important stories are front and center. For example, Yahoo! editors made sure that the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death was on everyone’s page the moment the news broke. An algorithm couldn’t have done that.
So how does C.O.R.E actually work?
C.O.R.E. measures how often users click on stories overall and within different segments of the population. In just a few visits to yahoo.com, you’ll start to see tailored content appear just for you. And the more time you spend, the better it gets.
Since C.O.R.E. was implemented in 2008, people click on the Today Module four times more often than they used to – in fact, more than 1 billion times per month! To put that in context, every eight minutes C.O.R.E. registers more clicks on the Yahoo! homepage than there are words in the entire English language.
Rather than list out the millions of possible combinations, we created an interactive visualization that allows you to experiment with C.O.R.E. You can explore the day’s most popular stories or put yourself in someone else’s shoes and see Yahoo! through their eyes.
Go behind the scenes and drill into the data that powers the personal content experiences of 700 million users here: http://visualize.yahoo.com/core
Steven Lyons,Sr. Product Manager, C.O.R.E.

Calling all internationally-minded Tech gals! You can be a life-changing mentor in the US State Department’s TechWomen program.  Please join Yahoo! and other global tech firms at the information session on Monday February 13. Details here: http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/wit/posts/2012/02/global-gals-techwomen-needs-you/. RSVP by Feb 9!

by fabiolaa

Few women know their true worth. Their potential for power, their upstanding place in society. But for a few days, in Egypt-- a place of current revolution -- women decided to speak up. Ebele Okobi opened up the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Summit on Women and Social /Digital Media in Cairo with a powerful statement – “A determined woman is a force of nature.” These simple, yet eloquent words touched me deeply. It is funny how emotion and fact can move women to action. That is just the sort of character trait that I found in the women I met in Cairo. The summit displayed a carousel of progressive voices. Women from across the globe (Egypt, Middle East, North Africa, the U.S., Europe) gathered and spoke about human rights/social justice activism, blogging, journalism, entrepreneurship, safety online, and shared views on how to use technology and media platforms to support virtual communication without borders. The speakers had different backgrounds and stories, but the audience could clearly map a common denominator, that is the questions raised out loud to make everyone think critically.

• What is a woman? What is your own definition?
• Should we move away from the false fear driven equation women=loss of honor in society?
• What about transforming fears into a renewed energy for women empowerment and adopting a changed perspective in everyday life?
• What about women who bring honor to society and win a Nobel peace prize?
• What about women who understand who they are and are driven by motivation and strong will?

The summit moved from panel to panel and I kept hearing the same message over and over, “Women need organizational structure” and the question, “What triggers a paradigm shift in many women’s lives?”
Here is my summary in 3 steps:

1. Understanding who you are and what inspires you.
2. Aligning with other like- minded women.3. Connecting without borders and standing for each other according to your own comfort level (front line or behind the scene).
There was no shame during the summit, women felt free to express themselves: public female figures (and not) shared their dreams and spoke out loud their revolutionary minds. Can just having a voice beat fear? Yes! Fearful people usually hide behind other‘s widely accepted ideas. I listened to Manal Al-Sharif, a professional Saudi woman, who is leading the campaign to support women’s drivers and it just hit me, how is it possible that some women in 2012 have limited freedom of movement? I said to myself stop arguing with reality and accept it; it is what it is and only action can make a change. Manal acted and she was jailed for 9 days. She gained my respect for acting upon her belief. She helped me believe that Facebook campaigns, youtube videos, social and media platforms are the foundations we can use to support the global virtual alignment between women involved in social justice and human rights causes.
The Internet is virtual power. The Egyptians are a great example of how to use the internet to gather like-minded people and ideas, and make a real impact on issues that oppress their people. Women are powerful because we are a main voice of society. Ideas and modern minds will continue to expand as long as we keep sharing our realities, even if we risk punishment and peril. Experience sharing is infectious because it creates a sense of belonging in other women’s minds around the globe – if facts and emotion combine, we cannot shake the pain of truth. I am convinced that creating awareness and sharing stories must be a duty for all women without regard for geographical borders.

