The question at Ask Jeeves these days is, “How long till the party’s over?”
The search engine run by Robert Wrubel announced the resignation yesterday of President and Chief Operating Officer Ted Briscoe.
Briscoe, who joined Ask Jeeves in January 1999, is heading for Play Streaming Media Group – a 12-person startup spun off last November from Play Industries.
Briscoe is leaving a 400-person company for one that has “half a dozen” staff, according to a source.
Ask Jeeves’ stock dropped 7.51 percent after the news.
Ask Jeeves, known for its English butler character, is down a whopping 80 percent for the year. The stock closed yesterday at $20, down $1.63.
It traded as high as $190.50 last November.
Jeeves lost $47.2 million in the first quarter of this year, and had revenues of $17.8 million.
The company scrapped plans for an “Ask Mimi” spinoff site in February to deal with sex-related questions.
Jeeves has spent heavily recently on promoting itself as a business-to-consumer portal, and it even entered a giant Jeeves float in Macy’s Thanksgiving parade to appear alongside traditional icons such as Garfield and Woody Woodpecker.
On April 27, following the current fashion for vanity conferences, the company held a business-to-business “seminar” in San Francisco. The evening was topped off with a party at hotspot Rubyskye, which included an open bar, free sushi, and performances by Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe.
Ask Jeeves sells its services to Web sites such as Dell and Microsoft at prices from $350,000 to $1 million per year. Analyst Stan Corker at Emerald Research has a “buy” rating on the company.
“They have about 100 contracts with 75 different companies and a good renewal rate so far,” he said. “I anticipate further acquisitions to expand their customer support offerings.”
The corporate Jeeves Web site offers Jeeves Live – instant message-based tech support – and Jeeves Answers.
No one at Ask Jeeves returned calls for comment yesterday.
Briscoe is staying at Ask Jeeves through the end of June to help the company find a replacement.
He is believed to have gained little more than a salary from his time at Ask Jeeves, but according to Stephan Bouchard, vice president of business development at PSMG, he’s taking an options-heavy package in his new job as CEO.
“He is being very kind,” Bouchard told The Post, “He’s risking that there’ll be an upside here.”
PSMG provides the streaming video services for Yahoo! Financial, as well as for Pseudo.com and Pop.com, the yet-to-launch DreamWorks project. Michael Ovitz has a multi-million dollar investment in the parent company, Play Industries.
“I think he saw things were more exciting here,” said Bouchard.