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The Internet Businesses

AskJeeves Steps Into RSS with Bloglines Acquisiton 88

Posted by timothy from the almost-but-not-completely-unlike-tea dept.
Sugarpimp writes "According to several sources, AskJeeves has stepped into the deep end of the blogging pool with an interesting acquisition. Bloglines is one of the premier RSS readers. Perhaps AskJeeves will be able to legitimize itself again in the crowded search market by integrating Bloglines into its suite of products."
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AskJeeves Steps Into RSS with Bloglines Acquisiton More

AskJeeves Steps Into RSS with Bloglines Acquisiton

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  • Step One (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Adrilla ( 830520 )
    Perhaps, this is step one in updating it's services. It's not nearly as effective as the other search engines.

    • Re:Step One (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Frymaster ( 171343 )
      Perhaps, this is step one in updating it's services. It's not nearly as effective as the other search engines.

      1. buy bloglines
      2. ???
      3. profit!

      i've got a question for jeeves: how the hell are you going to make money with this?

      just askin'.

      • .

        They're probably planning to TAMPER with the RSS content; stick in ads that bring them revenue, and such, what else can possibly be lucrative with this?

        I bet the copyright identity of most blogs are vague at best, so they can probably get away with messing with other people's intellectual property.

        .

    • Re:Step One (Score:3, Informative)

      by maethlin ( 680448 )
      Smells like FUD to me. A lot of people posting about how horrid Jeeves is, yet nobody yet stating why? Have you actually compared query results? These days I've found Jeeves results to be around equivalent to Google, and quite often more relevant since it is much less a target to spammers.

      Compare this to Yahoo and MSN results... (bad and abysmal, respectively) This leaves me using both Jeeves and Google about equally, but more and more I use Jeeves due to better results. If you want search only witho
      • Smells like FUD to me. A lot of people posting about how horrid Jeeves is, yet nobody yet stating why? Have you actually compared query results? These days I've found Jeeves results to be around equivalent to Google, and quite often more relevant since it is much less a target to spammers.

        Jeeves may be better now, but it used to suck, and most people aren't going to keep checking old search engines to see whether they improved.

        Askjeeves' big problem in the beginning was they promised a method of searc
      • If you really wanna trash Jeeves, at least give us a real basis to do so.

        The *real* reason?

        Stupid name. Really. Ask Jeeves? For what? My socks? My breakfast? Bring the car around, Jeeves old boy?

        I just get this gut feeling that a company dopey enough to think that a frickin' butler was a good symbol for Web searching is not smart enough to deliver a quality product.

  • bloglines news (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:02AM (#11604440)
    Dear Bloglines Member:

    Ask Jeeves has acquired Bloglines, and we're excited about becoming the newest member of their portfolio of web services. We view this as a huge step forward for Bloglines, and a chance to achieve our mission of making RSS news reading and blogging a part of everyone's internet experience. You can learn more about the transaction by reading our press release or reviewing our Frequently Asked Questions.

    We want to assure you that the Bloglines service will continue to grow and thrive. Like other companies in the Ask Jeeves portfolio, we will operate as a standalone, separate service -- the Bloglines name will remain, as will our URL, www.bloglines.com. We will support our current features and services, so please continue to log in to Bloglines to search, subscribe, publish and share RSS news feeds and blogs. All users will continue to be governed by the Terms of Service you agreed to when you registered for Bloglines.

    We have a great roadmap on how to integrate some of the many innovative technologies of Ask Jeeves, including its Teoma algorithmic search technology. As always, we will share news of our progress on our blog, Bloglines News. And we encourage you to participate in the conversation. Our users have been amazing help in guiding the evolution of Bloglines, and we hope you will continue to give us input so we can remain the gold standard in blogging, search, and news aggregation.

    We understand you may have questions about the acquisition and we'll try to answer them all as best we can. Please continue to contact our customer service with your questions and comments.

    Thanks for your loyalty, patience, encouragement and feedback throughout this exciting process.

