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January 2, 2008

ChaCha Launches Mobile Interface. They Still Suck.

Michael Arrington

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I was surprised this evening to receive an email from the ChaCha communications team about a new feature they’ve just launched. I say surprised because we have not been kind to the service in our three posts on them so far. In the most recent post, I called them “a bad idea, poorly executed.”

The new feature is a mobile interface to the search engine - try it virtually here. Users can text a search query to 242242 and receive text results back on their phone. Like the main ChaCha service, the answers are sent by a live search guide. For now, it’s free.

Example searches given by the company include “I’m at the corner of 42nd & Broadway in New York City. Where can I get a cup of coffee?” or even “Where can I get some great sushi in Palo Alto, CA?” ChaCha also says that shortcuts and misspellings are not a problem, since a real human is reading and responding to the message.

I texted “What is the temperature in New York City?” to the service (I’m flying there tomorrow). Within moments I received a text message back welcoming me to the service:

Welcome to ChaCha’s FREE txt trial! Your phone just got smarter. Ask away. Your first answer will come shortly. Std txt charges apply. Send HELP for help.

Four minutes later I got the following reply:

Current temperature is 17 degrees F, Clear, Wind: W at 10 mph, Humidity: 45%. Thursday 24 degrees F 16 degrees F. http://www.chacha.com/u/a6xii7j9

Useful? Definitely. Scalable? Not a chance. But the upside is that if you are ever lonely and have no one to text with, ChaCha guides are there for you. You’ll never be lonely again.

The company has raised $16 million in funding, including an investment from Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions. Look for them to hit the deadpool by end of year 2008.

Just kidding, ChaCha. Keep me on the PR distribution list. I promise to be fair and balanced. On a side note, we have a running thread in the forums for people to post their most entertaining ChaCha guide exchanges.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. ChaCha SMS - is this our dance? at infodoodads

    January 22nd, 2008 at 10:42 pm

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  1. Alex

    January 2nd, 2008 at 10:07 pm

    Arrington,

    You’re on a roll today. Another hilarious line/title …..”They Still Suck.”

    :)

  2. Niyaz PK

    January 2nd, 2008 at 10:16 pm

    oh michael… you know how to really hurt people…..
    just kidding…

    But i guess the quality of results will be very high…
    Also, we dont waste any time to search and find the results on our own… So the 4 minutes can be excused…

  3. elvirs

    January 2nd, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    at least they are not in deadpool where EDGEIO is.
    why we never saw a ‘Edgeio sucks’ titles post on techcrunch?

    being an influence blogger doest not mean you can call things shit only because your day was bad or whatever the reason is.

  4. Morgan

    January 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 pm

    Based on your example I would likely use this.

    And depending on how it’s done, I don’t know why it would have to be any less scalable than Yahoo Answers, I think they could pull it off. I suppose we’ll see, but I am leaning more toward ‘cool’ than ’sucks’.

  5. Chris

    January 2nd, 2008 at 10:41 pm

    There’s a service in the UK/Ireland called “Any Question Answered” which is virtually the same thing as the Cha Cha Cha mobile. Website is http://www.issuebits.com/. I’ve never used it, but a co-worker who worked in the UK for a few years says it’s very popular. I assume their response rates are relatively quick. Wikipedia indicates AQA receives 16,000 queries a day and employs 1,000 researchers.

    There’s also a service called Mosio (www.mosio.com) that sends the text query to the Mosio website, where live users can respond w/o pay (response gets forwarded to the cell phone). There is also an e-mail service I created called SnapAsk, which is keyword based and automated/immediate, but has a slightly different feature set than Google SMS (notably, the ability to send full wikipedia articles based on queries - very useful for answering random questions in bars).

  6. Marzipan From Toledo

    January 2nd, 2008 at 11:00 pm

    $16M !

    this is getting ridiculous

  7. syed

    January 2nd, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    That’s just puuuure evil. Love the last line, though.

  8. Michael Arrington

    January 2nd, 2008 at 11:08 pm

    for those of you who think this scales - see the link in the answer they sent it has a source page that links to google with the query “temp in NYC.” So they are basically sticking a human in between me and Google, and paying that human a fee. Think through that enough and it all becomes kind of obvious why this isn’t going to work.

