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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) Yahoo Inc named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its chief executive on Wednesday, hoping the well-regarded Internet technology and e-commerce expert will replicate his success at eBay Inc and turn around the struggling company.

Thompson, credited with driving growth at eBay’s online payments division PayPal, joins Yahoo during a period of turmoil, as the company plows ahead with a strategic review in which discussions have included the possibility of being sold, taken private or broken up.

Yahoo shares finished Wednesday’s regular trading session down 3 percent at $15.78, as Wall Street assessed how Thompson’s hiring would affect the hopes of some investors that Yahoo would be sold or spin off its Asian assets, as well as how Thompson’s background fits in with Yahoo’s core online media business.

“It’s a positive outcome, but not as positive as a sale of the company,” said Lawrence Haverty, a fund manager with GAMCO investors, which owns Yahoo shares.

“The risk element is that his background was in payments. And this is not a payment company; it’s a marketing, technology company,” he said.

Thompson, a former Visa payments software platform designer, joins the company four months after the firing of previous CEO Carol Bartz as the one-time Web powerhouse Yahoo struggles to compete with newer heavyweights Google Inc and Facebook.

“I’m from Boston, we’re the underdogs since the beginning of time. Hopefully that spirit has held through. I like doing complicated, very difficult, very challenging things,” Thompson said in an interview.

Thompson, who takes over on January 9, will also join Yahoo’s board. He ran eBay’s PayPal since early 2008, and was previously its chief technology officer. Under his leadership, Yahoo said PayPal increased its user base from 50 million to more than 104 million active users. PayPal processed $29 billion in payments in the third quarter of 2011.

EBay’s shares fell 3.8 percent as analysts said the online retailer would miss the respected Internet executive.

EBay Chief Executive John Donahoe told staff in an internal memo that Thompson’s move was a “shock.”

“Scott informed me Tuesday afternoon, saying that despite his passion for PayPal, this was an opportunity he felt he had to take,” Donahoe said.

At PayPal,Cheap Ed hardy Shoes, Thompson was known as a leader who was not afraid to make bold strategic bets. He came up with the idea of taking PayPal beyond its online stronghold and into the physical world by allowing PayPal payments in retail stores — an opportunity analysts believe could prove much bigger than its existing business.

That kind of strategic risk-taking could be particularly useful at Yahoo. The Sunnyvale, California-based company, whose services include mail, search, news and photo-sharing, was a Web pioneer that grew rapidly in the 1990s. But in recent years, Yahoo has struggled to maintain its relevance and advertising revenue in the face of competition from rivals Google and Facebook.

“They really need that push to the next level,” said Ryan Jacob, chairman and chief investment officer of Jacob Funds, which includes the Jacob Internet Fund and counts Yahoo as one of its largest positions.

“Ideally what they would do is rather than just follow where today’s Internet leaders are moving, try to really be on that front edge,” he said, citing Yahoo’s need be better positioned in mobile, social networking and other fast-growing technology trends.

During a conference call on Wednesday, Thompson cited mobile as a key area that he expected to focus on at Yahoo, and he said he viewed the company’s treasure trove data about its users as one of Yahoo’s key assets. But he said it was too early to comment on his overall vision for the company.

NOT GOING PRIVATE

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock told analysts on the joint conference call with Thompson that Yahoo has no intention of being taken private.

“If you want to look at it in a practical way, if you and I were to sit down tomorrow and say let’s take this Company private, I think we have one hell of a challenge on our hands to do that,” said Bostock.

The decision to appoint a new CEO is not expected to impact the strategic review, which includes Yahoo’s ongoing dialogue with both China’s Alibaba Group and its Japanese affiliate to slash its stakes in the two companies, sources close to the matter said.

Under the “cash rich split” plan being discussed, Yahoo would effectively transfer most of its 40 percent slice of Alibaba back to the Chinese company and all of its stake in Yahoo Japan to Softbank Corp in return for cash and assets.

A preliminary term sheet has been drawn up that broadly outlines the deal concept, said one of the sources.

“Everyone seems to be in agreement over it,” the source said.

The question is whether a definitive agreement can be signed between the parties ahead of March 25 deadline when activist shareholders can submit director nominees to Yahoo’s board and waging a proxy battle.

Alibaba has also hired a Washington lobbying firm in a sign that the Chinese e-commerce company would be willing to make a bid for all of Yahoo in the event that talks to unwind their Asian partnership fail.

“If they can successfully complete the Asian asset transactions, in a way that is beneficial to Yahoo shareholders, I think it will buy them some time and they’ll have a chance to build for growth,” said Jacob, of the Jacob Funds.

