US web portal Yahoo has named Scott Thompson, the president of online payments firm Paypal, as its new head.

He will fill the vacancy left by Carol Bartz, who was dismissed as chief executive in September after failing to turn around the company's fortunes.

Mr. Thompson has headed Paypal, the payments division of eBay, since 2008, during which time its userbase doubled. Yahoo is currently undergoing a strategic review as it has failed to keep up with rivals such as Google.

The US firm's key products, beside its search engine, include photo sharing site Flickr and its webmail platform.

However, its domination of webmail - and the ancillary services it offers its email account holders - is under threat as younger users migrate to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, BBC reported.