    All the best,

    Mark Fletcher and the Bloglines Team

  • Right... (Score:5, Funny)

    by eddeye ( 85134 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:05AM (#11604448)

    Perhaps AskJeeves will be able to legitimize itself again in the crowded search market by integrating Bloglines into its suite of products."

    Because nothing says "legitimate" like blog.

    • well.. i hear that bloglines is good for keeping track of any .rss. be it a blog or some other sources of information.

      i hear it's got a handy wap portion too.

      i don't use it though ;)

  • Confirmed (Score:5, Informative)

    by shodZ ( 786663 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:05AM (#11604449)
    Heres [bloglines.com] the official confirmtation

  • I wish a search engine would read my mind... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ABeowulfCluster ( 854634 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:05AM (#11604451)
    as in knowing my preferences... ie.. remember that I prefer NO BLOGS when I search for news.
    • Uh...bloglines if just the title. If you RTFA at all, you know that BlogLines is simply (though quite handily) a service for reading your daily RSS feeds. I mean, really, who's gonna use it to publish anything? Or search? I go through dozens of headlines a day with this service. Don't knock it just because they originally bought the domain with weblogs as their primary function. Give them credit for moving so well into this rocking new age of informational RSS feeds.
    • > as in knowing my preferences... ie.. remember that I prefer NO BLOGS when I search for news.

      Perhaps acquisitions like this could be good for ya - hopefully they'll make a separate search tab "Blogs" which should be quite easy to avoid. Until the acquisition the've probably searched everything at once.

      Hate blogs myself.
      99.9% of all blogs are absolutely worthless, (compared to about 95% worthlessness of the rest of the Web).
      Self-centered assholes before had to earn recognition on a forum or somesuch pl
      • I can't believe how many people are banging on about blogging, like it's something completely amazing and new.

        8 years ago, there were millions of personal web sites, full of people's top 10 trek episodes. Now, I see an entry on somewhere like Boing Boing or Slashdot, and within 2 hours, it's on someone else's blog. No comment about it, no enhancement, just copy it. I think most blogging will be dead in a year or 2.

        If you are going to blog, try and follow the golden rule - make some content, or express a

    • On the contrary, I really do want blogs to be included.

      It means someone else has already thought about whatever I'm searching for and taken some time and effort to collect links and write it up. The blogs that get ranked highly for a search are much linked to, and relevant to the search, which will tend to mean the writeup is not bad. If I search for a technical subject, more often than not the blogs I find will end up being written by the very people who create or work with the technology in question. I t
      • You really have the most distorted view of the steaming pile of crap that is the blogosphere I've read in years.

        Any search engine that finds a way to ignore blogs is going to have a realistic crack at Google (unless Google finally manage to filter them out itself, of course).

        TWW

  • AskJeeves (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:05AM (#11604452)
    Jeeves, what will happen when askjeeves goes out of business? link [ask.com]

    Answer:

    It Will Never Happen to Me
    By Claudia Black. Only $6.29.
    Amazon.com
    • Nice. Unfortunately, from your link at least, not obviously true. Or am I being exceptionally stupid and wrongly accusing you of a heinous crime?

    • Re:AskJeeves (Score:4, Funny)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @05:31AM (#11604799)
      Jeeves, what is next when jeeves fades into well deserved obscurity? Link [ask.com]

      Answer:

      Elitism for the Masses

    • I felt compelled to follow that link to amazon, due to the mention of Claudia Black... What follows is a quote from this It Will Never Happen to Me by Claudia Black...

      I remember, as a boy, coming home from school and seeing either the living room or the dining room furniture thrown out in the driveway...

      Hrmm. I got a bit worried there, but it turns out that:

      1) That quoted bit was not actually by Claudia Black, but a quote from some bloke. ie: Aeryn Sun is not really a man. (phew)
      2) This Claudia Black

  • Really.

    Neither this, nor MyJeeves [ask.com] is going to make AskJeeves anything but the ass of the internet.

  • I tried ask jeeves once... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jihadi_fungus ( 839057 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:10AM (#11604467)
    I was having a bad day with google, and I was getting really frustrated. I submitted:

    "How the fuck can I get /boot to mount by default on gentoo?"

