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Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo!, has resigned from its board of directors with immediate effect.Jerry Yang founded the online company in 1995 with David Filo and was its chief executive from June 2007 until January 2009.

His resignation comes two weeks after the company hired former PayPal executive Scott Thomson to be its new chief executive.

Mr Yang annoyed some shareholders by turning down a £31 billion ($47.5 billion) takeover offer from Microsoft in 2008.

Since then the value has plummeted and the company’s current market value is only about £13 billion.

Mr Yang has also resigned from the boards of Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group and said in a statement: “The time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo!”.

In addition to leaving the boards, Mr Yang is also giving up his title of “Chief Yahoo”. He also expressed support for the company’s current management.

“I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo! into an exciting and successful future,” he said.

Some observers had seen Jerry Yang as an impediment to the sale or restructuring of the business as it provides a more objective and unemotional approach to the variuos strategic alternatives which are being considered as the company attempts to reinvent itself.

Yahoo has named Scott Thompson- the president of online payments firm Paypal, as its new CEO.He will fill the vacancy left by Carol Bartz, who was dismissed as chief executive in September after failing to turn around the company’s fortunes.

Mr Thompson has headed Paypal, the payments division of eBay, since 2008, during which time its userbase doubled.

Yahoo is currently undergoing a strategic review as it has failed to keep up with rivals such as Google.

First and foremost Mr Thompson has to define what Yahoo should be. Technology firm? Media company? Online services provider? Search engine? Internet portal? All of the above?

Yahoo has spread itself too thin, both managerially and technologically. It tried to compete with Microsoft, Google, AOL and everybody else at the same time – and failed. Yahoo is not known for innovation anymore. Meanwhile, Facebook snuck up from behind and ate Yahoo’s most valuable asset – the time its users spend online.

Selling troubled Yahoo to some naive investor might be an option, but anti-trust challenges make the outcome of any bid doubtful – unless Yahoo’s Chinese partner Alibaba steps forward. But that in itself would be a political Pandora’s box.

The US firm’s key products, beside its search engine, include photo sharing site Flickr and its webmail platform.

However, its domination of webmail – and the ancillary services it offers its email account holders – is under threat as younger users migrate to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Markets gave the news a cool reception. Shares in Yahoo were down 3.1% at the close of trading in New York.

Shares in Paypal’s parent, eBay, closed down 3.77%. The broader Nasdaq tech index closed up 0.33%.

Yahoo’s share price has stagnated at about $15 ever since late 2008, refusing to go above $20, after it rejected an offer from Microsoft to buy up the company at $33 a share.

Revenues at the firm have stagnated, particularly compared with leading search engine Google, and Yahoo has had to lay off workers four times over the past three years.

The poor performance prompted Yahoo’s board to ignominiously turf out Carol Bartz in September last year.

Tim Morse, who had been standing in as chief executive, will return to the role of chief financial officer when Mr Thompson takes over on 9 January.

Facebook’s share of the UK online usage has fallen by more than seven percentage points in the last year- raising concerns that it may have hit saturation point.The social network – which is expected to make an initial public offering (IPO) this year – still attracted significantly more online time than its nearest competitor, accounting for 52.6pc of all visits to social networks in December.

However, Facebook has lost substantial ground since the previous December, when it took a 58.5pc share of the UK’s social networking market, according to data from Experian Hitwise.

It slipped 1.3 percentage points last month alone.

The decline has raised concerns that Facebook is running out of steam in the markets where it is best established, whilst its competitors gain ground.

“Facebook’s growth is levelling out,” said James Murray, market research analyst at Experian. “Because Facebook had such a clear lead, it was always going to be difficult for Facebook to maintain [its position]. It has probably reached near enough its maximum growth.”

The figures will come as a blow to the company, which has been investing heavily in extending its reach and enticing users to click on its adverts, ahead of its long-awaited IPO. Facebook is expected to float with a possible valuation of  £65 billion ($100 billion)- the biggest technology IPO ever.

By contrast, YouTube, the user-generated video site owned by Google, grew its traffic by 45pc last year.

It accounted for just over a quarter of all UK visits to social networks in December, putting it 7.4 percentage points ahead of the previous year.

“We’re expecting video to be even more influential as a marketing channel, and marketers will have to adapt their strategies to incorporate a multi-channel approach in order to secure customers both on and offline,” said Mr Murray.

Twitter and Yahoo! Answers also made gains, but remained tiny by comparison, with 3pc and 2pc of all visits to social networks respectively.

Google’s social network, Google +, did not register in the top 10 most visited social networks at all.

However, Google grew its share of search engine usage market in the UK, edging up from a 91.3pc share of the market to 91.8pc.

Microsoft, its nearest competitor, was a minnow by comparison. Its suite of sites accountted for 3.6pc of all search engine visits in the UK in December, whilst Yahoo!’s popularity for searches fell nearly a percentage point to 2.5pc.

Google was the most visited website with US users in 2011 but Facebook was not far behind according to market researchers.Nielsen suggests more than 153 million visitors clicked onto Google branded pages each month, as Facebook attracted close to 138 million visitors.

