Barry Diller and IAC are going to launch something called “AskCity” next week, which will be a consolidated local offering under the Ask brand:
The new Web-based city guides, due out on December 4, will be followed later in December by a redesign of IAC’s Ask.com search service, a small but fast-growing rival to Google Inc. that Diller said would offer a new paradigm for Web search.
“We are coming out with AskCity, which is our local service,” Diller told the Reuters Media Summit in New York. “It is just wildly better than anything else because we are able to bring in all of our assets.”
The local information service will provide a more convenient way for Web users to comb through the 10 years of entertainment listings and services stored in its CitySearch service, along with links to maps, events and ticket services.
This new city guide will get substantial amounts of content from Citysearch (as Ask Local does today) but it suggests to me the longer term de-emphasizing of Citysearch as a primary local brand.
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Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm focused on online consumer and advertiser behavior and the relationship between the Internet and traditional media, with an emphasis on the local marketplace.
