The Profit Is In Anothe...

Citing poor sales of the Nintendo 3DS and “the stronger yen against the euro was also another reason,” Nintendo posted its first-ever loss – $534.6 million on revenue of $8 billion. This is down from $12.6 billion in revenue last year with $960 million in profit. But, as they say, it’s dangerous to invest alone. Here, take this: the company is predicting a profit of $429 million next year. Nintendo bet big on the 3DS and the forthcoming Wii U , a superior console designed for clever multi-player gaming. Although the Wii is the best-selling console in the world, it’s clear that demand has slowed with the launch of Kinect from Microsoft and the PlayStation Move. We’re expecting to her much more about the Wii U launch this summer at E3 and, provided they can get a product out the door by the holiday, expect these numbers to rise skyward. It’s a little sad to see Mario stumble like this, but here’s hoping he regroups.

CEO Scott Thompson To C...

CEO Scott Thompson outlined his vision today for how Yahoo can start growing again. His big theme: Focus, focus, focus. “Yahoo has been doing way too much for too long and was only doing a few things really well,” Thompson said. He was speaking on the earnings conference call covering his first full quarter as CEO — revenue was flat while earnings went up. Thompson has already been making some big changes, with layoffs and a major reorganization , but he said he isn’t satisfied with the results so far. Even the company’s lesser-known properties may be getting more engagement than most startups or mid-size companies, but Thompson said, “That doesn’t mean we should continue to do everything we currently do.” He said he will be shutting down or “transitioning” at least 50 Yahoo properties (he didn’t say which ones, but we’ve heard that a  number of Yahoo entertainment-focused properties were hit hard by the layoffs ), so that it can focus on core products like Mail, Finance, and Sports. Other strategies include using all the data that Yahoo has collected to deliver a more personalized experience for users, doing more to show advertisers their return on investment, and accelerating the process of developing new features and products. “Yahoo has built processes that were originally intended to help us scale but they’ve become way too complex and stifled innovation,” Thompson said. Shutting down properties may lead to a “modest” decrease in revenue, but the company’s margins will improve, he added. (Earlier in the call, CFO Tim Morse said the company is aiming for margins of 20 percent, excluding traffic acquisition costs.) He also said that Yahoo won’t rule out developing new products in the future, but first it needs to “earn the right to pursue new growth opportunities” by improving core experiences. “I’m convinced we don’t need to reinvent who we are,” Thompson — instead, Yahoo just needs to reinvent the user experience.

IBM Acquires Sales Data...

Big Blue has made a purchase today—IBM has acquired Varicent Software, a company that creates a sales analytics software. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Varicent, which has raised $35 million in funding, analyzes sales data from businesses to help organizations to streamline compensation processes for employees, improve sales performance, and more. Varicent’s software automates and analyzes sales data across a number of sectors of an organization including the finance, sales, human resources and IT departments and can uncover trends that could lead to better sales and revenue for a company. The company’s software is used by over 200 banks, insurance companies, retailers, information technology and telecommunications providers. Clients include SugarCRM, Reliance Standard Life Insurance, Silverpop, Tribune, and AAA Northern California. Varicent offers a software catered to larger enterprises as well as a product that focuses on smaller teams. In February, Varicent reported that 2011 revenue grew by 42%, marking the company’s best year ever in terms of sales and client acquisition. This acquisition ties into IBM’s focus on providing in-depth analytics offerings to businesses. IBM says that business analytics revenue for the company will reach $16 billion by 2015. The company has made a number of acquisitions in the business analytics area, including Algorithmics, Clarity Systems, Open Pages, Cognos and SPSS. From the release: The acquisition advances IBM’s efforts to drive analytics capabilities into the hands of front line employees, particularly in the area of sales where many organizations still rely on silos of data and antiquated spreadsheets to manage this vital area of their business. Interestingly, Janet Perna a former Senior Executive from IBM, sits on Varicent’s board. Other recent IBM purchases include Worklight, Green Hat, and Emptoris.

Yahoo’s New Catch-All U...

