Since Marissa Mayer made the jump from Google to Yahoo, there’s been a lot of talk about how she’s going to pare down the many faces of Yahoo and retool it as a product company. But rumor has it that after less than a month on the job, Mayer is trying to bolster Yahoo’s media business with a powerful new addition: Katie Jacobs Stanton, Twitter’s VP of international strategy.
I'll be honest. Seeing women in high profile exec roles makes my little feminist heart go pitter patter.
Word on the street is that Mayer is trying to woo Stanton away from Twitter and into a new high profile position at Yahoo in the media scheme of things. AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher first reported the news early Friday morning, citing unnamed sources who, themselves, were unclear what position Mayer is offering Stanton—other than the fact that it’s a big one. One theory is that if Stanton were brought on board, she could be running Yahoo’s home page.
Stanton, who ranks at number 56 in Forbes’ list of Power Women, is no stranger to Yahoo, having worked for the Web portal from 1999 to 2002 as Group Production Manager. Specifically, Stanton was the driving force behind Yahoo Finance, the main trump card Yahoo has had over Google.
Stanton actually owns a patent on interactive financial charting and related news correlation—which translates to technology that allows Web users to interactively navigate pricing and news information about public and private companies when looking for financial information about them.
Interestingly, Stanton also helped develop Google Finance when she worked at Google from 2003 to 2009. Google Finance didn’t take off nearly as well as Yahoo Finance, which saw its audience grow to 40.5 million unique monthly visitors, while Google Finance hovered around 1.6 million uniques, according to comScore.
But Yahoo Finance has been in decline over the last few years. It’s still the reigning champion among finance sites, but AOL Money & Finance has been slowly creeping up on it. So maybe that’s why Marissa Mayer is gunning for Katie Jacobs Stanton. Yahoo has a good thing in Yahoo Finance—it’s obviously a good idea to invest in what is working for Yahoo.
After her stints with Google and Yahoo, Stanton went on to work for the State Department, where she worked with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to develop the mobile donation campaign Text Haiti, following the devastating earthquake in Haiti. She was also the White House’s first Director of Citizen Participation and was responsible for getting the White House on Twitter.
Image source: mediaite.com