In 2008, Yahoo rejected an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft Corp worth about $44 billion. Its share price was subsequently pummeled during the global financial crisis and its current market value is about $20 billion.

Co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down in late 2008 after being severely criticized by investors for his handling of the bid. The company cut thousands of jobs and later agreed to an advertising and search partnership with Microsoft.

RALLYING THE TROOPS

One of Thompson’s first orders of business at Yahoo may be to try to rebuild morale inside the nearly 14,000-person company, which has been beset by layoffs, management reorganizations and a revolving door of executive departures.

The company cannot compete with hot Web companies such as Facebook and Twitter when it comes to luring the most sought-after engineers and many of the staffers within the company have tired of the seemingly endless reorganizations and lost their competitive drive, said one Yahoo employee, speaking anonymously.

“There are fundamental cultural issues, there are people who are not motivated to do big things,” the Yahoo employee said.

Thompson, 54, who speaks in a thick Boston accent, is described as calm under pressure and adept at energizing his team.

One of his signature management styles involves creating different groups, each tasked with achieving the same goal and pitting them against each other, said one PayPal manager who asked to remain anonymous.

“He’s not afraid to experiment,” the person said.

“He’ll build teams that are both going after the same thing,” the person said. The idea is “you guys go after the same thing, whoever does it better wins,” the PayPal manager explained.

Thompson said in an interview that Yahoo was in a strong position with its large user base of more than 700 million people.

“The traffic itself that these sites generate is a very big number, the collection of assets that sit below this core business I think are not well understood and clearly have tremendous opportunity to be leveraged as we look forward to the future.” (Additional reporting by Alistair Barr and Nadia Damouni; editing by Maureen Bavdek, Gunna Dickson, Bernard Orr and Andre Grenon)

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LOS ANGELES Oprah Winfrey earned the rare opportunity to convert her media charisma into a monogramed TV channel. Now she’s the one tasked with rescuing OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, after a disappointing first year.

It’s a high-stakes,wholesale Ralph Lauren shoes, potentially ego-shattering challenge that could make the strongest woman or man flinch. But win or lose, Winfrey says she relishes the fight to turn OWN’s fortunes around.

“Yes, some mistakes were made. Who hasn’t made mistakes? The real beauty is you can say, `I learned from that,’” Winfrey said. “I don’t worry about failure. I worry about, `Did I do all I could do?’”

The cable channel, which marks its first year Jan. 1, is trying for a fresh start after executive turnover and missteps that proved OWN lacked a solid foundation on which to build, this despite a Discovery Communications investment of a reported $250 million and counting.

Viewers snubbed the lineup that skimped on programming and, surprisingly, what should have been OWN’s unique weapon of choice: Winfrey herself, whose limited on-air presence will be boosted Sunday with a new weekly series, “Oprah’s Next Chapter.”

OWN has failed to improve on, or in some instances even match, the modest ratings and small audience earned by the low-profile Discovery Health channel it replaced.

“I would absolutely say it is and was not where I want it to be for year one,” Winfrey said. “My focus up until (last) May was doing what I do best, which is `The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ and giving that my full attention” until its conclusion.

But Winfrey, who said management team errors in planning and execution could serve as a cautionary tale (“I was never interested in writing a book. … THIS could be a book”), rejects the idea that a single year’s performance will determine OWN’s ultimate fate. Or hers.

“Somebody was talking to me in that kind of saddened, `How are you?’ tone, and I was thinking, `I’m fine,’” said Winfrey, 57, who ruled as the queen of daytime TV until she ended her talk show after 25 years and turned her attention to the channel.

“I realized the reason people have this tone is they’re reading all the press (about OWN), so you see me and wonder if I can still walk. … I am a determined and committed woman. I don’t give up. I’m just getting started,” she said in a recent interview.

One bonus of being Oprah: She has received pep talks from other media movers and shakers.

“Everybody has told me Ted Turner has told me, Barry Diller has told me, Lorne Michaels has told me, David Geffen has told me anybody who’s ever worked with a channel, who’s ever done anything, has said it takes three to five years,” she said, adding, “You have to do the work. … You do not have to pay attention to the criticism.”

Year two for OWN will reflect executive changes made last July, when Winfrey expanded her role at the channel by adding the roles of chief executive and chief creative officer to her position as chairman. Discovery Communications COO Peter Liguori had filled in as interim head after OWN CEO Christina Norman was dismissed in the wake of poor ratings.

Although the channel’s ownership is split evenly between Discovery and Winfrey’s Chicago-based production company, Harpo Inc., it is Discovery’s money that’s on the line.

With more scheduling consistency, movies, original series with and without Winfrey, and “a lot more Oprah in general,” Discovery is “a lot more confident that we’re heading in the right direction,” said company spokesman David Leavy.

