Heath Clarke, the CEO of Local.com, explained how it makes sense for one search engine to help another.  “Yahoo’s considerable base of high quality local advertisers complements Local.com’s highly relevant search results,” he said in a statement.  “The result is even more relevant content that helps visitors to Local.com and our network of local publishers find the businesses and services they are looking for.”

Yahoo’s Hilary Schneider covered the reverse outlook by adding, “As we continue to grow our advertising marketplace, we’re excited to renew our relationship with Local.com as one of our trusted partners within the Yahoo! Publisher Network.  Local.com’s relevant audience effectively extends our advertisers’ reach, providing them with increased local and vertical targeting opportunities across a wide range of categories.”

Schneider, in case you don’t remember, greatly benefited from last week’s reorganization at Yahoo.  Her new title is Executive Vice President of the Global Partnership Solutions Division – pretty snazzy, huh?  This type of situation is not new to Schneider, however; she gave a similar comment just last month when Philly.com joined Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium.

Indeed, it’s a bit of business as usual for both companies.  “This is too small to have any impact on Yahoo! shares,” wrote 24/7 Wall St.’s Jon C. Ogg, “but Local.Com shares are up 14% to $6.77 in pre-market trading.  As a reminder, this is one of the microcap web stocks that often sees large price swings on days when it has news.”

Let’s face it, even the news of Yahoo’s latest reorganization just isn’t that compelling. They won’t be real interesting until the next earnings announcement.

So instead of searching for search, let’s search for something a lot more interesting to those of us enjoying the last days of a sizzling hot August in the United States. Football, the gridiron variety, not the version where Chelsea goes out and buys all the good players.

We’ll give Yahoo a hat tip for building out a search shortcut for NFL players. Here’s a joke for you: what does Yahoo’s Greg Coleman have in common with a lot of NFL players this week? He’s just been cut, too.

Our friends at Resource Shelf must be ready for the NFL too. Their latest post cherry-picks some nice links from the NFL’s official site for online reading.

The link to the Record & Fact Book shows good organization of information for a league with a lot of data people want to find. As a Giants fan, I can remind myself that Tiki Barber isn’t going to add to any of his rushing records now that he’s retired.

The league’s History page also gives a lesson on providing timely information. A site’s content won’t feel out of date if something current is on a page. "This Date in NFL History" features a timely mention about the league; today they note Kentucky product Shaun Alexander celebrates his 30th birthday.

Just as in many things in life, there are little things to learn just about everywhere you go. Organization and timeliness of content provide value to the multi-billion dollar NFL empire. If the NFL thinks that much of their web efforts, web entrepreneurs in other fields should always pay such attention to the little things on their sites.

Yahoo Pulls On The Reorg Boots

Rumors of a Yahoo shakeup proved true, and much broader than just company president Sue Decker’s pal, Hilary Schneider, gaining at the expense of another executive’s job again. Greg Coleman had been the executive in charge of global sales, which included the search and display ad business.

Coleman was also the guy who gave Wenda Harris Millard a not-so-fond farewell in June 2007. “The industry has shifted and requires a different set of skills to take the business forward,” Coleman said of Millard at the time.

Now it’s Coleman who’s being shoved out the door, as more changes take place at Yahoo. Rafat Ali at PaidContent managed to score a copy of the internal Yahoo email about the shuffling of Yahoo’s sales deck.

Yahoo has created a new division called Global Partner Solutions (GPS). Schneider has been minted the new head of this group, which will develop international business while overseeing all of Yahoo’s US sales, marketing, and business development when it comes to advertising.

“Therefore, with the decision to create this new Global Partner Solutions unit under Hilary

Analyst’s reactions to the management shake-up have been mixed. They are somewhat cautious because of the internal distraction this will most likely cause at Yahoo no matter how the spin is applied. One analyst noted that even with the change the remaining management team does not have a solid enough technology background to turn the company around.

There are also worries about the reorganization because of the upcoming launch of Panama, Yahoo’s new platform. Some are also questioning Sue Decker’s new role in sales as she has a background in strategy and finance.

Others see Yahoo’s latest move as an honest acknowledgement of the company’s organizational and operational problems over the past year. The view seems to be that the reorganization will make the company more efficient in the long term.

There were some interesting comments about the changes at Yahoo on Techcrunch. One post from Christian said,” First and foremost Braun is out. That guy is the biggest turd and was just a dead weight sucking up everything in his sight and spitting out crap.” While another post from John K said,” It’s not gonna work. Yahoo needs Semel gone because he’s not technical enough to deal with the search monetization screwups.”

These latest changes at Yahoo may help the company to move in the right direction. After floundering for the past year the only possible direction they can go is up.

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"He's dead, Jim!"
-- Dr. McCoy, Star Trek, far too many episodes to list here.

It appeared for a while that Microsoft was in the process of doing what some have expected it to do since its corporate reorganization took place last month: shutting down MSN in favor of Windows Live.

Back in March, Microsoft said of the reorg that it was focused on lining up “Windows and MSN assets with Microsoft’s overall Live strategy.” During yesterday’s outage, MSN Search had this to say to visitors:

Or to paraphrase Edgar Allen Poe, ‘quoth the raven, 404′.

But the service returned after its hiatus. As to where it was during the downtime, no one knows. The MSN Search blog has not been updated since its Search Macros post of March 28th.

The King County Journal reported on an email received from a Microsoft spokesperson that the company was trying to figure out what had happened.