Yahoo came third with about 130 million visitors each month.

But analysts warned Yahoo’s tally might be at risk if young people continued to turn away from web-based email.

The study is based on data collected between January and October and included visits from home and work computers. It involved a sample from a global panel of 200,000 people.

Website                                  Unique visitors per month
1. Google                                        153,441,000
2. Facebook                                     137,644,000
3. Yahoo                                         130,121,000
4. MSN/WindowsLive/Bing                 115,890,000
5. YouTube                                     106,692,000
6. Microsoft                                      83,691,000
7. AOL Media Network                        74,633,000
8. Wikipedia                                      62,097,000
9. Apple                                           61,608,000
10. Ask Search Network                     60,552,000

Source: Nielsen

Although Google trumped Facebook as the most popular web brand, the search giant’s Google+ network came far behind Mark Zuckerberg’s site in Nielsen’s ranking of the most popular social networks and blogs.

Google+ came eighth in the list with 8.02m unique monthly visitors.

That also put it behind Google’s weblog publishing tool Blogger, as well as Twitter, Wordspace, Myspace, Linkedin and Tumblr.

Google’s YouTube was identified as the most popular destination for online videos, attracting more than three times the number of monthly visitors as the music video service Vevo.

While Yahoo maintained its position as one of the top three web brands, an earlier study cast doubt over its ability to retain the position over coming years as it’s email system faces a declining market share.

Yahoo shares rose on speculation that the company is looking to sell its stake in China’s Alibaba Group and also Yahoo Japan.Yahoo rose 6% on the Nasdaq stock exchange after the New York Times reported the firm was aiming to cut its Alibaba stake to 15% from 43%.

According to some estimates, the deal will value Yahoo’s Asian assets at £11 billion ($17 billion).

Yahoo bought its stake in Alibaba for £675 million ($1bn) in 2005.

Despite being one of the biggest brand names, Yahoo has seen its market share tumble amid growing competition.

The likes of Google and Facebook have not only surpassed it in the amount of users but have also seen advertisers flock to them, hurting Yahoo’s revenues.

Dwindling fortunes saw the company fire former chief executive Carol Bartz earlier this year and launch a strategic review of its operations.

There has been growing speculation about a takeover bid for Yahoo, with companies including Microsoft, Alibaba and private equity group Silver Lake being linked to a possible deals.

The main focus of Alibaba’s sale of its Asia assets will be on what developments take place with regards to its stake in Alibaba Group.

Alibaba is China’s biggest ecommerce group and Yahoo’s stake in it is considered by many as one of its most prized assets.

However, relations between the two firms have deteriorated reaching a tipping point earlier this year after Alibaba spun off its online payment business, Alipay.

Yahoo accused the Chinese company of hiding the move from it, saying the change had been made in August 2010, but it only found out about it in March this year.

Visits to video sharing websites by UK users have gone up by more than a third in the last year.The biggest driver of traffic to those sites is music videos (33%), followed by TV shows (17%), film (11%), gaming (10%) and news (9%).

The figures, from internet research company Experian Hitwise, show YouTube accounts for nearly 70% of all video website hits.

It’s now the third most popular site in the UK after Google and Facebook.

Lady Gaga was the most in demand for artist within music searches.

The research was gathered between September 2010 and September 2011.

During that time 240 million hours every month were spent by British internet users watching videos online.

UK’s top 10 websites:

Google UK
Facebook
YouTube
eBay UK
Windows Live Mail
MSN UK
Google.com
BBC News
BBC Homepage
Yahoo! UK & Ireland

Research by Experian Hitwise

Illustrating its dominance in this area, Google owned YouTube, clocked up 184 million of those hours.

That number is still dwarfed by the amount of time spent on social networking sites though.

The same research shows 800 million hours were spent each month on sites like Facebook and Twitter by the UK’s internet users.

Despite YouTube’s dominance of video sharing websites there was also strong growth for other ones too.

BBC iPlayer, the second most popular video site, experienced a 22% rise in traffic last year.

That means the number of visits to the site has doubled in the last three years.

Google is to charge websites for adding their maps to your website.Google Maps wants to charge larger websites for heavy usage of the service.

From 1 January 2012, Google will charge for the Google Maps API service when more than the limit of 25,000 map “hits” are made in a day.

Websites, especially travel firms, use Google Maps to link customers to a view of the destinations they inquire about.

Google is rumoured to be charging £2 per 1,000 views in excess of the limit.

Google maintains the high limit of 25,000 free hits before charging “will only affect 0.35% of users”.

Google said it was aware that developers needed time to evaluate their usage, determine if they were affected and then take action as appropriate.

“We understand that the introduction of these limits may be concerning,” said Thor Mitchell, product manager of the Maps API at Google.

“However, with the continued growth in adoption of the Maps API, we need to secure its long-term future by ensuring that even when used by the highest-volume for-profit sites, the service remains viable. ”

Dr Search has long debated the accuracy of Google Maps- they are linked to the flawed StreetView and Places options within the Google databases.

