Ask.com’s new AskAround app

Ask.com is one of the oldest companies on the web, predating even Google, and Q&A has been a focus since the beginning. Now they are adding a human element to their existing, algorithmic Q&A model while expanding into mobile and chat. In July, they launched a user community in beta, which answers questions that haven’t already been answered on the web. The group is a subset of the 90 million people who visit the site every month. Ask.com finds experts among this community and routes questions to them. You get your question answered in minutes, as opposed to immediately, but you get a real answer rather than a list of links that might not actually be useful. This service is not yet available on the web, but it can be accessed via the Ask.com iPhone app. "Our big challenge is combining the human element that happens in minutes with the search algorithmic portion of our service which happens in milliseconds and getting people to understand that sometimes you'll get an answer right away and sometimes you'll get an answer in a couple of minutes," explains Doug Leeds, CEO of Ask.com. "The nice thing about the mobile device is it changes expectations in that way too. It's okay to ask a question, put your phone in your pocket, wait for it to buzz with an answer. On a PC, it's less okay." Interestingly, as the company started to review the comments where users were asking questions of real people, they began to realize that location was becoming an organizing, contextual principal ...

Channel: YouTube Video Length: 18m 12s Date Found: Wed, Mar 16 2011 2:28 PM Category: Technology Date Produced: Wed, Mar 16 2011 12:42 PM View Count: 0