Can Marissa Mayer turn Yahoo around?

When Yahoo chose Marissa Mayer as its new CEO, it set off a firestorm of debate – about the future of the company, about corporate culture, about executive compensation (some reports estimate her compensation at upwards of $100 million), about women in technology and, yes, even about motherhood. But, as much as has been written and said about Mayer, she’s still a bit of an enigma, particularly so in the way that matters most: No one is quite sure what direction she’ll take the company. And that’s not a question that will get a quick or tidy answer either. As Kara Swisher put it in one of her many pieces about Mayer on AllThingsD, “Opinions so far are largely in Mayer’s favor—as in, she shall fix all that ails Yahoo—but others properly stressed that the task she faces is perhaps unfixable by anyone. We’ll see, won’t we—and not soon? Because it is a task that should and will undoubtedly take Mayer years to accomplish—and the board appears to have given her much time to do so.”

A few weeks in however, there are at least several hints as to how Mayer might approach the job. First, there was her first (leaked) internal memo to employees, which didn’t say much, but did set a tone, so to speak. (“You are doing important work. Please don’t stop,” she wrote.) Then, she was spotted grabbing her own lunch in the cafeteria, which sent employees into “paroxysms of bliss,” according to one report in the San Francisco Chronicle. But mostly, many a tech writer has spent the last few weeks digging into Mayer’s past, particularly her tenure at Google, to get clues as to the future of Yahoo. In summary, Nicholas Carlson wrote in a Business Insider piece, “Yahoo hired Mayer to be a ‘products’ CEO … But that doesn’t mean Mayer is going to run away from content or media. She actually ran toward media at Google, developing Google News, trying to buy Digg and Yelp, and successfully acquiring Zagat. Expect Mayer to bring the modern aspects of those media properties to Yahoo.”

• Marissa Mayer’s 9 Principles of Innovation (Fast Company)

• Marissa Mayer’s Secret Plan To Save Yahoo Is Right Under Our Nose! (San Francisco Chronicle)

• Buy Yahoo!; CEO Marissa Mayer Will Lead It Out to $20 (Forbes)

• One Week of Mayer at Yahoo: Whither Ross? New Old Yahoos? More Search? Product Side ‘Elated!’ (AllThingsD)

• ‘Yes, Keep Moving’: Marissa Mayer’s First Memo to Yahoos (Natch!) (AllThingsD)

• Marissa Mayer and the masculine requirements for success (CNNMoney)

• Six Things Marissa Mayer Can Do to Get Yahoo Back On Track (AdAge)

• Question for a C.E.O.: What Is Yahoo? (New York Times)

• Yahoo to Pay Mayer $100 Million Over Five Years (Wall Street Journal)

• New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Wins Hearts, Makes News—At Lunch (NBC Bay Area)