Sheri Salata and Erik Logan, two veteran Harpo executives, were brought on board to share the title of OWN president, with Logan moving from Chicago to OWN’s Los Angeles headquarters.

Logan said he clearly understands the hard work in establishing any cable channel, and this one in particular.

“One of the greatest gifts and challenges is to have her name on the door,” Logan said of his top boss. “Everything you do garners a high level of scrutiny and attention. … We don’t run from that.”

The initially slight programming lineup is being beefed up, most notably with “Oprah’s Next Chapter.” The weekly series debuts 9 p.m.-11 p.m. EST Sunday with Winfrey’s visit to the New Hampshire home of Steven Tyler.

“Next Chapter” turns the once studio-bound Winfrey into a globe-trotting interviewer who drops into the home of a Hasidic Jewish family in New York, George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in California and cook Paula Deen’s Georgia estate. There is also a trip with Sean Penn to Haiti, fire-walking with Tony Robbins and a planned India trip with Deepak Chopra.

The injection of Winfrey on-screen, not just in the executive suite, is sorely needed, suggested one industry analyst.

“The biggest mistake they made is, if it’s the Oprah Winfrey Network, where’s Oprah?” said Bill Carroll of media buying firm Katz Media.

He compared OWN’s Winfrey vacuum to programming the Court TV channel without courtroom shows or the Major League Baseball channel without games: “After a while, viewers stop going,” Carroll said.

OWN has averaged about 136,000 viewers a day, a drop of 8 percent from what Discovery Health drew in 2010, although it’s up slightly in total viewers in prime time and has seen an 8 percent increase among women ages 25 to 54, part of the channel’s hoped-for demographic.

Popular shows include “The Judds,” which ran for six episodes in April and May; “Our America With Lisa Ling”; and the reality series “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s,” which attracted a strong African-American audience (prompting media reports that OWN intended to skew toward black viewers, an assertion that Discovery and Winfrey deny. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to turn into the `Roots’ channel,” Winfrey said, wryly.)

Winfrey also is on-air with “Oprah’s Lifeclass,” which draws on her talk-show archives, and “Oprah’s Master Class,” a series of high-achiever biography specials. But, she said, she never “was supposed to carry the channel on my back, and it never was supposed to be about me being on the air as much as possible.” Instead, O magazine, with Winfrey as monthly cover girl and articles reflecting her better-life philosophy, is the intended model.

She attributes the channel’s rough start to a more basic error: The lack of a “library” of programming for the many hours of airtime not filled by original shows, compounded by overconfidence about her market value in general.

“I don’t understand what anybody was thinking. You’re going on the air, you’ve got four shows. What do you think you’re going to do by Tuesday? Did they think people were going to turn on the channel just because it had my name on it?” she said, sounding almost eager to cast doubt on her drawing power.

“People didn’t turn on `The Oprah Winfrey Show’ because my name was on it. It was absolutely topic driven every day,” she said.

Such modest expressions aside, Winfrey’s involvement clearly is key to the channel’s success. She’s glad to make the commitment, she said. As her longtime boyfriend Stedman Graham told her, she’d be bored silly today if she’d taken any lengthy break after ending her daytime show.

Discovery is also in it for “the long term,” said spokesman Leavy, citing the three to five years that other cable channels have needed to develop audience-grabbing hits and firmly establish themselves.

He declined to specify what Discovery has spent so far on the venture, calling media estimates high. But he pointed to long-term advertising contracts with major companies including Procter & Gamble, and hopes of new carriage fees from cable providers that have been airing the channel for free.

Viewership that has been lower than expected, however, has meant “make goods” in ad time for sponsors.

Winfrey, who describes herself as obsessed by ratings for the first time in her career, said she’s giving OWN “everything I’ve got. I’ve spent more energy doing this than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life.”

With good reason. “I walked in today (to OWN’s offices) and felt uplifted to see my name on the door, Oprah Winfrey Network,” she said. “Just to … be able to sit in a room with a team of people presenting you with ideas what a gift that is.”

It has also made OWN her ultimate responsibility.

“Every third week, someone new was in charge, and now she’s in charge. From where I sit, this is going to be her success or her failure,” said analyst Carroll.

Winfrey claims to have an unlikely sounding Plan B if the channel falls short.

“If this doesn’t work out, I’m going to go into organic farming in Maui. And I’m not kidding.”

___

Online:

http://www.oprah.com/own

___

EDITOR’S NOTE Lynn Elber is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. She can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org.

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For more information, visit Polkadots and Moonbeams’ Web site.

Check out Hollywood’s shining stars rocking metallics!

