Jobs speaks at Yahoo!

Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a surprise guest appearance during a gathering of top Yahoo! executives at the company's Sunnyvale, California headquarters last Friday. With Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang calling the Apple co-founder "one of his heroes," Jobs spoke about how he turned Apple around on the merits of its worthy assets -- which he claimed Yahoo! also has -- by simply executing properly. Reporting for the Wall Street Journal, Kara Swisher wrote "Thanks, Steve! (Although easy for him to say, given Yang does not exactly have the kind of emperor thing going for him in this regard as Jobs does)," adding that "it was a brilliant choice on the part of Yahoo leadership to use the halo effect of Jobs–whose story of struggle over adversity is well known–in focusing their execs toward the new direction for the company."

Also discussed at the meeting were the building out of Yahoo's ad network, and a refresh of the corporate culture to allow ideas to rise to the surface more easily. The company also discussed the creation of a more open network akin to Facebook on Yahoo for third-party developers to use as a platform.

by MacNN Staff