A month and a half in the saddle and today I have the perfect excuse to get blogging.

I’ve been on a whirlwind tour for the last six weeks, talking with everybody from executive leaders to the guys who configured my laptop. I’ve been in student mode, slowly getting smarter about what makes this place tick. And most recently, I’ve been gathering information on what it’s going to take to get Yahoo! to a great place as an organization –- and one that brings you killer products.

People here have impressed the hell out of me. They’re smart, dedicated, passionate, driven, and really nice. There’s so much great energy and frankly lots of optimism. But there’s also plenty that has bogged this company down. For starters, you’d be amazed at how complicated some things are here.

So today I’m rolling out a new management structure that I believe will make Yahoo! a lot faster on its feet. For us working at Yahoo!, it means everything gets simpler. We’ll be able to make speedier decisions, the notorious silos are gone, and we have a renewed focus on the customer. For you using Yahoo! every day, it will better enable us to deliver products that make you say, “Wow.”

I’ve noticed that a lot of us on the inside don’t spend enough time looking to the outside. That’s why I’m creating a new Customer Advocacy group. After getting a lot of angry calls at my office from frustrated customers, I realized we could do a better job of listening to and supporting you. Our Customer Care team does an incredible job with the amazing number of people who come to them, but they need better resources. So we’re investing in that. After all, you deserve the very best.

We’re also leaning on this team to make sure we’re all hearing the voice of our customers (consumers and advertisers). I’m singularly focused on providing you with awesome products. Period. The kind that get you so excited, you have to tell someone about them. Whether on your desktop, your mobile device, or even your TV.

And that takes a real understanding of what you want/need/love/hate, how you’re using our products, and what you find simple, intuitive, easy and fun. Who wants innovation for innovation’s sake if it doesn’t make your life easier, more efficient, more productive? So expect us to hear you better and take better care of you.

Finally, a note about our brand. It’s one of our biggest assets. Mention Yahoo! practically anywhere in the world, and people yodel. But in the past few years, we haven’t been as clear in showing the world what the Yahoo! brand stands for. We’re going to change that. Look for this company’s brand to kick ass again.

Big thanks to the many of you who’ve reached out with positive comments. It’s clear people want Yahoo! to succeed. I’ll try to pop by here again soon, though probably not too soon. I have a pretty long to-do list.

Carol Bartz
CEO

One hundred million people. It’s the population of America’s 60 largest cities combined (from NYC to Toledo). It’s about three million more than the size of this year’s record-breaking Super Bowl audience. And it’s the number of people who visit the Yahoo! Homepage every month.

I’ve always wondered what it’s like to program news content for that kind of a massive audience. (Let’s just say Yodel Anecdotal’s readership has a ways to go.) After all, you’re basically responsible for informing roughly one in every two American Internet users about what’s happening in our world…and influencing what they talk about over cube walls. What does that responsibility feel like? How do they stay on top of the fire hose of news and then decide what gets one of those precious links? Who is “they” and what prepares them for this big job? How do they know what will click? What was it like to cover this year’s Election?

I took a camera backstage to answer these questions and more. Enjoy this up-close-and-personal look inside the Yahoo! Homepage newsroom.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Filmed and edited by Bart Bishoff, Yahoo! Broadcast Bureau

When Matt Harding sets up his video camera and asks strangers to dance with him, there’s no music. No tempo, no beat. Just his signature jig, a few faint finger snaps, and the sounds in your own head. It makes for a hysterical experience and a wonderfully infectious scene on video.

I know this first hand because Matt came by to dance here at Yahoo!. If you’ve never heard of Matt, go check out wherethehellismatt.com. He traveled to 42 countries in 14 months to make his most recent video, “Dancing 2008,” which has been viewed more than 8.5 million times since he posted it in June. His scenery included a tulip field in the Netherlands, the DMZ in Korea, the “Painted Ladies” in San Francisco, children in Yemen, Bollywood-style dancers in India, bushmen in New Guinea, and free spirits in Paris.

I emailed Matt on a lark, with an invitation to come do a video with Yahoos in Sunnyvale. What you see here is the effect of one incredibly willing Internet phenomenon, as I dragged him hither and yon across our campus to shoot 33 scenes in less than seven hours. This video closed a recent company all-hands meeting — webcast to 14,000 employees worldwide — as a reminder that, in spite of the extraordinary events of last seven months, this is still one helluva great company.

You can download the song “Praan” (Bengali for “life”) at Amazon. It was composed by Garry Schyman and that incredible voice belongs to 17-year-old Palbasha Siddique of Minneapolis.

Thanks for the dance, Matt.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

We regret to inform you that you did not win the Yahoo! lottery. Because there is no Yahoo! lottery. Please don’t send us money to claim your “winnings.”

Like other highly visible brands, ours is a tempting one for fraudsters to hitch their wagons to. You may receive an email or even a text message on your cell notifying you of a fabulous windfall you’ve won in a Yahoo! lottery. It instructs you to send money to cover the taxes on the winnings or reply with confidential personal information. Don’t fall for it.

First, we would never send you information about a contest you never entered. That’s the definition of unsolicited: you never asked for it. It showed up out of nowhere. And although the email may look like it’s from Yahoo!, don’t be fooled by the sender’s address. Anyone with a Yahoo! account also has a Yahoo! email address. Phony emails and messages are also usually poorly written with inventive spelling and grammatical errors:

“So we appeal to you to have a bite patients to enable our Account Department carryout their works more effectively for smooth and sucessful tansfer of your winning prize $ 0ne million us dollars without any delay…”

But, as more and more folks are getting wise to these scams, the scammers are getting more and more creative — and not just in their use of the English language. Pictures of the Yahoo! campus and our logo (which are available online to anyone) give an appearance of authenticity. My favorite is the one with a photo of “Lotto Coordinator Vinton Cerf.” Mr. Cerf, recognized as one of the founders of the Internet, certainly isn’t spending his time running a lottery — not to mention that the photo looks nothing like him.

As ridiculous as some of these cons may seem, we take them seriously. Our Yahoo! Mail Abuse team looks into all reports of these scams and takes appropriate action.

We’re currently evaluating new filtering technology that may be effective in catching scams like this. In the meantime, if you receive a message claiming to be from Yahoo! notifying you of a cash prize, please let us know! Just forward the message to mail-spoof [at] cc.yahoo-inc.com. Include the full email header (info on how to do that is here). The full header shows us the route the email took to get to your Inbox and helps us track down the culprits.

Also, if you receive this hoax as a text message or SMS, email us about that, too. You’ll need to include the Yahoo! email address referenced in the SMS message, the time and day of the message, and the complete text of the message. Also, we encourage you to report the message to your wireless carrier to see if they can take corrective and/or preventative action.

We despise these scams — maybe more than you do. So help us knock them out before they hit someone else’s inbox. It’s a more dignified way to honor Mr. Cerf’s legacy.

Ben Baker
Director, Yahoo! Customer Care