Other than an assortment of chuckles posted at Threadwatch (“They can’t figure out how to restart IIS correctly”; “shouldn’t that screen be blue?”), there hasn’t been much notice of the outage.

Since Windows Live was available during that period, users could still search there. It is strange that Microsoft didn’t place a link on the outage page to Live to try and keep some of that traffic from just punching out and heading to Google or Yahoo instead.

And then MSN Search returned, as quietly as it had departed. New features? None apparent. Back-end upgrade? Unknown.

One guess would be some kind of issue with the contest Microsoft has been running since February. Based on user searches, the contest can make a winner out of someone who queries certain keywords at MSN Search. Prizes range from gift cards to plasma HDTVs, so perhaps the temptation to win something led to an attempted compromise of the service by a third party.

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That report created an absolute firestorm of controversy, and a long weekend of commentary on numerous blogs.

In the wake of Microsoft’s announcement that the consumer version of Vista was being pushed into 2007, followed by a substantial reorganization of Microsoft’s structure, many seemed ready to believe that the wheels had come off of Microsoft.

And when the story broke that Microsoft had entered serious rewrite mode, that fanned the flames even higher.

A Microsoft spokesperson responded about the issue via email today:

Publishing 2.0 blogger Scott Karp assessed the whole issue of news being made by the “edge,” ie, the blogosphere:

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The filings were made in the evening of February 21 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

All 920 Winn-Dixie stores in eight states and the Bahamas are open and serving customers. Winn-Dixie intends to use the reorganization process to take additional action to improve its operations and financial performance and strengthen its business.

Peter Lynch, President and CEO of Winn-Dixie, said, “We intend to use this reorganization process to take the actions necessary to position Winn-Dixie for future success. This includes achieving significant cost reductions, improving the merchandising and customer service in all locations and generating a sense of excitement in the stores. We deeply regret any adverse impact the Chapter 11 filing may have on our associates, vendors, shareholders and business partners. However, having spent the last two months taking an in-depth look at the Company and visiting over 50 stores across our chain, I am convinced that the Chapter 11 process will give us the opportunity we need to restructure our finances, strengthen our business performance and achieve a sustained turnaround at Winn-Dixie.”

To fund its continuing operations during the restructuring, Winn-Dixie has secured an $800 million debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing facility from Wachovia Bank, N.A. Subject to court approval, the DIP credit facility, which replaces the Company’s previous $600 million credit line, will be used to supplement the Company’s cash flow during the reorganization process.

Mr. Lynch continued, “We will focus on increasing sales quickly and cost- effectively across the chain by improving the execution of merchandising and sales-focused initiatives, reinvigorating the Company’s store associates, and restoring a sales-driven culture across the organization. These plans include enhancing Winn-Dixie’s perishables offerings and other product merchandising, as well as implementing store sales competitions and other initiatives to motivate associates to drive sales.”

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Among other things, the amended plan formally facilitates the sale process by allowing for the distribution of sale consideration to Adelphia’s creditors upon a sale of all or a portion of Adelphia’s assets. At the same time, the plan preserves Adelphia’s ability to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy as an independent entity. The amended plan also adds provisions designed to facilitate potential compromises of outstanding inter-creditor disputes and governmental settlement demands in the context of a potential global settlement.

“Our goal of maximizing value for all constituents remains our number one priority, and to that end, we remain focused on the dual track of selling the Company or emerging from bankruptcy as an independent company,” said Bill Schleyer, chairman and CEO of Adelphia. “Today’s filing reflects our continued progress towards this goal and evidences our efforts to balance input from our many constituents.”

As previously announced, Adelphia is conducting a sale process for the Company as a whole or in seven strategic clusters. The Company is in the process of reviewing bids received in its sale process and anticipates, following negotiations with the bidders, announcing the results of the sale process sometime before the end of the first quarter.

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- Fred Bremmer

Answer:
Hi Fred,

After beginning a new position, you will need a few months to build a foundation, credibility and trust in your new company as well as evaluate your staff’s performance appropriately. You want to make certain that you are documenting performance deficiencies, etc., according to company policies.

Once you’ve developed your reorganization plan, consider the impact on the troops.

Timing and the manner in which you implement the changes will be critical as the remaining staff will judge you by the manner in which you handled the reorganization/terminations.

Louise Garver, CMP, CPRW, JCTC, CEIP, MCDP, has assisted senior executives and management clients worldwide in all aspects of job search, interviewing and negotiations, development of resume and marketing letters, career transition and career management since 1985. President of Career Directions, LLC, she is an award-winning, published and certified career coach, professional resume writer, outplacement consultant and former corporate recruiter. For help in winning the career your deserve, visit http://www.resumeimpact.com.

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Other topics can include:

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New Managers: When To Start Your Reorganization
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From Non-Profit To For-Profit: Tips For Transition
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What Hiring Managers Really Look For In Resumes And Cover Letters
Learn the Warning Signs of Potential Job Loss
Unhappy With Your Job? When To Call It Quits
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The Annual Career Check-Up

Louise Garver, CMP, CPRW, JCTC, CEIP, MCDP, has assisted senior executives and management clients worldwide in all aspects of job search, interviewing and negotiations, development of resume and marketing letters, career transition and career management since 1985. President of Career Directions, LLC, she is an award-winning, published and certified career coach, professional resume writer, outplacement consultant and former corporate recruiter. For help in winning the career your deserve, visit http://www.resumeimpact.com.

Louise Garver Answers Career Questions: Click Here For Free Answers