The Ask Attempt
I’ve heard from a number of people in the industry that the new CEO of Ask has been contacting them trying to get them back as brand ambassadors. Smart move? Yes. Executed well? No.
The CEO, if he isn’t already, needs to be reading Seth Godin’s blog. If he is already, I would suggest not skimming the entries. Why? It looks like he got the concept – the company made a boo-boo, and he knew that many influential bloggers we mad. So he reached out to them.
What did he miss?
- He insulted most of them in an article on Forbes.
- He missed meetings. (can’t say who with, they like their twitts anonymous)
- He missed the entire point they had all been making.
Why do I talk about Ask so much? Well they keep giving me reasons to AND I still think they have some great people with some great ideas. Remember my idea of an Ask/Yahoo deal? Well I have one thing to say to the Ask.com employees:
Yahoo is hiring.
Go take your ideas to a company with a greater following and the infrastructure to top the industry. Yahoo is hurting, but I think with the right ideas (the kind we see at Ask) they can take off again. I know the executives at Ask wanted Yahoo bought out, but that was just for PR purposes. We all know that was and still is a BAD idea.
UPDATE: Few more articles as of late. One is from The Lisa about Ask’s attempts with her. And the other is about how they are outsourcing various areas, to Microsoft no doubt. *sigh*
One response to "The Ask Attempt"
Ask has committed major blunders. So much so that as a brand, they cannot recover. For me, I’d like to say that I’m impressed with their tools and user innovations… I mean, Ask City was wonderfully addictive.
I use the past tense there because even if it’s still available, their commitment to users is not.
Gary Price was key in innovating Ask in the search space. The tools and experience proved they did many things right. Sadly, in a down economy, their company is worried more about turning a profit which is difficult as a tertiary engine with less than 1.5% market share.
I’m not sure I’d be referring people to Yahoo! just yet though. While they have the reputation and users to endorse industry change and innovation – they’re still a goat thanks to the Microsoft bids and Google partnership. They’ve also lost some good people. Bowman comes to mind.