Mark Jung was COO of Fox Interactive Media as of March 2006, the company that was sprung when News Corporation acquired MySpace and IGN, the company that Mark Jung co-founded and headed up as CEO.
This past week, Mark Jung stepped down.
Mark was my boss from May 2005 to December 2005 after he bought the company where I served as VP of Ad Sales. I left in December, 2005 as a result of the integration. To put it mildly, we never quite hit it off. He never gave me much respect. I had no hard feelings, clearly, he did (read on). To read my comments on why Mark might have left FIM, click here.
This week, rumors began to swirl that Mark Jung is in talks with MySpace competitor Facebook. Point is: that’s freaking ironic… though I am sure Mark managed to negotiate a severance package that lets him work for Viacom (or the Democratic party, for that matter…) for all we know.
To show you how much I like to take the high road: I’ll let bygones be bygones and offer Mr. Jung the following advice: Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Jung cannot co-exist in a room the size of Uranus.
My suggestion is: if you are going to report to anyone, choose someone worthy of your pedigree. Have your people call Terry Semel’s people and take at stap at shaping up Yahoo! There are a few people that Mr. Semel could/would bring alongside him to navigate against Google; you are on that short list. There are also a few people who managers and VPs at Yahoo! would look up to and you fit in that short list, partially because of your recent jackpot.
You also have a phenomenal track record at acquisitions and wooing young entrepreneurs and these are all things that Yahoo! could use. After all, Yahoo! bought both Del.icio.us and Flickr yet YouTube is now in Google’s hands. To see why that makes sense, click here.
I can see you working alongside Mr. Semel, but alongside / for Mark Zuckerberg? Who are we kidding? That’s a disaster waiting to happen. You know it, I know it, the American people know it.
As a Yahoo! shareholder, I’d love to see someone with your expertise and vision come in and help shape Yahoo! up.
Ah the irony…
In all likelihood though - and certainly I can be wrong on this - I see Mr. Jung heading out of the spotlight into the VC world; at least for a while.
In an era where VCs are finding themselves on the outside, Mark is an asset to any VC who is looking to lure young minds. He did time and time again over the past few years, with RottenTomatoes, AskMen, TeamXBOX and many others. The VC that took IGN private in 2003 and cashed in biggatime in the FIM sale is Boston-based Great Hill Partners, who would probably welcome him with open arms (assuming they had a civil relationship before the sale to FIM).
All signals point to something like that. Anyone who knows Mark (and I only met him some 10-15 times) knows that the mere notion of him reporting to Mark Zuckerberg is ludicrous.
Let alone the fact that Mark Zuckerberg’s VC deals have a clause that Mark Zuckerberg remain CEO so long as he chooses to. Mark Jung made some good money in the News Corp. deal and unless he loves Facebook, he’ll pass on babysitting a young CEO.
Besides, I think he probably got his share of turf battles at Fox Interactive Media with the deep bench and talent they had. At Facebook or at Yahoo!, he’d put up with more soap opera nonsense than someone of his intellect and experience (and nestegg) would care to put up with.
Mark my words.
Digg this Blog
Share on Facebook
WatchMojo on Twitter
WatchMojo on YouTube
Add to Favorites
WatchMojo Newsletter