    It came back with a bunch of pr0n because of the F word...mount probably didn't help either :|
    • ""How the fuck can I get /boot to mount by default on gentoo?"

      It came back with a bunch of pr0n because of the F word...mount probably didn't help either :|"

      Boatloads of shoe fettish pr0n I would guess...

    • I just tried your search in order to look what kind of porn it would bring, and it gave me only linux and gentoo related sites.
      Either they upgraded their search engine or they read slashdot.

  • Question. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FireballX301 ( 766274 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:11AM (#11604468) Journal
    How is acquiring a blog service in any way 'redeem' a search service? I don't use google because it has Picasa or Groups or anything. I use google because it has a no-frills, high quality search engine with a clean interface and relatively unobtrusive ads. I don't see AskJeeve's search engine as being anywhere near as good.

    So in essence, was getting the blog service good for the company? Sure. Was it good for the reputation of the engine? Hell no.

  • Ask Who? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nate nice ( 672391 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:15AM (#11604482) Journal
    Remeber when they had the highest IPO ever! It skyrocketed from like $5.00 to $130 in one day! Holy shit it must have been exciting working there at first assuming they gave away stock like everyone else. Anyone know what's it at now days? My guess is about $3.50. Maybe $5.00 but it cannot be anymore than that.

    Man, I totaly forgot that place existed. Does anyone actually use it?
    • ASK JEEVES INC (NasdaqNM:ASKJ)

      Last Trade: 24.43
      Trade Time: Feb 7
      Change: Down 0.96 (3.78%)
      52wk Range: 18.90 - 44.66
      Volume: 6,196,602
      Avg Vol (3m): 4,900,045

      Not quite $5, but they were a few bucks shy of $200, so I'm sure there are a couple of pissed people somewhere.
      As for using it? feh, don't personally, never seemed to get good results, tho the "see what other people are searching for" feature was kinda interesting ;)

      linky for the untrusting [yahoo.com]
      • Yeah I went to their site and saw that what people are searching for thing right away. My immediate and synical assumption is they are "interesting" threads that will result in advertisers links coming up more. I mean from a business standpoint that would be smart anyways. Or maybe it's just another stupid patent and they feel obliged to use it.
    • I use it. It is actually good at what it does, if you want an answer to an actual question like "how do I..." then it's better than google (where I usually end up just searching for ... HOWTO)

  • I talked to Bloglines and Ask Jeeves about it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Marc Hedlund ( 229164 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:16AM (#11604487)
    And it's definitely true. I wrote up my conversation on the O'Reilly Network [oreillynet.com].

    In short, I think it's a good deal for Ask Jeeves. They're trying to compete with Google and Yahoo, and to do that they need to do something new. The user profiles Bloglines has would make a great tool for pricing Google AdWord-style text ads -- but the "oo" companies (G*gle and Yah*) don't have the same incentive to try something radically different. They're sticking with what works. Maybe by offering a richer profile to ad buyers, Ask Jeeves will be able to break into the search market more aggressively.

    More in the full blog post [oreillynet.com].

  • it's confirmed news (Score:4, Informative)

    by mallumax ( 712655 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:18AM (#11604493) Homepage
    Bloglines have confirmed it.
    Announcement page [bloglines.com]
    Press release [bloglines.com]
    FAQ about acquisition [bloglines.com]

  • My personal motto: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mboverload ( 657893 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:27AM (#11604513) Journal
    "If it's not on Google, it doesn't exist"
  • Two services obviously dumbed down so far that I can't correct for it enough to get anything useful out of either of them.

    If anyone wants to give me a step-by-step for Bloglines that results in me actually being able to read anything I've subscribed to, and doesn't use marketing speak, I'd be most grateful. Probably.

    • Bookmark http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?all=1

      (this is the URL that displays in the right-hand frame when you click the root of your subscription tree).

