A new broom sweeps more cleanly and the new broom at Yahoo! Inc. is Chief Executive Scott Thompson. In the deepest cuts for years at Yahoo! 2,000 people, 14 per cent of the workforce, have been removed from their employment. The new exec wants a smaller and more agile company and to cut the overheads, this round of staff cuts is estimated to save the company $375 million per year. Thompson is also planning to reshuffle certain Yahoo divisions and possibly sell off its ad-placement service as the company refocuses on its core business. The stock market reaction to the news was muted. Shares were down slightly, shareholders almost always approve of a mass culling of workforce, bu

It’s taken its time, but Yahoo is finally getting its revamped mail service out of beta, giving its 284 million users social network integration, faster search and more. With social networking sites increasingly becoming many people’s preferred means of communication, the new version allows Facebook and Twitter updates to be posted directly from within Yahoo’s email boxes through a reply bar. It’s also possible to chat with friends who are logged into Facebook directly from Yahoo Mail. There’s also a prioritization feature placing a user’s most frequent contacts at the top of the list, and the ability to search IM and SMS conversations as well

Yahoo’s finally found someone to take bookmarking service Delicious off its hands, selling up to YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Yahoo acquired Delicious about five years ago. Late last year, the company announced that it was planning to shut down Delicious, along with several other poorly-performing services, after making nearly 600 layoffs. It warned that if no buyer appeared by this July, the unit would be closed. But Hurley and Chen have ridden to the rescue, saying they plan to incorporate Delicious into their new venture, Avos. They say they intend to continue the service in its present form. “We’re excited to work with this fantastic community and t

Yahoo has increased its integration with Facebook, allowing users to view their Facebook news feed on Yahoo Mail and the Yahoo home page. From this week, users can link their accounts and view and share updates across both networks. Content created on Yahoo sites such as Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Flickr and Yahoo entertainment sites can beshared on Facebook. “More and more, people rely on social sites to share and discover information that matters to them, making Yahoo! uniquely positioned to provide people with all of the mainstream methods of content discovery – social, search, communications, and editorial,” said Cody Simms, senior director of social platforms