In a letter to the Ask staff, Safka said:

"This choice was not made lightly … When my brother John passed away unexpectedly less than a month ago, I began re-evaluating my personal and professional priorities and decided it was the right time for me to make a change … And whatever I do next will be smaller and more local, enabling me to have a better personal balance."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Safka is going to become the CEO of online textbook rental company Chegg. This information comes from "a person familiar with the matter." Ask president Scott Garell will apparently be taking over some of Safka’s duties at least for the time being.

Safka has overseen Ask.com’s global operations and has also held the title of CEO of Primal Ventures, a new-venture entity that identifies seeds and incubates business opportunities for Ask.com’s parent company IAC.

He has also served as CEO of Match.com, another IAC property. He held that title from 2004 to 2006. Prior to that he held positions with AT&T, E*Trade, Intuit, Warner Bros, and Paramount.
 

"As part of our strategy to go deeper into the highest-volume categories and provide the best answer, the first time, every time, we want to be the first place fans search online for NASCAR information," said Ask.com Chief Executive Officer Jim Safka.

Jim Safka
Ask.com Chief Executive Officer

"Through these partnerships, we will break new ground by applying our semantic search technology capabilities to NASCAR-related content while also tapping one of the largest marketing channels in America."

Ask is hoping NASCAR fans will continue to use its search engine for broader searches outside of the arena of auto racing and increase its market share.

The Ask.com search engine for NASCAR is slated to launch on February 15 when the Daytona 500 starts.

NASCAR.com search will be powered by Ask and it will also feature an Ask tool bar.

Ask has plans to introduce around a dozen more vertical search engines this year that will also be sports related along with other topics.

The company will be the primary sponsor of the No.96 Ask Ford in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and is looking at other marketing strategies with NASCAR.
 

According to internet research company comScore, 500 million searches every month are conducted for dictionary, thesaurus and general references. Lexico Publishing’s sites are not only the top domains in the space, but also carry a significant share of the traffic – approx 15.6 million visitors in Mar 08.

Ask.com execs believe the acquisition will increase its user numbers by about 11% to 145 million users every month, pushing above the likes of Apple and Facebook.

Jim Safka, Chief Exec of Ask.com reports "More than 30 per cent of all searches conducted on Ask.com are in the reference category. ‘Dictionary’ was the second-most searched term on Ask.com in 2007".

While there seems to a be a logical fit in terms of search behavior, industry analysts aren’t convinced the move will address the company’s real issues. Douglas McIntyre from the Wall Street Journal had this to say about the acquisition:

"The purchase of Lexico is based on deeply flawed thinking. Consumers who use an online dictionary are not likely to use the search engine which is owned by the same company, especially if that search engine is Ask.com. Ask has already lost the search race because it is a weak product. People using the internet can click from Dictionary.com to their favorite search engine, probably Google, in one click which takes one second.

Buying a potential audience for an internet property that very few people use will not change consumer habits and that makes the investment a waste."

Perhaps the move isn’t about bolstering Ask.com’s search engine success, and more a key traffic driver. The important next step for Ask is – how do they effectively monetize the user base?

Comments

“The idea that we’re going to become a ‘women’s site’ is not correct,” says Graham. Ask says that the original AP report had an erroneous headline, and it’s pretty much been downhill from there.

But the reality is that:

what we’ve found from our research is that there’s a sizeable group of our core user base that is women. This core audience comes for certain types of searches, certain categories—reference (dictionary, thesaurus, etc.), health and entertainment. Our new strategy is to focus on building up our ability to render good answers in those categories for our core audience.

Graham emphasized that Ask.com will work on providing answers “quicker, faster and in a more meaningful, scaling way.” (I can see the new slogan now: “Ask. Get answers.” Love it.). Providing answers, however, doesn’t mean that they’ll return to the natural-language, ask-us-a-question model that’s so last century. They’ll continue to work on improving their answers for queries on generic, single-word terms, statements and questions.

The best news of all, of course, is the news that “the idea that we’re not going to be a search engine anymore is not correct. We’ll continue to cater to all sorts of people who come to search. . . . We’ll continue to be a great search engine, but a great search engine with a new focus.”

While today’s statements may sound dangerously like the “realignment” or “refocusing” buzzwords that some so dreaded, I believe Ask when they say that they’re not abandoning search or seeking to alienate any of their users. Instead, they’ll “continue to cater to all sorts of people who come to search.”

However, they have decided to strive toward an “emotional connection with our core audience.” Acknowledging that it’s not wise to try to be all things to all people, and that people are looking for differentiation in search, Ask will focus on their core audience, who comes to them three times as often as they do other search engines, because that’s where their core growth is.

They’re “not giving up on bettering Google,” but trying to

become the first place that customers come to when seeking answers. We’re going to be the best at that; we’ll be the first place that they come to for that. We’ll keep bringing them back in a strategic and meaningful way.

Naturally, if they’re successful in this, these efforts will be good for marketers working through Ask as well. Focusing on a “highly active, dedicated and loyal” core audience can help marketers understand their traffic and what kind of appeals they should make to them, in addition to increasing traffic from Ask.

Graham acknowledged that they’ve seen some great successes with the innovations from 2007, including Ask3D, and they’ll continue to innovate in search in 2008—and we should watch for exciting announcements from Ask in the coming weeks and months. They plan to “innovate in a way to connect emotionally with users who know us and love us and have done so for a long time.”

CEO Jim Safka did mention a community-generated answers aspect to Ask and Graham confirmed that some user-generated content will become important in “building answers.” He said that they have researched their core audience and determined that this is something that they are, in fact, looking for. Right now, however, the search engine will remain the “central product,” though they’ll “build out around their core audience” as well.

I think that this strategy sounds much better than what we were hearing about earlier this week. By focusing on their core audience, Ask hopes to make their loyal users even more dedicated to increase their strength. Then they hope to grow from that position of strength, positioning themselves for growth in the search market. As long as we continue to see search innovation from Ask, I wish them luck!

Comments

A few weeks ahead of IAC’s 4Q 2007 earnings call on February 8th, the company has made some changes at the search engine and around parent company IAC.

IAC announced today Lanzone will remain as an advisor during the changeover as Safka settles into the position. Lanzone plans to join Redpoint Ventures, as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence.

“Jim Lanzone was the principal executive responsible for Ask.com’s turnaround over the last two years. His passion for innovation and his every day dedication to the business and its people have been everything anyone could ask for,” Diller said in a statement. “He is a superb executive and leader and I’m hopeful we can be associated in the future.”

We at WebProNews have always appreciated Lanzone’s candor and knowledge, and hope Safka will emulate his predecessor. The well-traveled Safka has stops at AT&T Wireless, E-Trade, and several other firms along with his prior stint running the dating site in his background.

Another executive, Scott Garell, has been named President of Ask.com. He will manage the search engine’s global operations. Garell formerly held the position of CEO of IAC Consumer Applications & Portals, including Fun Web Products, Evite, and Pronto.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/iac-jimmies-the-ask-ceo-office-2008-01/feed 0