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July 20, 2005

my friend Jim @Ask Jeeves

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Jim and I were co-workers at Netscape. We started off in the analyst group and we went off into product management. There were some trends we discussed that we hit right on the mark and it was certainly a fun and crazy time.

The reason I like Ask Jeeves isn't because of "Ask Jeeves", it's because they've employed a brand strategy and they own a lot of properties that people don't understand they own - a couple include My Way (a very good My Yahoo type portal), Bloglines, Teoma, Excite, and now Ask Jeeves is a part of Interactive Corp. A diversified brand strategy is unique to Interactive Corp and something that AOL tried to do but couldn't execute.

For Ask Jeeves to succeed, they still need to focus on technology, focus on the end-user, and quit worrying about Google and Yahoo. Provide a great search experience for the diversified properties, create and enhance services, and drive re-circulation. That's pretty much it.

Posted by rebron at July 20, 2005 02:26 PM

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