Approximate measurements: 11Wx 7Hx 3D (inches)

PRODUCT DETAILS

Secure closure

OMG! I just love this Verona Sequin Bag by Anissa! It looks rich and glitzy — and there is never an off-time to wear sequins. I wear sequins about as often as a Vegas showgirl and you would too if you had the perfect accessory.

Detachable shoulder strap

Shoulder strap: 7 inch drop

Well, here it is, available online for $86 from Los Angeles boutique Polka Dots and Moonbeams. Who doesn’t feel that pang for shine in their wardrobe? I love the shape of this bag, the fact that it looks like this year’s Dolce & Gabbana, and that the price is really good!

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The bag is something to wear against all the neutrals. Crystal embellishments and metallics are all the rage this season and going forward to fall into winter. Also, this type of bag is like a glittery Transformer toy, which means you can stroke the sequins to go from silver/pink to silver/blue!

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Yaz Kurhan, better known as her nom de jewelry Yazbukey, is no one to hide her light below a bushel. For her “Fabulous African Saga” accessories and fashionable family decor, Kurhan took over Tigersushi in Paris’ Marais neighborhood for a collection launch celebration with her likeminded friends, including stylists Catherine Baba and Elisa Nalin (on left, with Kurhan), Purple’s Caroline Gaimari, Lanvin’s Elie Top, Sarah Lerfel from Colette, and Michelle Harper, in town from New York because Couture week. Fancy friends, whatever, doesn’t make for a muggy hostess: Kurhan comfortably installed herself on a throne made of plastic grocery-store crates (made for the occasion along Diplomates, the Paris art collective) and welcomed her visitors.

Kurhan chose Africa as the theme for her Fall collection, based on childhood memories growing up in Saudi Arabia. “My father was portion of the Turkish legation there and he organized the Islamic session for numerous years,” she said. “I memorize playing with the children of all the African dignitaries at the session, and although I’ve not visited Africa, I got a emotion for its variety from namely experience.” Kurhan, who divides her time between Paris and New York (where she dreams up accessories for Zac Posen’s Z Spoke line), continues to go in Plexiglas, creating flattened versions of everyday Africana, including flora, fauna, and everything in between. Case in point: There are tiger’s paw pendants with scratch-mark traces, snake sunglasses, and banana cilia pins—as well as a ghetto blaster bag. And for the 1st time, plastic walls decals combine the wearable offerings, including a portrait of Naomi Campbell and a lion’s head.
—Rebecca Voight

Photo: Courtesy of Yazbukey

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If you’re out and approximately in New York City, you may yet have blotted Alexander Wang’s new T campaign stars. Guerrilla-style posters featuring rockers Santigold and Spankrock have already begun papering the metropolis. The duo follows Ashley Smith and Diplo as the new faces of T for Fall ‘11, shot by Dan Jackson and styled by Alastair McKimm. They also seem in Wang’s new campaign video, a remix of Santigold’s unattached “Go” by Switch, Diplo’s associate in Major Lazer, debuting exclusively under.

Why Santi and Spank? “Their endless talent, matchless vigor, and most of entire, down-to-earth identity make them the perfect performance for T,” Wang told Style.com. All of those qualities are above exhibit in the behind-the-scenes video the label created surrounding the movement, which arrives today by AlexanderWang.com. That’s no all namely you’ll find aboard the site. The Fall ‘11 T collection kicks the designer’s e-commerce boutique today as well.

—Matthew Schneier

Photo: Courtesy of T by Alexander Wang

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Tell Us: Were you wondered at Carson’s elimination?

Kressley vowed to be behind “every week, applause for my castmates!”

VIDEO: Watch Chaz Bono conquer his shyness and jolts his booty!

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Talk almost having a nice outlook!

Carson Kressley was excluded on Tuesday night’s Dancing with the Stars, yet the mainstream guru kept on a merry face.

“Thank you to everyone involved with Dancing with the Stars,” Kressley, 41, gushed. “First of always to [Anna Trebunskaya], who has been the maximum prodigious, patient, kind, wonderful partner. [Thanks to] my castmates, to the magistrates, to the producers, to my friends, kin, fans, this has been pure delight for me. I wish I could make folk smile and smile and have a magnificent period.”

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By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, press here.

Not everybody loves the flatness of a flip-flop or a haute summer barely there sandal. What’s missing is the scope and the advocate. You can get both here from Sam Edelman and KSwiss, who offer an affordable option to higher priced kicks favor Katie Holmes’ $595 Jimmy Choo pair.

Super cute summer sneaks (like the Sam Edelman ‘Alexander’ Studded Sneaker pictured at left) are a mini rebellious and sweet in the meantime.

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