      You'll get all new entries on all your subscriptions as they show up. But be careful not to close the window before you've read them all, because just visiting that URL marks them all as read and you can't get them back!
      • Thank you. BTW: I can't find anything that matches the description of "root of your subscription tree", nor have I ever seen anything that looks like the page you gave me the URL for.
  • This is good news. Ive been using Bloglines for sometime now and the aggregator feature makes for any other RSS tool available for download today. However, the blogging feature itself needs some dressing up to match competetion like Blogger.

  • Intrigues (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sundroid ( 777083 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:49AM (#11604574) Homepage
    Ambitious man, that Jeeves. According to a CNET report, About.com is now up for sale, and Ask Jeeves is one of the bidders. The intriguing element here is that Google is also one of the bidders, of About.com, that is. Here is the link to the article: http://news.com.com/Primedia%20puts%20About.com%20 up%20for%20sale/2100-1025_3-5566950.html?tag=nefd. top [com.com]

  • Bah! The bloggers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Yuruusan ( 696012 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @03:55AM (#11604592) Homepage Journal
    Man, I had no idea Ask Jeeves was still around. It sucked way back, and probably will contintue to suck, and purchasing blogglines in no way of redeeming itself. I might be only one person with an oppinion, but when I read news, I want it to be just that, news not another worthless oppinion from another crazy dolt out there. If I want to hear someone ranting about the current headlines I go talk to a drunk. Not trying to troll here, I just see bloggers as a completely wortholess humans.

  • Information OD? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by womanfiend ( 530067 ) <jonathan.e.green@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 08, 2005 @04:05AM (#11604619) Homepage Journal
    I run about ten RSS feeds on my Firefox browser that run the day's headlines and whatnot from leading news outlets and niche content providers of interest to me.

    I've tried some Blog RSS feeds, along with some other very-high-output feeds, and it strikes me as too damned much. RSS is great for something like Slashdot or The New York Times where there's an editor on the other end to hold back the content delivered to a sane amount, but the architecture (as in "really simply") of RSS, while certainly sufficently robust, just isn't well designed for a high volume of hits per feed. I feel like I've immediately OD'ed, badly, on information when I pull down the home feed for PRWeb.

    The solution? I shitcanned the PRWeb feed, even though I spend a lot of time on their website. And that's the fix, right there. Continuing upon the example, PRWeb's homepage is much better suited to sifting through the zillions of things they update all of the time than an RSS feed. Might the same apply to bloglines?
    • I run about ten RSS feeds on my Firefox browser that run the day's headlines and whatnot from leading news outlets and niche content providers of interest to me.

      [snip] ...I feel like I've immediately OD'ed, badly, on information when I pull down the home feed for PRWeb.

      I find that a good RSS integrator like BlogLines actually helps cut down on information overload. I use Firefox's RSS for several frequently-accessed sites that I like to have right on my bookmarks toolbar... such as some news sites, and

      • I find that sage [mozdev.org] is the perfect way to view 10-30 sites using firefox.

        It allows you to see articles, summaries, or just titles in a simple and easy to use way.

        • I find that sage [mozdev.org] is the perfect way to view 10-30 sites using firefox. It allows you to see articles, summaries, or just titles in a simple and easy to use way.

          That looks really slick. I'll have to give that a shot. Thanks!
    • The problem with RSS is that if you subscribe to a few feeds, then you'll get the same news multiple times, from different sources.

      For example, that story about Saturn's pole being unexpectedly warm was carried on (at least) slashdot, space.com and "Yahoo News: Science". The more feeds you subscribe to, the more duplicates of the same story you will receive. The only way out is to only subscribe to feeds which do NOT report other peoples' news.

    • A few RSS readers on the Mac now support "smart feeds" which are basically filters such as "show me articles from all my scubscriptions with the words: blah, feh, huh"

      This is one solution to the information overload problem, but unfortunately, requires one to determine your interests ahead of time. It can be a good way to check up on the latest news about a specific subject, however.

    • I'm biased, but you really might try Findory [findory.com]. It's a feed reader that learns your interests, searches thousands of feeds, and helps surface interesting articles. It's all about avoiding information overload from RSS feeds.

      It's easy to use. Just click on a few articles. That's it.
  • The official press release [bloglines.com] at Bloglines.

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