The Information’s 411 — Greek Dramas

The holiday season, and holiday parties, are in full swing; at The Information we just hosted ours Thursday night. But there’s little in the way of celebration coming out of Yahoo right now. The company announced that it was pulling back on its proposed spin-off of its Alibaba stake, and instead will look to spin out Yahoo’s core online media business. That decision has once again spotlighted the tenure of CEO Marissa Mayer, who appears to have failed to achieve the turnaround many expected when she took over.

On Friday’s podcast, Jessica explains why Silicon Valley will be seeing Ms. Mayer again, even when she walks away from Yahoo. Jessica suggested in her column on Friday that Ms Mayer should start her own consumer software company. She elaborates on that view in the podcast.

Then Jessica turns the tables to ask Tom about Buzzfeed. Among the issues discussed: Why is its leader Jonah Peretti pushing video advertising so much? And the big question: can video ads scale? Tom and Jessica also lay out the next year or few in online media, and whether these companies will go public or sell themselves.

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