Search Firms - Other

We were feeling the love today with our Earth Day design, which got a few kudos from industry watchers (thanks Mashable!) And props to the Ask.com users who correctly answered the Question of the Day. It is a sad, but potent reminder that a plastic bottle takes 450 years to decompose.

Special thanks to Ask.com's Diana Furka and Holly Boston for this beauty...

 

 

Valerie Combs, VP Communications

This week we learned that Ask.com’s flagship mobile app for the iPhone has been selected as an Official Honoree by the Webby Awards, in the Social category. We’re honored; of the close to 10,000 entries received for the 15th Annual Webby Awards, less than 10 percent were selected as Official Honorees. This builds on Ask for iPhone's recent Appy Awards win in the Reference category earlier this year.

While it feels great to see our app recognized by the industry, what's really exciting is seeing our users engaging with it. We've seen around half a million downloads since our November launch, with more than 550,000 updates to the app. What's more, mobile users are contributing more content (questions, comments and answers) than their web counterparts, which tells us that mobile truly is the killer platform for the Q&A use case.

It's no secret Ask is focused heavily on mobile as we retool our strategy around pure Q&A. When people are on the go, they want answers quickly and they want them to be accurate; they aren’t necessarily looking to wade through a sea of blue links each time they have a question. This is exactly what inspires us to continue on our path of building the most comprehensive and fun mobile Q&A experience around.

 

Valerie Combs, VP, Communications

This week we learned that Ask.com’s flagship mobile app for the iPhone has been selected as an Official Honoree by the Webby Awards, in the Social category. We’re honored; of the close to 10,000 entries received for the 15th Annual Webby Awards, less than 10 percent were selected as Official Honorees. This builds on Ask for iPhone's recent Appy Awards win in the Reference category earlier this year.

While it feels great to see our app recognized by the industry, what's really exciting is seeing our users engaging with it. We've seen around half a million downloads since our November launch, with more than 550,000 updates to the app. What's more, mobile users are contributing more content (questions, comments and answers) than their web counterparts, which tells us that mobile truly is the killer platform for the Q&A use case.

It's no secret Ask is focused heavily on mobile as we retool our strategy around pure Q&A. When people are on the go, they want answers quickly and they want them to be accurate; they aren’t necessarily looking to wade through a sea of blue links each time they have a question. This is exactly what inspires us to continue on our path of building the most comprehensive and fun mobile Q&A experience around.

 

Valerie Combs, VP, Communications

Here we go again!

I'm happy to announce that a new version of Trexy has just gone live. ;-)

We've learnt lots of lessons from our previous versions and made many changes, from the backend engine, to the new user interface and a simpler strapline:


Finding what others found is the essence of the search trails idea: recommending results based on the search behaviour of others.

It is still the aim of our engine - to safely share search intelligence for the benefit of all users. Our new engine merges user search trails with crawler-based results to re-rank and describe search results.

We hope Trexy helps you find what others found. Your feedback is very welcome: support@trexy.com.

Stay tuned for more developments.

When you have a question on the go, you want to be able to get a direct answer to your question rather than wading through a sea of useless blue links. It was with this understanding that we launched our iPhone app last year. Our users agree, and have downloaded the app nearly half a million times since November.

We’re taking this concept even further with a new app that we’ll be encouraging folks to check out at SXSW, called Ask Around. Ask Around is a location-centric app that lets people join, save and share conversations taking place in their immediate vicinity.

We saw some of this location-centric chat behavior evolving naturally in our flagship app and took the hint that there was real interest in having a discussion with those people around you.  Launching Ask Around as a separate app dedicated wholly to this use case lets everyone explore the shared experience of location. Want to have a behind the scenes conversation with friends in the bar? Predict the next play in the game to those watching it with you? Find out where off campus people are heading tonight?  Discover what the crowd across the street is looking at? Ask Around is the app for that.

And that’s not all.  Ask Around gives you a view into the location-centric conversations happening in places you’re not at.  Get a preview of the scene at the bars you’re considering heading to, without leaving where you are. See what the folks at the conference are talking about even if you can’t attend. Or, check back in on an event or location you left hours ago, and see how the conversation has evolved.

Here’s how it works: The app uses your phone’s built-in location-detection (GPS, cell triangulation, wifi, etc.) to tell where you are, and offers a slide function to adjust distance for the conversations you want to view from a few hundred yards, up to 15 miles. There’s also a map allowing you to see conversations on specific streets, intersections, towns or cities (you can check out conversations outside of your location but can’t join them because this is all about location being the nexus of the conversation). You can also save ‘spots’, such as a bar, a classroom, a political rally, a convention center, or the beach.  Then you can tune back into the conversation to see how it unfolds after you’ve left, or before you arrive.  The app also allows you to share these ‘spots’ with other users.

Check out our video to see the app in action:

 

What Ask Around is not about is playing matchmaker or helping you meet new friends. It’s not about direct messaging, connecting, or following other users. At least not yet. Ask Around is about using location as a common denominator and allowing location-based Q&A to blossom into conversation – giving you a window into the real-time dialogue unfolding around you.

Click here to get notified when Ask Around is available in the store.  We want you to Ask Around…and let us know what you think!