Don’t worry if you do feature Google Maps on your website as there are FREE alternatives available from at least Yahoo and Microsoft at: http://www.bing.com/maps and http://www.maps.yahoo.com

LinkedIn now has over 120 million users worldwide, including six million in the UK. Two new members join every second and there are nearly one million groups on the site.

It is now the mainstream tool for professionals to network online – and that is why it can’t be ignored as a marketing tool.

An increasing number of businesses are promoting their brands through staff profiles and presence on LinkedIn.

However, making the most of the social media website is a science- as with all social media websites information and security are key issues.

Here are some hot tips on how you can market your business successfully through Linkedin:

• Tell a compelling and authentic story about who you are, how you got to where you are, what you do and why you enjoy it. It is critical that a profile is “personally professional”. Individual profiles that only talk about the company or brand are a big turn off. Encourage your staff to take the same approach.
• Join relevant discussion groups and get involved in them. This can be interesting and rewarding and helps to raise your company’s profile.
• Make sure that your profile and all employees’ profiles link directly to your company page. An individual’s profile should also include information about your company, its products and offerings.
• Ensure you have a comprehensive company page including detailed pages on all products and services.
• Ask for and publish recommendations from satisfied customers for your products and services section on your company page.
• Ensure staff have profiles that are 100 per cent complete. LinkedIn is not like Facebook – individuals are representing a company or brand in a professional capacity on LinkedIn. The more visible your staff are on this network, the greater the visibility of your brand. But this only works if your employees are actively using their LinkedIn account.
• Encourage employees to use blogs, PowerPoint presentations and videos promoting your brand in their profiles and help them with the material.
• Provide guidelines on how to effectively communicate, reminding staff that their activities are representing the company- and can be read my literally millions of people- including your competitors.
• Provide all staff with copy to use to describe your company within their profiles. This ensures a consistent approach and helps avoid disclosing commercially sensitive information to competitors.
• Start your own group to build a community where you can indirectly promote your brand.
• Remember that search engine optimisation is important for every article, profle and group. LinkedIn allows open profiles which means that the search negine will alos pick up on your activities.

Yahoo has reported a quarterly profits fall of 26% as it struggled to boost earnings from online advertising.Net profits in the third quarter were £188 million compared with £247 million during the same period last year.

Last month, Yahoo sacked chief executive Carol Bartz after its online earnings failed to keep pace with those of rivals Google and Facebook.

However, its performance beat market expectations, and its shares ended 3% higher.

Yahoo’s net revenue in the three months to September was £668 million, compared with £700 million the year before.

“My focus, and that of the whole company, is to move the business forward with new technology, partnerships, products and premium personalised content,” said interim chief executive Tim Morse.

Yahoo has been looking for a new chief executive since firing Ms Bartz in September amid mounting frustration at failed efforts to turn the firm around.

Analysts say that in recent weeks there has been increasing speculation that Yahoo, or parts of its business, might be sold to an assortment of buyout firms.

There have been rumours that Microsoft is considering a second attempt at a takeover. Microsoft last offered to buy Yahoo for £29 billion in 2008.

China’s internet firm Alibaba has already said it might be interested in buying Yahoo- however american political sensivities will complicate any chinese purchase due to data spying senstivities of the Yahoo email system.

Yahoo’s chief executive Carol Bartz has been fired by the search company after only two and a half years in the top job.The company said in a statement that Ms Bartz was removed by the board of directors with immediate effect.

Tim Morse, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, will take over from Ms Bartz.

Yahoo has been struggling to increase its market share as it faces increased competition from rivals such as Google and Facebook.

Yahoo shares jumped more than 6% in after hours trading after news of the firing broke- Yahoo’s stock price was up at $13.72, an increase of 81 cents.

Mr Morse will serve as interim chief executive and the board of directors will look for a new CEO, the company said.

Ms Bartz was hired to run Yahoo in early 2009, taking over from co-founder Jerry Yang.

She made significant changes to the management team and cut jobs to save on costs. She also shifted the focus of the traditionally search oriented firm towards more personalised content.

Critics claim that Yahoo has failed to make significant strides in two of the most lucrative segments of the market – search and social networking.

The news first broke on the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D website, which quoted an email from Ms Bartz to Yahoo staff. The email has since been reported by other news agencies including Bloomberg and Reuters.

“I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s chairman of the board,” Ms Bartz said in the email to staff.  ”It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.”

As news of the sacking spread across the internet, Yahoo released its own press statement in which it confirmed it was undergoing a “leadership reorganisation” and that Ms Bartz would be leaving the company.

Roy Bostock, chairman of Yahoo’s board, said in the statement: “On behalf of the entire board, I want to thank Carol for her service to Yahoo during a critical time of transition in the company’s history, and against a very challenging macro-economic backdrop.”

Despite being one of the pioneers in the online search business, Yahoo has seen its market share dwindle in recent times. Not only have the users turned to its rivals, advertisers have also been ditching the company.

Analysts said a lack of focus and direction have hurt the company’s image.

Unless a new leader can get many more of us to start talking about and using Yahoo’s services, then the sad, long process of gentle anonymous decline looks set to continue.