Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Ask.com

IAC Reports A Profit Of $18.1 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:57:06 +0000

IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI) has reported a first quarter profit of $18.1 million this quarter. They recently renewed a contract with Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) that estimated to be worth $5.5 billion over 5 years. Google provides IAC with search products and advertising services.

Even though Ask.com has showed improvements, IAC is facing an increase in costs as The Daily Beast subsidiary recently acquired Newsweek magazine. During the same period last year, IAC reported a loss of $18.7 million.

IAC’s overall revenue had increased 22% to $460.2 million. Match.com’s revenue increased 25% and operating income surged 71% for the quarter. Home improvement referral website ServiceMagic had a 10% revenue gain and operating income had risen 59%.

[WSJ]

Nuance Is Powering The Voice Recognition Capabilities For Ask.com iPhone App

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:46:19 +0000

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) has announced today that they are powering voice recognition capabilities for the Askc.om iPhone app. Nuance’s voice recognition technology is also being used on the Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search apps. “The voice-to-text feature really resonates with users, and makes the whole question asking experience on a mobile device easier than ever,” stated Ask.com SVP of Products Tony Gentile. [Nuance PR]

IAC Shutting Down Ask.com Search Operations, Focusing On Q&A Service

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:30:40 +0000

IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI) is shutting down the search operations for Ask.com. Ask.com was acquired by IAC for $1.85 billion in July 2005. About 130 engineering jobs will be cut and 20 engineers currently working in New Jersey will be asked to move to Oakland. With a 65% market share of all U.S. searches, Google is simply too big of a company to compete with.

“It’s become this huge juggernaut of a company that we really thought we could compete against by innovating,” stated Ask.com President Doug Leeds. “We did a great job of holding our market share but it wasn’t enough to grow the way IAC had hoped we would grow when it bought us.”

Ask.com will still have a search box on their homepage, but the search will be powered by one of their competitors. Supposedly Ask.com will focus primarily on their toolbar and Q&A business going forward.

[Bloomberg]

Bloglines Shutting Down On October 1

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 23:57:24 +0000

Bloglines, a property owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI), is an RSS reader and aggregator service that launched in June 2003 by Mark Fletcher. In February 2005, he sold the service to Ask.com/InterActiveCorp. At the time, it was hosting over 200 million searchable blog articles. This past week, Ask.com announced that Bloglines would be shut down on October 1, 2010.

IAC bought Bloglines for about $10 million back in February 2005. Bloglines had struggled to gain additional traction after Google Reader had been launched.

Ask.com President Doug Leeds said that the reason behind shutting down Bloglines is due to the market changing. People are starting to prefer real-time news streams like Twitter. There has been a 20% decline in people using RSS feeds as a whole.

[TechCrunch]

Ask Jeeves Founder David Warthen Joins Allvoices As CTO

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:07:49 +0000

David Warthen, the founder of Ask Jeeves has joined AllVoices.com as the CTO. Back in the mid 1990′s, Warthen sold Ask.com to IAC for $1.85 billion. IAC ended up renaming Ask Jeeves to Ask.com Warthen also worked at Demand Media’s Answerbag.com for a short amount of time. AllVoices is a news website that depends on citizen journalism. [VentureBeat]

BlackBerry App World Gets A Free App From Dictionary.com

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:48:28 +0000

Dictionary.com has launched a new application on BlackBerry App World. This application resembles the Dictionary.com application that has already been launched on the iTunes App Store. The iPhone/iPod Touch Dictionary.com application is also free and has hit about 3 million downloads.

The BlackBerry version of the app has a list of about 500,000 words, synonyms, definitions, audio pronunciations, and spelling suggestions. The Word of the Day feature in Spanish and English is built-in to the BlackBerry app too. One of the distinguishing features of the BlackBerry version is that synonyms and definitions can be accessed from the Dictionary.com app while reading or writing e-mails.

