Kate Morris

I’ve heard from a number of people in the industry that the new CEO of Ask has been contacting them trying to get them back as brand ambassadors. Smart move? Yes. Executed well? No.

The CEO, if he isn’t already, needs to be reading Seth Godin’s blog. If he is already, I would suggest not skimming the entries. Why? It looks like he got the concept - the company made a boo-boo, and he knew that many influential bloggers we mad. So he reached out to them.

What did he miss?

1. He insulted most of them in an article on Forbes.
2. He missed meetings.  (can’t say who with, they like their twitts anonymous)
3. He missed the entire point they had all been making.

Why do I talk about Ask so much? Well they keep giving me reasons to AND I still think they have some great people with some great ideas. Remember my idea of an Ask/Yahoo deal? Well I have one thing to say to the Ask.com employees:

Yahoo is hiring.

Go take your ideas to a company with a greater following and the infrastructure to top the industry. Yahoo is hurting, but I think with the right ideas (the kind we see at Ask) they can take off again. I know the executives at Ask wanted Yahoo bought out, but that was just for PR purposes. We all know that was and still is a BAD idea.

UPDATE: Few more articles as of late. One is from The Lisa about Ask’s attempts with her. And the other is about how they are outsourcing various areas, to Microsoft no doubt. *sigh*

We got a call from AOL marketing services yesterday. Bit of a surprise to me, but then I thought about how many times I’ve heard AOL’s name in the past week and was surprised no longer. From new executives to the acquisition of Bebo, their like 105th acquisition in the past year (I exaggerate), I can see they are on the move.

Then thinking about how Time Warner is planning to spin them off got me thinking. Ask just made a dumb move focusing just on women (I am one and all, but really??), Yahoo is in trouble, and AOL is going psycho.

Humor me for a second. How interesting would this situation be? Ask and AOL merge, which is highly probable according to other industry experts (and AOL’s 106th acquisition), forming the now AOL. I propose another name or something — but with AOL’s base, Ask’s technology, Quigo/Ads.com and AIM/Bebo, they have something there.

Take that company and put that up against the top 3. Now remember that Yahoo is in danger of being bought out. I don’t want that to be Microsoft, so why not merge the new AOL/ASK and Yahoo? Talk about a powerhouse! Ideas, technology, subscribers galore! That is the only way I can see anyone giving Google a run for their money.

Microsoft tried to buy Facebook to no avail. Now they are trying with Yahoo. And Google got flack with Doubleclick? Wait … why isn’t anyone noticing that MSN is buying EVERYONE again. There may still be competition, but really??

I am still riding the fence on this one though. There is some real good that COULD come from a Yahoo/Microsoft merger. But I still am not a fan of Microsoft. So what I really need to say is Go Ask Go!

I need to rant about the features of Yahoo versus Google. Who has what and what they need to share.

First off, I am setting up Yahoo with all of my company’s accounts. We spend lots with Google every month and are wanting to do the same (maybe not AS much) with Yahoo. So I start with my first question, how do I get all of these keywords and data from Google to Yahoo? When I first started in search marketing, it was all by hand. And if you were a BIG Yahoo client, they let you load a spreadsheet. Man, that was a good day for the agency I was working for at the time.

Alas, things have gotten easier … sort of. Using Google AdWords Editor, you can export your campaigns from Google (Good Job Google!). But you can’t just throw that into Yahoo. They use different inputs. So I started looking into redoing the info to be Yahoo! friendly. And guess what?? They have a converter! I was excited! I would have this seemingly 40 hour project done in an hour. I downloaded all my campaigns and loaded those into the converter.

It “converted successfully” and said to load the new sheets into the import engine. I did so … and got an error. The header in the sheet they gave me was wrong.

Wait … didn’t Yahoo give me that sheet? Weren’t they supposed to convert it for me? I looked at the sheet they gave me, and the template they provide on the import engine. Sure enough, the headers are different. Annoying Yahoo Thing #1

I figured out what to do to get it to import a few hours later and have been working on it since then. But this is what irritates me, why can’t this be easier? You two use the same ad size, etc. But really, why make it this hard to do this? I won’t mention what else I saw in the “converted” sheet I got from Yahoo! but the ads weren’t right.

So then I got to thinking about something else. Yahoo has this nice converter, and Google might, but I don’t know about it right now. I recently asked my Google AdWords team (they are GREAT) about Manager Defined Spend and getting restricted logins. They set me up with BETAs. They listened and gave me what I wanted with the logins, but it was stuff I had already seen in Yahoo. There are things that Yahoo does better.

Logging into accounts into Google vs Yahoo. In Google I can assign people to accounts, and they only need one login. Right now in Google, if I want to give someone reports access on 2 accounts, they need 2 different logins. Hmmm … Annoying Google Thing #1

But something Google does better is payment. Yahoo only allows CC and PayPal. Well I love invoicing. My Accounting department loves invoicing. Less CC bills. But that’s not an option in Yahoo right now. Annoying Yahoo Thing #2

So I guess the point is that I have been doing this for a while. And it has gotten easier, but it could be so much easier if the industry leaders would set some standards. Share you two and help us all. And if you can’t share … steal. You use each other’s systems. Steal away, you already do.

Yahoo! just released (out of beta that is) their new user interface for Yahoo! mail. So I’ve used it before because I have a paid account (read: I use AT&T DSL), but it’s gotten even better.

I’m excited because you can text to a phone and get them back in a really cool format. Hmm … Google? Wanna play catch up on this feature? I would love it if gmail did this too.

Update: So I realize that we all can email texts and email back, but not in the cool interface Yahoo gave us. That’s what I mean.

From SES San Jose via SEORoundTable:

The question he’s been getting a lot: Is Facebook the next Google? I think they are two different things. Can Facebook get the same kind of hype? Yes, that’s the “likeness” it has to GOogle.

Facebook has experienced 2 tipping points according to the statistics - corporate network and opening access to anyone with an email address. There’s definitely a market share increase of pages: the site broke into the top 10 of all Internet sites in March 2007. Opening application development could lead to the next tipping point.

Here are my thoughts on Facebook and it’s popularity. I was on it when it started. I still had access to my college email address then (don’t anymore, 3 years after graduation) and liked it. But more of my old friends from HS were on MySpace. They were allowed there.

But Facebook was cleaner.

Then they opened it to everyone and it gained popularity. But I have a theory, a more unseen one, as to who Facebook is more popular. It’s not banned at work yet.

MySpace was/is a time hog. I used to spend hours making my page look right, changing it on my mood, and I know code! Most people don’t … imagine how long that took?

But now with applications and such, and the opening to everyone … I am thinking it’s only a matter of time. I’m not saying it’s going down. I’m just saying it’s not any better. It’s just different. Google vs Yahoo. They both have their uses.