One week after Yahoo announced it would lay off 2,000 employees , the company has now confirmed the second part of its restructuring: a reorganization that puts the company’s assets into three new business units — consumer, regions and technology, with at least one operation put to the side for a potential sale. The announcement, revealed to the company in an all-hands meeting as well as an internal memo earlier today (first published by AllThingsD ), was not released in a public statement, but TechCrunch understands that Scott Thompson, Yahoo’s new CEO, has put three different functions within the consumer division: media, “connections” (interactive and social businesses) and commerce. Regions meanwhile will oversee all of Yahoo’s ad business. And technology will provide the “science” and infrastructure that will underpin how the first two work. All three underscore just how much work Yahoo has ahead: Ross Levinsohn will be in charge of the media division . This will not only be the place where Yahoo’s own content operations will sit — that includes portals like Homepage, News, Finance, Sports, and Entertainment — but also the company’s newer forays into delivering content on behalf of other companies through the Yahoo Publishing Platform, which covers text- but also video-based content. (This might have been where, incidentally, it would have put Float , if that deal with Scribd had gone ahead.) It looks like the streaming video content is where Yahoo hopes to be banking the most activity, around upcoming events like the Olympics and the U.S. Elections. It’s also where so many others are moving, too, so the big question is whether Yahoo will be able to offer something in the quality or experience stakes above what we might see elsewhere. “ Connections “, or Yahoo’s different interactive and social properties, are going to be led by Shashi Seth, and cover services like Mail, Messenger, Flickr and Answers. To be sure, this is a challenging area for Yahoo, because it encompasses services where Yahoo has been relatively successful — Mail, Flickr and Answers — but has also failed to capitalize — social, where one of its most controversial recent acts has been not to launch a new product but a patent suit against Facebook. There are some interesting things underway with what Yahoo is trying to do — for example, with some new technology in its IntoNow social TV app (more on that later) — but again this is about whether Yahoo is doing something better that others are working on, too. It helps that Yahoo already has a big audience in other consumer divisions. One intriguing new territory for Yahoo is its new commerce division . This does not yet have a named head (although AllThingsD has pegged Sam Shraugher from PayPal to lead it), and it will put all of the company’s existing divisions where commerce already happens. That includes Autos, Shopping, Travel, Jobs, Personals and Real Estate. While while there may be new e-commerce ventures in the cards for Yahoo — it seems natural, given Thompson’s own background from PayPal and the fact that this is a $224.2 billion market this year — this is not something that the company is focusing on today. “We must focus all we do on the users who trust us to give them personalized content and communications, and the advertisers who want to connect with our users,” said Thompson in a memo to employees. “To be very clear, our highest priority is winning in our core business and that will earn us the right to pursue new growth opportunities.” Advertising , which will now be in the regions division, is equally challenging: As the market for online advertising continues to grow, Yahoo has seen a big decline in its share of it. Last year, according to eMarketer, Yahoo’s share stood at only 9.5 percent for all online ad revenues, down from a 15.7 percent share in 2009. And 2012 is a case (at best) of “it’s going to get worse before it gets better”: Yahoo’s share will only be 7.4 percent this year. The U.S. online ad market is expected to be worth $39.5 billion this year, up 23.3 percent over 2011. Display ads, where Yahoo has been strongest traditionally, is where it’s getting hardest hit: Yahoo’s share in U.S. display was only 10.8 percent in 2011, down from its peak of 18.4 percent in 2008. Facebook has overtaken it and now has a 14 percent share of display ad revenues in the U.S., says eMarketer. It’s telling that Rich Riley has been brought back to the U.S. to lead up the Americas team: he oversaw some very strong growth in Europe. Rose Tsou continues to lead Asia Pacific, and Europe/EMEA is now looking for a new head, with Christophe Parcot leading in the interim. Lastly, technology . This is a touchy area, with Yahoo having let go a number of people who were at the center of its R&D efforts, with some speculating talent migrations to Facebook and others to Detroit … Wherever it is, it ain’t Sunnyvale. You have assume for now that Thompson and his advisers have a bigger plan here, and are focusing on teams and products that haven’t been decimated by the restructuring announced last week. Areas that will continue to remain a focus for the tech team are the areas of user analytics, content optimization, personalization and monetization.

Arianna Huffington No L...

You know every once in a while you come across news about your company and it turns out your boss is no longer your boss anymore. If you’re me this probably happens to you every three months. Anyways this morning I read in the media that Arianna Huffington (who I think used to be my boss) gained more control within Aol and then subsequently read that actually she had been “demoted.” Okay truth please guys?! Well, because no one ever tells us anything because we’ll publish it , I dug around and found out that we (TechCrunch) are no longer a part of Huffington Post Media Group, and neither is Engadget, Moviephone, Stylist, AOL Video,  AOL.com and TUAW. Additionally, divisions of the Huffington Post originally folded into Aol like sales, tech and communications will now be re-instated into the Huffington Post, and the HuffPost property will remain an independent entity within Aol, sort of like the Basque region of Spain.  Business Insider says that all the non-HuffPost blogs will now report to a man named Jay Hirsch. While I don’t know any Jay Hirsch, I do know a Jay Kirsch — a non-editorial Aol executive who is the SVP & General Manager of the Autos/ Finance/ Industry/ Jobs/ Real Estate division of Aol and an awesome writer. No really, he is a great writer. Even though Jay is an aforementioned great writer, he will be looking for an Editorial Manager to fill a role under him and deal directly with each individual site, according to sources. Kirsch wouldn’t comment. Hirsch, whoever he is, also wasn’t available for comment. What does this mean for TechCrunch AND YOU? Well I’m assuming we’ll be saying Jay or whoever’s name instead of Arianna’s when we call Aol to change our System Passwords once a quarter. Arianna was rarely involved in our day-to-day anyways (well except for that one time ) and now we’ll have no Aol editorial oversight, at least that we know of.  AND YOU? Well it probably doesn’t mean very much to you at all.