Many industries throw around terms such as “double down” and “big bet” and “big win” which may be an indication of why so many conferences pick Las Vegas as the location for companies to showcase their bets on their new products, new strategies and of course tout the successes of past wins. It was particularly fitting to spend time in Las Vegas at the Parafest conference focusing on industry trends and best practices in customer experience and support. Gathered together were 400 representatives of B2B and B2C companies as well as industry analysts and customer support product vendors.

My role there was not only to learn a lot (which I did), but also to present Ask’s story of the past year concerning our own efforts in this area. In addition to launching new products last year, we also rolled out a new Help Center to support those products. It was designed with an eye toward self-service, allowing our 100 million users the option to get the information they need at any time without having to wait for an agent to respond.

At the Parafest conference, I discovered the industry has taken notice! During the keynote, Ask’s Help Center was showcased as a trend to watch in 2013, and I fielded a lot of questions throughout the duration on why we’ve done what we’ve done.

The “why” is very simple: to connect our users with answers as quickly as possible, just as we try to do with all of our search products. We’re pleased to have a Help Center that lives up to our values. It’s a big bet which has really paid off!

- Eric McKirdy, Worldwide Customer Care and Technical Support Manager, Ask.com

SXSW Interactive 2013 has officially come to a close and if you weren’t able to make it to Austin, you missed our very own, Lisa Kavanaugh speaking with neuroscience expert, Janet Crawford, on “Why Neanderthals Make Lousy Entrepreneurs”. Did you know that in terms of how it operates our brains haven’t changed much since our Cro-Magnon days. We’re social animals designed to live 10,000 years ago in small tribes, totally dependent on the relationships around us. With biological programming that equates social approval with survival, it’s obvious why so many companies fall into collective groupthink, struggling to surface new and innovative ideas. Simply put: no one wants to look stupid. But there are (unexpected) ways to trick your brain into chilling out enough to coax innovative thinking out from the shadows. The audience helped Janet and Lisa explain how the brain works and how applying improv exercises and techniques to the product development cycle helped us at Ask.com to unlock our best ideas yet.

Think applied improv might help you in your workplace? 

- Suraya Akbarzad, Ask.com

Yes friends – it’s almost time to bid farewell to 2012. But with so many crazy headlines this past year, Ask teamed up with Harris Interactive to gauge Americans’ thoughts about 2012’s biggest news stories and, of course, to see which stories our users asked the most about. “Will Rob and Kristen get back together?” is officially the top trending question of 2012 making Kristen Stewart the person users most wanted to know about. But there was so much more to 2012 than everyone’s favorite Twilight couple…take a look at what else piqued Ask users’ curiosities…

• While Psy hit #3 on the Ask.com top asked-about celeb charts, he was chosen as the #1 breakout star of 2012 by Americans polled (13% chose Psy as 2012’s breakout star), from a list including One Direction (11%), Honey Boo Boo (10%), Jennifer Lawrence (8%) and Carly Rae Jepsen (7%).
• Only 16% of Americans included Snooki on the list of most popular celebrities of 2012 but who would have expected that more people over the age of 35 felt this way (33%) than those between 18-34 years of age (30%)?
• There was a flood of celebrity engagements but who will get married first – Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Anniston? 26% of Americans are placing their bets that Jennifer will tie the knot first. We’ll see…
  

Makes us wonder how our 2012 opinions will shift with next year’s headlines…Here’s to 2013!

-       Suraya Akbarzad, Ask.com

Who would want a night in the slammer? Apparently 60% of U.S. workers would if the alternative was to lose their employee benefits. Ask.com uncovered this little fun fact in an effort to gauge what strikes a job candidate’s fancy when it comes to deciding on a new job. While some of the responses to the 2012 State of the Workplace: Benefits and Perks study were expected, you’d be surprised at some of the other results – check it out!

It’s also clear from the survey that Americans are protective of personal time and actively seek employers invested in their health and well-being. In fact, unlimited PTO is gaining traction with companies such as Netflix, Zynga and of course, Ask.com. But how do Americans feel?

• 69% said they would be swayed to take a new job if the company offered unlimited time off
• Unlimited PTO matters more to single people (42%) than those who are married (30%) or divorced (27%)

Check out Ask.com’s infographic on the benefits of adopting an unlimited paid time off policy, a benefit Askers enjoy themselves.

