Carol Bartz | Photo: Jonathan Alcorn/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Despite grumblings in some tech circles that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's days may be numbered, the company's chief product officer Blake Irving says he has her back.

At Federated Media's Conversational Marketing Summit today, Federated chairman John Battelle asked Irving if Bartz is going to be around much longer. In response, Irving said, "I hope so."

"Carol is very good. She's a very good CEO. She knows what needs to be done. She knows how many things need to get fixed. She's assembled a great team," he said. "And she has a lot of momentum."

Still, he acknowledged that "there's frustration" about why changes aren't happening faster. But he said that tackling the "gnarly" problems that plague a 15-year-old company is a tough task.

In his boss' defense, Irving said Bartz has been "re-architecting" and rebuilding the company from the ground up to boost the systems that support content and media infrastructure.

With a crowd of markets in front of him, Irving also talked up Yahoo's upcoming Livestand digital platform for publishers (due out this fall), and said the tablet application, which many have likened to the popular Flipboard app for the iPad, aims to personalize digital media for the user while giving publishers a magazine-like newsstand on the tablet.

Although brand dollars have not moved very quickly to the Web, he said the tablet might change the equation.