March 07, 2008 | Friday
Ask.com backpedals, spins…and circles drain?
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in News |Search Engines |Ask
Well, that last one may be up for some debate, but the first two are clear. After CEO Jim Safka made the announcement that Ask was shifting to a woman-focused site, the search also-ran today tried to deny their own previous PR. Here’s what went down, and why the future doesn’t now seem so rosy for Ask.
On Tuesday, Safka gave an interview to Reuters in which he laid out the strategy shift for Ask. That same day, according to the Reuters interview, he planned to share details of the change with employees.
But yesterday, Ask was backpedaling furiously. Instead of Safka doing the talking this time, it was corporate PR flack Nicholas Graham who had the unpleasant job of spinning the new corporate line:
The idea that we’re going to become a women’s site is just plain wrong. We know that a sizable group of our core user base is women, and we know they come to us for a certain kind of search: to get answers, often in areas of reference, health and entertainment. We recognize that we can’t be all things to all people, so we’re focusing on our core group of users. We want to build up the kinds of answers those users are looking for, while at the same time remain a strong search site.
Well, if Ask wants to talk “just plain wrong”, the chief exec not being able to articulate himself with the media might be a place to start.
So what happened? Tech and media industry tabloid site Valleywag - which, whatever you think of its intentions, does get a lot of solid inside information and break new, valid angles on stories - got word from one Ask employee on what is now being called the ”Marge Simpson plan”:
Apparently, Ask CEO Jim Safka changed his mind over the weekend and executives spent all day Sunday scrambling to put together a new plan. Our tipster blames the confusion on Safka’s secretive nature, telling us that when he comes into work his office door is always closed. The silence has once loyal employees feeling apathetic and looking for jobs elsewhere.
There is chatter that the midwestern American housewife beat just wasn’t cool enough for Safka’s self image as a businessman. (He formerly whipped popular US dating site Match.com into shape after some troubling times, spending a fair chunk of change along the way.)
Whatever the reason for this about-face, many industry observers are calling time on Ask. For one, respected search pundit Danny Sullivan:
Me, I see [Ask] as rapidly out of the game. Two days ago, they’re all about targeting married women and bailing on the West Coast digerati, much less a general audience. After all the bad attention, oh, surprise, some backspin. Tell you what. $100 bucks says you won’t be caring about Ask this time next year, much less writing much about them.
...Me, when I’m looking at what Ask is doing, I’m also going back and thinking of all the similar things I would hear before Excite went belly-up, before Go threw in the towel, before NBCi bit the dust, before AltaVista went into one if its upteenmillion redesigns and repositionings, before LookSmart tried to put the right spin on being dumped by Microsoft. And when you have that perspective, this is a no brainer. Ask is done as an independent, unique and important voice challenging [Google, Yahoo and Microsoft]. For me, it’s as clear as day—and I’m not alone...If I see them standing in a year, bake the crow, and I’ll merrily eat it.
Come on, Danny - tell us what you really think!
What’s certain is that Ask’s CEO has not done any favours for his credibility or the trustworthiness of what comes out of his mouth. As Sullivan also points out:
[F]act is, the new Ask CEO comes in, makes no effort to reach any of the people who actually cover search, disses a ton of them as “digerati” or “elite” and pretty much demonstrates to many of us that it’s game over for Ask. Because that’s not how you behave in a space when you’re seriously going after Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. That demonstrates pretty much that you have no clue what you’re doing. You can’t even get the messaging right. Geez. This isn’t a race where you can be that clueless. Blunt, but there it is.
So it’s been a dramatic few days for Ask. In light of that, it’s notable just how quiet the tech media is on this story. It’s almost as if it’s utterly irrelevant.
Barry Diller, whose IAC owns Ask, is probably going to have a hard think over the weekend about what to do with Ask - and the man who became CEO less than two months ago. Jim Safka may have gotten used to shutting his office door, but getting too comfortable in the captain’s chair might not be such a sound idea.
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