AskMeNow Inc. was an American public corporation, specializing in
mobile search
Mobile may refer to:
Places
* Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city
* Mobile County, Alabama
* Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S.
* Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador
Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels
* Mobile ...
and
mobile advertising
Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mob ...
. The
Irvine, California
Irvine () is a Planned community, master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on ...
based company officially launched in November 2005 and ceased operations in late 2008.
AskMeNow's primary offering was a consumer mobile search product based on proprietary technology that offered a
natural language
In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...
based interaction and dynamic content provision platform.
AskWiki
AskMeNow signed a partnership agreement with the
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...
to bring natural language processing to
English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of
, has the most arti ...
.
The beta product, AskWiki, integrated some of the semantic web and natural language features of AskMeNow into English Wikipedia searches. The AskWiki engine was able to parse natural language statements and return specific answers rather than just relevant articles. The contract between AskMeNow and Wikimedia was rescinded after
Jimmy Wales announced his own for profit search engine named
Wikia
Fandom (formerly known as Wikicities before 2007 and later Wikia before 2019) is a wiki hosting service that hosts wikis mainly on entertainment topics (i.e. video games, TV series, movies, entertainers, etc.). Its domain is operated by Fandom, ...
.
Partnerships
AskMeNow partnered with a variety of content publishers to offer mobile access to these publishers’ content. These partnerships included
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
,
Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States.
In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as ...
,
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...
, and
Guinness World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
.
AskMeNow had established distribution partnerships with
Alltel
Alltel Wireless was a wireless service provider, primarily based in the United States. Before acquisitions by Verizon Wireless and AT&T, it served 34 states and had approximately 13 million subscribers. As a regulatory condition of the acquisition ...
in the US and
Rogers Wireless
Rogers Wireless Inc. is a Canadian wireless telephone company headquartered in Toronto, providing service nationally throughout Canada. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The company had revenues of just under $15.1 billi ...
and
Bell Mobility in Canada.
References
{{reflist
External links
AskMeNow Historical SEC Filings
Defunct companies based in California
Marketing companies established in 2005
Companies disestablished in 2008
Digital marketing companies of the United States
SMS-based question answering services
Defunct internet search engines