I participated myself as speaker in the last panel “What’s next” and I conveyed 3 important messages:

• Who I am.
• Why I was in Cairo.
• My dream for the future.

I ask you: what is really next? 
I have decided: 
Next is to continue a respectful conversation with an audience made of men and women; Next is creating new mentorship programs while growing existing ones (see Techwomen); Next is breaking away from the concept of communication based on physical vicinity; Next is spreading art among youth as powerful communication tool; Next is Yahoo! leading discussions and creating action items from this Cairo summit.
I believe that the internet, women, and curiosity are key ingredients to an explosive but peaceful change in society!

Editors Note: Click here for the original post on the WIT blog.

There's a lot Yahoo! is bringing you for the Super Bowl!

Check out what's up over at the Yodel Anecdotal Blog...

"In addition to our award-winning sports reporting, Yahoo! is going to be all over Super Bowl XLVI with insider access to one of the hottest events of the year. Here’s a look at everything we’ve got going on before, during, and after the game:

Bud Light Hotel Super Bowl concert broadcast live on Yahoo!: The night before the Super Bowl, Bud Light will host a special concert featuring 50 Cent, Lil Jon, and Pitbull that will be broadcast live only on omg! From Yahoo!. The concert can be seen on both omg! From Yahoo! and Yahoo! Screen, beginning at 10 pm EST on Saturday, February 4th.
Daily coverage: omg! From Yahoo! and Yahoo! Sports will feature daily coverage from the Bud Light Hotel, including “blue-carpet” celebrity interviews, celebrity predictions, an omg! photo gallery collection, and coverage of all the weekend’s parties..."  for full article click here.

Also, IntoNow is featuring some amazing content before and during the game!

You'll be able to rate the commercials during the game AND a chance to win Pepsi MAX for life!  Find out how here, but hurry, you need to download the app and be ready to go by the NFL Honors award show, which is being hosted by Alec Baldwin and will air on Saturday, February 4 at 9:00 PM EST on NBC.

What are you waiting for, it's almost game day!  

Ever wonder what our employees in Europe are doing or why they love working for Yahoo! ?  Check out some of the new videos they posted in their Our People section!

James Wildman, MD VP Sales, UK & IrelandRosni Mistry, Y! Financial AnalystWarren, Y! Editorial Manager
Steve, Y! Head of Media Buying, Direct Response
We've also got profiles of HR and other Marketing Yahoos so hurry over to our EMEA career sites and learn more about our global company!

NATPE award honors Yahoo! for leadership in the Digital category.

Last night, Yahoo! was recognized at the NATPE 2012 conference in Miami, Florida with a Digital Luminary Award for our leadership in the Digital Category for the commitment and investment in the creation and distribution of online content. Yahoo!’s Jason Dimberg, Senior Director and Head of Video Programming, accepted the award on Yahoo!’s behalf at the award presentation.

NATPE||Content First is a global, nonprofit organization committed to serving as a catalyst for the content revolution, operating and managing the only U.S.-based global content marketplace. The Digital Luminary Awards are based on six categories and the awards honor the innovative people and companies who act as catalysts in the content revolution.