According to Dictionary.com President Doug Leeds, the company also plans to launch APIs for developers to integrate the application into their own services. The application will be integrated in several e-books too. The Dictionary.com application on BlackBerry App World is free and will be launching in the near future (if not already).

InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com bought out Dictionary.com as part of the Lexico acquisition in July 2008. Dictionary.com is the sister website of Thesaurus.com and Reference.com too.

Jim Safka To Become CEO Of Chegg

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:40:34 +0000

Jim Safka stepped down as the CEO of Ask.com in the middle of last month and will now be moving to another online company, Chegg.com. When Safka stepped down from InterActiveCorp’s search engine company, he said that he wanted to work on something smaller and more local-based. Chegg is an online textbook rental service that was started in 2003.

The textbooks rent for a much cheaper price than what it costs to buy it on Chegg. The company raised about $27 million in funding so far from Gabriel Venture Partners, Maples Investments, Kleiner Perkins, and Foundation Capital. The first round was $2.2 million and the second round was about $25 million.

Osman Rashid, Chegg’s co-founder will step down from being CEO and will take the chairman position.

[via paidContent]

Ask.com, The Official Search Engine of NASCAR

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:48:33 +0000

InterActiveCorp subsidiary Ask.com has signed a deal to become the official search engine for the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). Ask.com wants to push their brand in front of the second-most popular professional sport on TV. NASCAR has about 75 million fans that purchase $3 billion in licensed products.

The financial details of the deal was not disclosed. Jim Safka, CEO of Ask.com said that the goal of the deal is to have NASCAR fans use their search engine to look up information about NASCAR. Ask.com will run the search engine on the NASCAR website and will also make a “NASCAR toolbar” for those users. Ask will offer detail searches of NASCAR’s databases and the two companies will be showing display Ask.com ads at the races.

Ask.com sponsors the No. 96 Ford car driven by Bobby Labonte as part of a pact with the Hall of Fame racing. The Ask.com Ford car will drive in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series as well.

“NASCAR fans are the most sponsor-loyal fan base in sports,” stated Ask.com spokesperson Andrea Riggs. “NASCAR fans appreciate the companies who support the sport they love and who enable the teams to keep racing.”

SVP at Microsoft, Steve Berkowitz Joining TheLadders.com Board of Directors

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:09:22 +0000

Steve Berkowitz announced in Feb. 2008 that he plans to leave Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). Berkowitz was the SVP of Microsoft’s Online Services Group, responsible for marketing & sales for MSN.com and Windows Live. Before Berkowitz worked at Microsoft, he was the former CEO of Ask.com.

According to CNET, Berkowitz has joined TheLadders.com, a job search engine with a focus on $100K salaries.

“Steve is an experienced and visionary leader whose proven record of success leading online services makes him an ideal person to join our board,” stated TheLadders.com CEO Marc Cenedella.

Before Berkowitz was the CEO of Ask.com, he was COO and President of IDG Books. Berkowitz oversaw the expansion of the “Dummies” series books and IDG’s acquisition of CliffNotes, Frommer’s, Betty Crocker Cookbooks, and Lasser’s Tax Guides. Berkowitz attended State University of New York in Albany.

Related Links:
1. Microsoft PressPass
2. CNET via Yahoo!

Photobucket Launches iPhone App & Partners With Ask.com

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:25:39 +0000

Ask.com, a subsidiary of IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI) and Photobucket, a subsidiary of News Corporation (NYSE:NWS) have partnered together. Ask.com is now powering Photobucket’s search engine. Ask.com will also be controlling the ads on Photobucket.

The financial details were undisclosed. Photobucket has roughly 44 million monthly unique visitors per month.

Photobucket also launched an iPhone application. The application will allow users to upload images to Photobucket from the phone. The application costs about $4.99.

“Photobucket has one of the largest online audiences, and now Ask.com provides these consumers with the answers to the questions they ask every day,” stated Andrew Moers, GM of Ask.com partnerships. “This alliance furthers our strategy to bring Ask.com to consumers worldwide through a broad range of Internet access points.”