Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Wednesday 5 March 2008, 5:23 PM
What Women Want (to Ask.com)
So Ask.com is reinventing itself as a women's search site. Perhaps I'm just being a stupid male here, but... why?! What do women search for that a pan-gender search engine cannot provide? Please, if someone knows, do tell.
The news does remind me, however, of a bit in yesterday's Eee press release, in which Asus proudly proclaims:
Although petite in size, this high performance miniature computer truly performs and comes with a durable shock-proof solid-state design - making it easy for housewives, office ladies and students alike to carry and connect to the Internet.
I did not make that up. But I do find it a richly amusing idea that housewives and "office ladies" are best compared with students for, I gather, their weak arms and general clumsiness. Bring on 1980!
PreviousComments on this post
Add me to that list of 'Stupid males'!
Maybe the plan is to morph into a content portal much like Yahoo but for women. My guess is they would leave search as it is, but provide news feeds and other women focused content alongside it.
I suspect harpless is right, and more... This sounds like a cheap and easy way for them to focus the advertisements a little better. Lots of potential benefit to the search provider, but is it a benefit to the user as well? I suppose, if you think getting "better" adverts is a benefit.
move to focus on female users smacks of a need to find a positioning that is tenable... in a google-dominated search market with the risk that no's 2 and 3 will merge, Ask risks being squeezed out of the market...
Ask has already tried to (re)invent itself twice - remember it started as contextual human search (where you could ask 'real' questions and get 'real' answers), that was not a sufficient USP, then it dropped the butler image and started to aggregate answers from all the minority search engines it had acquired, where next?
I still remember back in the dot com craze when Carlton and Granada proudly announced they were jointly investing £80m in 50% of Askjeeves, they later, rather quietly sold that stake to original owners for.... £1m.....
James, they actually invested £80m and sold for £1m? what a disaster, I would have kept my stake, even if it meant the company going into bankruptcy! Am sure that 50% is worth more that £100m now.
Maybe this new (re)invention will work, if you can't compete with the big boys, find a niche!
Meanwhile, startups like Mahalo are finding success in the 'human powered' search niche that ask left behind!
Simple women are taking over the world.. lol
Harpless - Carlton and Granada's respective online investment strategies make for jaw dropping reading...
In Ask Jeeves, they both invested real money and virtual cash via broadcast ad time on their channels - two years later they sold their stake for £1.8m. At the time they first invested their stake was estimated to be worth £2.25bn! This was for a company that was making an annual loss of around £30mn... Not sure whether they would have got more for it now - IAC are the current owners, they exchanged stock for Ask Jeeves worldwide back in 2005 - at that point the value of the IAC stock was rumoured to be $1bn...
Of course - Carlton also invested a stack of cash into Jamba (the games site) and Popcorn (movie listings) - both were closed by 2004. And Granada had a couple of online money pits as well!
James, I think it's safe to recommend that Chalton/Granada stick to TV, this internet thing just isn't for them!
First, they were AskJeeves (http://www.squirrelnet.com/search/AskJeeves.asp). Then Ask. Now AskForWomen (my own title).
So many changes. Too bad they didn't stick around as AskJeeves. Given the approaching semantic web, it could have been a nice concept.
