Features

NYTimes Bits, June 12, 2008, reported that

... Mr. Fayyad told his staff yesterday that he would be leaving and his departure is expected to be officially announced later today. Mr. Fayyad was the data guru at Yahoo, the person in charge of mining the terabytes of data collected by the company to improve things like the targeting of ads and content to Yahoo users. He was also in charge of Yahoo�s well-respected research organization.

I have asked Usama Fayyad is he has any comments to KDnuggets Readers about his resignation from Yahoo and his future plans and here is what he wrote:

Usama Fayyad:
After 4 great years at Yahoo! serving in a most exciting capacity as our industry's first Chief Data Officer, I got to the point where it was the right time to move on. These discussions are never easy, and it took about 6 months to decide the "right" time to announce my departure. I will remain with Yahoo! till September to ensure a smooth transition. My operational title at Yahoo! is Executive VP of Research and Strategic Data Solutions. My primary job was to start Yahoo! Research and make sure we turn it into the industry's best research lab. I recruited Prabhakar Raghavan to be the Head of Y! Research, and he has done a phenomenal job. Yahoo! Research is today considered the premier place in the world to do Research in the sciences of the Internet.

The majority of my job was to buld up Yahoo!'s massive data infrastructure that allows us to receive more that 25 Terabytes per day of usage data coming from Yahoo!'s half a billion users around the globe. This data is essential for understanding what is working on Yahoo!'s vast collection of properties and is the primary source of targeting information that allows Yahoo! to command premium prices for its vast inventory. This includes Behavioral, Geo, Demo, and many other types of targeting, including the newest smart ads. I am proud that Bassel Ojjeh, who has been leading SDS (Strategic Data Solutions) has delivered extremely well on his mission, including several significant and strategic acquisitions, and building the largest most scalable targeting system in the world.

With two very strong leaders in place, there is no better time to hand off the reins. They will both start reporting to the CTO after my departure, and if I did my job right they will take their teams to new heights that I never imagined. I personally remain passionate about the company, and I really will miss working closely with Yahoo!'s great founders: Jerry Yang, our CEO and David Filo, our Chief Yahoo!

I look forward to my next big step in the Fall. It will most likely be starting a new company, as I love the startup world and the opportunity that Yahoo! has offered me the past 4.5 years has afforded me a great perspective on the Internet, Search, Advertising, and the future interactive media. I hope to continue to be extremely active in the SIGKDD and I will be attending the KDD conferences just like I have for the past 18 years! I hope to see many of my data mining friends this August in Vegas at SIGKDD'08.

Usama