Natasha N. Khan - Latest Blog Entries

SEO success

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:56:00 -0500

Since implementing our SEO strategy, we have been experiencing the first signs of success. An increase in magazine orders, and now, high rankings on bing.com. For the popular search term "south asian american women", we are listed #2 and #3...after Wikipedia!

Show and Tell: Graphic Design Work

Mon, 18 May 2009 17:22:00 -0500

Though I have never worked as a professional graphic designer, I love to dabble in Adobe Photoshop as a hobby. Self-taught Creative Suite in college, I now have 6 years of experience and have been creating digital images, on a volunteer basis, for organizations, clubs, events, and ofcourse for SAPNA.

All of these pieces were created with Adobe Photoshop.

Theta Nu Xi Business Card

Be Beautiful Inside & Out Campaign Logo

Email Banner: Left Panel

You can definitely see more things I have created in the "Gallery" above.

Too many search engine sites, too little time

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:54:00 -0500

According to a very dated survey from a Nielsen/NetRatings study (circa 2005) - there are approx 4.5 billion Internet searches a day. Of this number, the break down of most popular search sites happens something like this:

Google 46.2%
Yahoo.com 22.5%
MSN.com 12.6%
AOL.com 5.4%
My Way 2.2%
ASK (askjeeves) 1.6% (but with their recent advertising campaigns..I hope they have more market share than this)
Netscape.com 1.6%
iWon .9%
Earthlink .8%
DogPile .9%
Others 5.3%

The funny thing is, the only sites that create their own index (aka do not only rely on other sites for their search feeds) are:

Google
Yahoo
MSN
Ask Jeeves

I stress only because even though Google has its own index, it is fed by Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org). Open Directory Project also feeds AOL and Earthlink. If you haven't submitted your website to ODP then I highly suggest you do - its not a search engine - they only produce what is registered on the website and approved by their editors.

Facebook CEO Reflects on Online Social Behavior

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:54:00 -0500

“I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before … that means that people are using Facebook, and the applications and the ecosystem, more and more.” - Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook @ the Web 2.0 Summit

I certainly see it happening but what are the ramifications? Online users are opting to send Facebook messages and email in the place of actual human interaction. Will this negatively effect our socializing behaviors or rather improve relationships by way of closing gaps in distance and creating a larger network?

From a business perspective, my concern is the influx of information pollution. As more people are generating content - as in the world of advertising - it is becoming harder to grab user attention on Facebook. My own account is a mess of events, group invites, and app suggestions - I usually just choose ignore all.

I see a need for simplification. Facebook is trying, with customized list with different levels of privacies and filtered newsfeeds, but since that functionality was not built in from the beginning, its very annoying and time consuming to back track and create lists (especially when you have 1000+ friends).

Facebook is the strong front runner in the world of social networking sites but it has its critics. If a new social networking website could make transitioning easy and build in this customization functionality from the beginning, I could see a migration.