“Each year, digital media continues to redefine itself and mature in terms of content, brand integration and talent,” remarked NATPE||Content First CEO Rick Feldman. “NATPE is proud to recognize the 2012 Digital Luminary Awards honorees as they lead the charge in uniting the world of media in a truly exciting way.”Yahoo! wins for ability to deliver premium content experiences
Yahoo!’s win in this category comes from our ability to deliver premium content experiences across screens at scale. In particular for our longtime commitment to original video programming with nine out of the top 10 original video shows online and the most successful online show in history, Primetime in No Time, boasting over half a billion streams. Yahoo!’s original programming reaches more than 26 million unique visitors per month producing up to 30 original programs per month.
Most recently, Yahoo! announced a partnership with Tom Hanks/Gary Goetzman’s Playtone, along with Reliance Entertainment, to team up to launch “Electric City,” an original scripted animated sci-fi series that offers a tantalizing, yet startling look into the future of civilization. Yahoo! also recently announced the Yahoo! Comedy Channel and Yahoo! Women’s Slate and launched Blindsided on Yahoo! Sports.
Also at NATPE was a keynote featuring a conversation with Yahoo! executive VP of Americas Ross Levinsohn and News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller. Additional Yahoo!’s represented Yahoo! on panels as well including Andrew Snyder, VP Content Solution Sales on Content, Context and Culture and Toby McKenna, Senior Director, Property Sales Development on A New Kind of Network.

The content team for Fantasy Sports scored several key awards in 2011.

In two weeks, the NFL’s pinnacle event, the Super Bowl, will take place in Indianapolis. With Yahoos gearing up for the big game, it’s the perfect time to recognize the key contributors who made this year’s fantasy season one of Yahoo!’s best.

Kicking off, our Fantasy Football product continued to set the industry standard in reliability, usability and overall membership. This year, it surpassed five million users, up roughly 10% from 2010.

Two-time Emmy nominated webcast, “Fantasy Football Live,” dispensed timely fantasy advice/information to tens of thousands of owners every NFL Sunday. Wrapping its sixth season, it’s the first and longest running live online fantasy program.

Awards All Around For Fantasy Content Team

2011 also marked several individual achievements for writers on the Fantasy content team.

Managing editor Brandon Funston, one of the true pioneers of the virtual sports industry, was inducted into the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, pigskin prognosticator Scott Pianowksi was named the industry’s most accurate Fantasy Football expert according to Fantasy Pros. Scott’s invaluable start-sit advice steered many Yahoo! players in the right direction each week.

Additionally, Andy Behrens, caretaker of our very popular Roto Arcade blog, was nominated by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA) for Best Baseball Print Article. Andy’s stellar Fantasy advice also helped fight a very real problem: hunger. His first place finish in Fantasy Pros’ "Beat the Expert" competition raised $1,000 for the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Brad Evans also earned accolades from the FSWA. For the second time in three years, he was nominated for Fantasy Football Writer of the Year, only the second person in industry history to be a finalist twice in the category. He was also nominated for College Sports Writer of the Year for the third consecutive season. Brad took home the trophy in the category the previous two years. If he wins this time around, he would become only the third person in industry history to take home honors, for any award, three years in a row.

Finally, on the hardwood, Roto Arcade blogger Justin Phan also earned a FSWA nomination. His for Basketball Writer of the Year.

Fabulous work, guys.

The 2011 All-Fantasy Squad

Of course, their success could not have been possible if not for the production of real-life players on the field. To honor the warriors of the virtual gridiron, here is the team’s All-Fantasy squad for 2011:

QB: Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay
RB: LeSean McCoy, Philadelphia
RB: Ray Rice, Baltimore
WR: Calvin Johnson, Detroit
WR: Jordy Nelson, Green Bay
WR: Wes Welker, New England
TE: Rob Gronkowski, New England
K: David Akers, San Francisco
DEF: Chicago Bears
MVP: Aaron Rodgers
Rookie of the Year: Cam Newton, Carolina

Predictions

Lastly, it’s only right to hear each of our intrepid forecasters’ predictions for Super Bowl XLVI. Their picks:

Brandon Funston: Patriots 30, 49ers 20
Brad Evans: Giants 31, Patriots 28
Andy Behrens: 49ers 24, Ravens 20
Scott Pianowski: Patriots 31, Giants 27

Enjoy the wings, Madonna and, of course, the hard-hitting action. And be sure to raise a pint for the greatest Fantasy team on the planet.