Yahoo’s Chief Technologist Starts New Gig
March 20, 2010
It may sound painfully dumb to point out that Yahoo's technology is important to the company, but there you have it. Unfortunately for the organization, that connection also makes it seem somewhat problematic that Yahoo's Chief Technologist has moved on.
Benchmark Capital announced today that Sam Pullara, who was Yahoo's Chief Technologist, has joined it as an Entrepreneur in Residence. That means Pullara, EVP Ash Patel, and SVP of Revenue Joanne Bradford have all left Yahoo in the space of a week.
It's a hard to put that in a positive light; you'd have to look long and hard to find a company eager to lose that many senior people over the course of just a few days.
Things may not be as bad as they appear, though. As we explained on Monday, Bradford's something of a job-hopper. Patel really intends to spend more time with his family. And now, Pullara's new job will be different enough from his position at Yahoo that it doesn't look like he was just abandoning ship.
Then here's one more fact Yahoo can take comfort in: Google lost an employee today, too. Robin Wauters reported this afternoon that Senior Product Manager Gummi Hafsteinsson has gone to work for an app company called Siri.
Facebook Users Favor Online News Sites
March 19, 2010
Internet users who click on links posted on Facebook that lead to news and media websites are more loyal to those portals than those coming from Google News, according to new data from Hitwise.
Among the most popular top 5 print media websites for the week ending March 6, 78 percent of Facebook users were returning visitors compared to 67 percent from Google news. The same was true for broadcast media, with 77 percent returning for Facebook compared to 64 percent for Google News.
Heather Hopkins, Senior Online Analyst, Hitwise, collected the numbers using clickstream data. The metric reports the percentage of visits by source (i.e. Google, Yahoo! Google News, Facebook, etc) that were new versus returning. New visitors are defined as those that haven't visited the site within the past 30 days.
"Interestingly, visitors from Google are less likely to be returning visitors than average for either Google News or Facebook," said Hopkins.
"This reinforces the long term value to News and Media organizations of working with the likes of Google News and Facebook."
Twitter Responsible For Very Little Visits To News and Media
March 19, 2010
The latest post from Hitwise discusses where users travel after leaving Twitter. The post further breaks down the various news and media sites which receive the greatest traffic from Twitter.
- Twitter.com accounted for 0.14% of upstream visits to News and Media sites last week. (Note that we are measuring website visits from Twitter.com only.) This compares to 3.64% from Facebook and 1.27% from Google News.
- Facebook was the #3 source of visits to News and Media websites last week. Google News was the #11 site and Twitter.com ranked #39.
- Upstream visits from Twitter.com to News and Media sites have grown by 54% over the past year.
Rumor Schedules Google China Exit For April 10th
March 19, 2010
Google may end its search operations in China very soon, according to a new report. A local employee supposedly told a Chinese newspaper that Google will announce its plans to leave on Monday, March 22nd, and then actually pull out on Saturday, April 10th.
It's hard to judge the accuracy of this information. On the one hand, there have been no shortages of rumors and hoaxes surrounding the situation in China. Also, Saturday seems like a rather odd day for any company to execute a major business maneuver.
At the same time, the tension between Google and the Chinese government has been mounting for months, and there have been multiple signs that the two sides are just about done talking.
So we'll just present what little fresh info is available. A Bloomberg article stated this morning, "Google Inc. may pull out of China on April 10, China Business News reported today, citing an unidentified Chinese sales agent for the company." Furthermore, "The search engine may announce its exit on March 22 . . . . It may also reveal plans for its China workforce on the same day, according to the report. "
We'll see what happens. At least the Monday target date won't keep everyone on edge for too long.
