Thanks to Marissa Mayer, Yahoo is getting back its mojo

Jacky Yap

September 12, 2013

At an announcement at one of the most anticipated tech conference TechCrunch Disrupt, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced that Yahoo’s monthly active users are up 20% to 800 million globally, including 350 million monthly active users on mobile.

The numbers do not include the traffic from Tumblr, the high traffic site that Yahoo bought for an estimated US$1 billion earlier this year.

Some of Yahoo’s core products include mail, news, finance, and search. Out of all the products, search and mail are the ones that saw the most growth since Mayer took over as CEO. The Yahoo mobile team has also grown a factor of 10 since July 2012.

Skeptical?

We had the same sentiments, but Mayer quickly dismissed it by sharing that the company has picked up a bunch of new talents through the 20+ acquihires it has made since a year ago. Today Yahoo gets more than 12,000 resumes each week, equivalent to how many employees the company has today. That’s a rise of five to six times compared to what the company was receiving before she took over.

Of course, not all applications are accepted, as Yahoo is actively brining back ex-Yahoo employees into the newly rebranded company. Out of all the recent new hires, some 14% of them are ex-Yahoo employees, especially for department which the company is focusing on, including mobile.

Mayer also revealed at TechCrunch Disrupt this year that she is looking for longer term rather than short term gains, as she sees growth as a three year process.

“I have said it would take multiple years…for the growth to be the way we wanted it to be. Having the right people and products and getting to the right traffic. People, products, traffic and revenue” – Marissa Mayer

With Yahoo revitalising its brand, it is slowly gaining its popularity as one of the best company to work for.

So we thought.

Both Business Insider and CNN has yet to list the company as one of the top 25 companies to work for. Facebook still leads the number one tech company to work for on Business Insider, while Google ranks number one on CNN.