DOUG

When you have a question on the go, you want to be able to get a direct answer to your question rather than wading through a sea of useless blue links. It was with this understanding that we launched our iPhone app last year. Our users agree, and have downloaded the app nearly half a million times since November.

We’re taking this concept even further with a new app that we’ll be encouraging folks to check out at SXSW, called Ask Around. Ask Around is a location-centric app that lets people join, save and share conversations taking place in their immediate vicinity.

We saw some of this location-centric chat behavior evolving naturally in our flagship app and took the hint that there was real interest in having a discussion with those people around you.  Launching Ask Around as a separate app dedicated wholly to this use case lets everyone explore the shared experience of location. Want to have a behind the scenes conversation with friends in the bar? Predict the next play in the game to those watching it with you? Find out where off campus people are heading tonight?  Discover what the crowd across the street is looking at? Ask Around is the app for that.

And that’s not all.  Ask Around gives you a view into the location-centric conversations happening in places you’re not at.  Get a preview of the scene at the bars you’re considering heading to, without leaving where you are. See what the folks at the conference are talking about even if you can’t attend. Or, check back in on an event or location you left hours ago, and see how the conversation has evolved.

Here’s how it works: The app uses your phone’s built-in location-detection (GPS, cell triangulation, wifi, etc.) to tell where you are, and offers a slide function to adjust distance for the conversations you want to view from a few hundred yards, up to 15 miles. There’s also a map allowing you to see conversations on specific streets, intersections, towns or cities (you can check out conversations outside of your location but can’t join them because this is all about location being the nexus of the conversation). You can also save ‘spots’, such as a bar, a classroom, a political rally, a convention center, or the beach.  Then you can tune back into the conversation to see how it unfolds after you’ve left, or before you arrive.  The app also allows you to share these ‘spots’ with other users.

Check out our video to see the app in action:

 

What Ask Around is not about is playing matchmaker or helping you meet new friends. It’s not about direct messaging, connecting, or following other users. At least not yet. Ask Around is about using location as a common denominator and allowing location-based Q&A to blossom into conversation – giving you a window into the real-time dialogue unfolding around you.

Click here to get notified when Ask Around is available in the store.  We want you to Ask Around…and let us know what you think!

DOUG

Mathew Ingram at GigaOM talked to me this week, and I think he hit all the salient point about how local ads monetize best in a local context -- 4X better -- and how hard it is to grow local...

It's not just awards season in Hollywood. Topix has just won a prize of its own. A winner in the Consumer Services: Community Platform category, Topix is the largest local online community in the U.S. This year's OnMedia winners were...

It’s been awhile since our last post, as we’ve been heads down working on a slew of updates designed to up the quality of our users’ experience on Ask.com – that means the quality of questions asked and the relevance/usefulness of answers produced.
 
To that end, this week we began rolling out the ability to personalize your Q&A experience on Ask.com with our Browse by Interests tab. So, once you create a profile on Ask.com, we will automatically ferret out questions and answers related to those topics, and showcase those in the My Interests tab in the Browse Q&A section. If you allow us to grab profile info from another social network – say Facebook or LinkedIn – we will also use that data to personalize the My Interests tab.
 
This personalized experience is part of our larger vision for what Ask.com Q&A is about. First, if the answer already exists on the Web and you can get it in milliseconds without bugging a single person, we should give it to you. Second, if you do need a person to answer, we should optimize the chances of you getting a high quality answer – quickly – as well as make it easy and fun to ask subsequent questions. From a feature standpoint, that means things like intelligent routing so your question is delivered to the people most qualified to answer it first. The ability to follow people who consistently provide highly relevant questions and answers on the site also helps you customize your experience. And now, the ability to filter your experience to reflect the questions and answers most pertinent to your life takes that one step further.
 
Check out this short video for more detail on how personalized browse works. And if you’re not yet part of the Ask.com Q&A beta, download our mobile app, or click this link for an invite.

Happy New Year!

Jason Rupp, Director, Product Management

It’s been awhile since our last post, as we’ve been heads down working on a slew of updates designed to up the quality of our users’ experience on Ask.com – that means the quality of questions asked and the relevance/usefulness of answers produced.
 
To that end, this week we began rolling out the ability to personalize your Q&A experience on Ask.com with our Browse by Interests tab. So, once you create a profile on Ask.com, we will automatically ferret out questions and answers related to those topics, and showcase those in the My Interests tab in the Browse Q&A section. If you allow us to grab profile info from another social network – say Facebook or LinkedIn – we will also use that data to personalize the My Interests tab.
 
This personalized experience is part of our larger vision for what Ask.com Q&A is about. First, if the answer already exists on the Web and you can get it in milliseconds without bugging a single person, we should give it to you. Second, if you do need a person to answer, we should optimize the chances of you getting a high quality answer – quickly – as well as make it easy and fun to ask subsequent questions. From a feature standpoint, that means things like intelligent routing so your question is delivered to the people most qualified to answer it first. The ability to follow people who consistently provide highly relevant questions and answers on the site also helps you customize your experience. And now, the ability to filter your experience to reflect the questions and answers most pertinent to your life takes that one step further.
 
Check out this short video for more detail on how personalized browse works. And if you’re not yet part of the Ask.com Q&A beta, download our mobile app, or click this link for an invite.

Happy New Year!

Jason Rupp, Director, Product Management