As we dive into November, Ask wanted to take a moment and thank the East Bay Tech Community for honoring us as the winner of the 2012 2.Oak Innovator Awards in the Digital Technology Innovator category. 2.Oakland asked the local tech community to cast their votes and we have to say we were very pleased with the results. Ask.com was recognized for our continued technology innovations, our investments in the community and for the countless jobs we’ve created. Ask.com CTO Lisa Kavanaugh and Director of Engineering, Nan Guo attended the award ceremony to accept the award on behalf of all Askers. We take great pride in calling Oakland home and will continue to foster today’s growing tech community. We’re excited to see that the community appreciates our efforts so far but there’s more to come! We’re still growing and continuing to look for new team members right here in Oakland. Oakland has a very special place in our hearts and Ask.com is honored to be a part of the community’s success.

- Suraya Akbarzad, Ask.com

Whether you’re in New York City riding the S Shuttle or in San Francisco riding the Muni trains, you can’t help but notice that Ask.com has a few questions for you. Why is New York City called the Big Apple? Why is the Statue of Liberty green? How many people ride the subway each day? What’s the oldest running restaurant? When did Alcatraz close? What’s the fastest way to get across town? Why are rainbows so colorful?

Have you spotted us in these cities yet? Send us your pics and go to Ask.com to find out the answers!

- Suraya Akbarzad, Ask.com

Yesterday marked the closing of the About.com acquisition and another milestone for Ask.com. Askers in Oakland joined Doug Leeds and the About.com staff in NYC on a video conference where we celebrated the marriage of the two companies with a champagne toast and a wedding cake (of course!).

Here’s to living happily ever after! Cheers!

- Suraya Akbarzad, Ask.com

They came, they saw, they hacked. And they ate ice cream sandwiches from local supplier CREAM Nation - courtesy of Ask.com. Hey, when you’re burning the midnight oil at the biggest Hackathon TC has put on to date (a record 147 teams presented 1 minute pitches on Sunday night) warm cookies smothered in ice cream sound, uh, really good. In fact, they might just be the perfect pairing with our personal favorite Hackathon entry, Sirious Margaritas – a Siri powered margarita machine. 

But I digress. Our heartfelt congrats to this year’s winner – Livebolt – which is a cloud-based system that uses a $60 block of metal and an iPhone app to authorize the locking/unlocking of virtually any door. What will these folks think of next?

Happy Hacking!

Valerie Combs, Ask.com

As reported Sunday, Ask will purchase the About Company from the New York Times, a top 20 US Internet property whose assets include 3 million handcrafted articles from nearly 1000 subject matter experts.

This is an incredibly positive move for both parties, and here’s why:

I’ll start with Ask. Since shifting away from algorithmic web search and re-focusing on Q&A back in the summer of 2010, we’ve learned a thing or two from our users. First, an increasing number of them are in “browse mode” when they come to Ask, looking to discover and explore information (for our mobile users, who cite Q&A browsing as a top reason for using Ask, this behavior is even more pervasive). In fact, the most satisfied Ask users say they want more than just “one right answer,” they want multiple perspectives combined with the ability to discover something new and unexpected.

As such, Ask has been moving toward a content-rich Q&A experience with the goal of building more engagement with our mix of people-powered and search-powered answers. We’ve also been heavily ramping content from carefully-vetted partners to ensure we have access to fresh, trusted answers in key verticals like food, health, travel and reference.

But About.com allows us to execute on our content vision at a whole new level. About.com is home to more than 900 topic sites, all created by guides who are true independent subject matter experts, passionate about what they cover. Ask.com is home to 100 million global users, asking millions of questions in hopes of finding great answers. The immediate synergies are obvious: Ask now has the ability to better satisfy our users with answers drawn from millions of handcrafted, quality articles published on About.com, while providing significant, additional traffic to About.com’s guide pages at the same time.

Matching millions of potential quality answers to user questions is where the synergies begin, not end. Ask can also make About.com’s awesome content much more discoverable through both extending our search expertise to the About.com site, and syndicating our recently acquired content discovery platform, nRelate, across About’s pages.

These are just some of the ways this acquisition represents a no-brainer for us, and a real opportunity for both parties.  I can’t wait to dig in and, together with the combined teams, learn more about how About.com and Ask can tap each other’s strengths, learn from each other’s experiences, and deliver a better experience for all of our users.

Congrats to all of the teams who made this deal possible, and a hearty welcome to the About Group to the Ask.com family!

Doug Leeds, CEO

Ask’s very own, Lisa Kavanaugh talks vacation recovery in Fast Company! How do you get back into the swing of things after a vacation?

- Suraya Akbarzad, Ask.com