One of our favorite spectator sports in recent years has been tracking the travels and travails of our executive Internet brethren, and the past 10 days brought us the most entertaining big play so far in this year's thrilling season of Executive Roulette. We're talking, of course, about the abrupt resignation of Harry Motro from CNN Interactive on 23 April, and his sudden ascension to the position of president at Infoseek only days later. Harry hasn't made himself available for comment, but many of his friends in the industry whisper that he had been unhappy for some time now with the Web strategies of CNN parent Time Warner. Harry, like his billionaire boss Ted Turner, wanted Time Warner to stimulate synergies amongst the merged company's various media operations by, well, merging them. On the Web, we're told by those in the know, Harry's plan was to merge the redundant operations of Time Inc. New Media, CNN Interactive, and Warner Bros. Online. And of course, Harry harbored the more than vague hope that Time Warner would recognize that Harry was the ideal candidate to run the whole enchilada. Unfortunately for Harry, Norman Pearlstine, and the Powers That Be at Time Inc. New Media apparently wanted to continue playing with their own ball at Pathfinder, and ultimately nixed his grand plans. Now that that drama's done, observers have turned their attention to the West Coast headquarters of Infoseek. Harry's leap from the CNN Tower in Atlanta to a soft landing at the stock-price-depressed search-engine company already has wags asking how long he and Infoseek CEO Robin Johnson (who relinquished the president's title to Harry) can peacefully exist under the same roof. Stay tuned.
The great America Online shell game continues. When AOL gave new definition to the phrase "historically unprofitable" last year and announced that its new method of booking subscriber acquisition costs would wipe out all of the company's previous earnings, company executives insisted the firm was focused on diversifying its revenues. Our favorite former soap salesman, Steve Case, and our favorite former real-estate agent, Bob Pittman, along with CFO Lennert Leader, have made a point, for example, of trumpeting the company's goals in online commerce. But it turns out that as of last month, AOL was woefully short of its target for online sales in the current fiscal year, even though three-quarters of it was over. To make up the difference, we're told, AOL has decided to fall back on its usual strong-arm tactics and get its partners to pony up the money. So the company recently invited some 60 of its online merchants to a special meeting on the West Coast, and told them that in order to retain the "privilege" of being an AOL vendor, they would each need to fork over US$150,000 immediately. And those marketers who were doing particularly well on America Online were asked to renegotiate their contracts immediately - so that AOL could lock down more revenue, we assume.
Times appear to be increasingly tough at once-hot interactive toolmaker mFactory. It's been known for months that the company, like many another Internet start-up, was seeking another round of financing to support it. Adobe Investments, for example, which already owns a stake in the company, apparently has already passed on the opportunity to sink even more dollars into mFactory; the latest rumor says Autodesk is sniffing around, but so far not committing. Could all this uncertainty have prompted the speculation that mFactory founder Hamish Forsythe would soon depart? For the moment, Hamish remains on the company's executive roster.
