Christine

Google Drives Shoppers, While Yahoo! Drives Buyers

While it wasn't the focus of the recent Nielsen//NetRatings talks, I found it striking that the conversion rates generated from Google searches can be substantially lower than those coming from Yahoo!.

Word-of-Mouth Drives Brand Awareness, Not Sales Conversion

Nielsen//NetRatings shared some interesting analysis today on word-of-mouth marketing and search - based on their numbers, these techniques are important for educating consumers and building brand awareness. Actual sales conversion, however, tends to occur separately:

Technorati Searchlet Wins the Typepad Search Bar Death Match

In the year-plus that I've had this blog, I've been frustrated by the lack of a decent site search. Here are snapshot reviews of the 13 widgets I tested today in looking to meet a simple need: a simple text entry search interface with clean, up-to-date results on the content in my blog. You'd think this would be easy, but it's not. Take a look at how these site search contenders matched up:

New Link: Christine.net Job Board

Like many folks in Silicon Valley, I receive numerous requests for recruiting help - friends, people I've worked with, portfolio companies, and people whose startups I like but haven't invested in. Since we haven't yet launched an Omidyar.net job board, I thought a decent measure might be to instead start up a separate feed for job listings that I have been asked for help on.

Is Page Views/Employee the New Performance Benchmark?

A quirky thought struck me today: Is page view per employee the new benchmark for establishing competent performance at a Web company?

LOST: Notes from Silicon Valley Summit

A lament for lost writing: When, oh when, will I ever learn? After packaging up snippets and takeaway thoughts from the 2006 Silicon Valley Summit, I was horrified to watch as Firefox hung...all....day. After many hours, I sadly clicked over to Force Quit and let the form data slip away.

Silicon Valley Summit Skews Low on Women

Environment: The Deal and Tech Confidential's 2006 Silicon Valley Summit.

New Technologies Driving Mobile Media Services

Many PC users take it for granted that their desktop will give them the ability to create, communicate, and discover information without regard for interoperability. On the mobile platform, however, many of these capabilities are either nascent or nonexistent. There were a number of new technologies launched at DEMOfall 2006 that will power a new generation of media and content services.