  9. Loren

    January 2nd, 2008 at 11:10 pm

    I have to say ChaCha isn’t as bad as you say it is. If you need to find something really specific, they have much better results than Google. The mobile ChaCha is a cool idea, but I would rather just ask someone.

  10. Michael Arrington

    January 2nd, 2008 at 11:13 pm

    Loren - they’re results are FROM Google. They really can’t be any better or worse.

  11. Faramarz

    January 2nd, 2008 at 11:16 pm

    it’s just a human interaction they are offering. someone gets paid to do the clicking for you and get back with result. even worst, they can’t direct you to the results, they provide a linka nd you do more clicking.

    good call, deadpool by end of the year

  12. EH

    January 2nd, 2008 at 11:30 pm

    I worked for a company that did something like this in the late 90s. What wound up happening is that since it didn’t scale, they found industries (like medical) that were willing to pay more for the same amount of volume. They got acquired, but whatever. Mediated computing has its place, I guess.

  13. kopos

    January 2nd, 2008 at 11:46 pm

    Considering in US where texting is only picking up recently compared to what the South Asian countries are already doing …

    But for this to be working:
    1. Texting rates have to be very cheap.
    2. Texting as a culture should be first nature to mobile phone usage almost equal or more than voice services.

    But as a simple Q & A service that connects a user to a knowledge vendor of hyper local information through a simple texting interface, it can be a game changer because it connects the two very disparate people demographics. The answers are instantaenous and only the most interested would give the info. Add in some incentives to responders by points and you have a hyperlocal business opinion network in no time.

    Frankly going to a website and inking in what I feel is just not the best medium to give info. The best and most honest (insider) info is asked direct and on a 1 to 1 basis.

    I beg to differ but why not scalable? When Y! Answers can scale why cant this? The question would just need to be send to the right person’s screen based on their profile.

  14. Prashant

    January 3rd, 2008 at 12:22 am

    “What is the temperature in New York city” is a pretty dumb question to ask ChaCha… and I guess that is why their researcher just googled it and gave u the answer…

    The potential in ChaCha lies in the fact that almost every one of us has had those moments when we just cannot find what we’re looking for on our search engine. Also, most people aren’t very good at ‘Googling’. I mean we all can type in phrases in the search box and click search, but we aren’t experts at crafting the queries with logic operators n all so that we get exactly what we want. It can take up to 15 minutes at times to find what you want online as you go from one site to the next. If ChaCha can handle these difficult situations for us, then I think we’ve got a winner.

    For eg., if ChaCha can answer a question like “How much fuel does a boeing 737 need to fly from New York to San Francisco?” or “Which is the most popular Ruby on Rails book?” in 4 minutes.. that’s pretty good.

  15. Rahul Dighe

    January 3rd, 2008 at 12:29 am

    I don’t quite understand why you would state something as a “fact” rather than take the time to explain why it is not scalable ? So long as chacha can make more money than what it spends to hire an employee to do the searches it should be able to make some money and better yet if as folks say they use google they don’t even have to invest in search technology either so its just a giant distributed call center. if Cha Cha opens up to sign up “searchers” outside of US they will have lot of people who are very computer literate ready to work for them at $5/hr .. who knows it might just work.

  16. chrisco

    January 3rd, 2008 at 1:03 am

    Wow, it is amazing that a company with a “stick a paid human between user search engine” raised $16 million. But then again we seen this type of thing before and we’ll see it again. When I was at my old venture debt and equity company we made a loan (guaranteed by a big media company) to a startup magazine headed by a successful TV and magazine publisher who wanted to launch use the money to launch a “content” website. To make a long story short, all you had to do was look at the business model, cost structure and revenue model and see it was going to fail and fail fast. I still don’t know why we did that deal — actually I do — it was a combo if infatuation and “get money out the door to grow the portfolio before the IPO.” Anyway, ChaCha can only survive as long as investors keep throwing money down the rat hole. I’d imagine that’ll stop soon. Only other way would be if they changed the business model. Better get to work, boyz, or else there’s a strong chance you’ll be out of a job by the end of the year.

  17. chrisco

    January 3rd, 2008 at 1:07 am

    PS: Regarding the “new york city temperature” example: It took them four minutes to return the number to you when typing that exact search into Google returns this in about 20 miliseconds: http://www.google.com/search?h.....tnG=Search

  18. kopos

    January 3rd, 2008 at 1:33 am

    Reg #13.
    I did some research (reading) on what ChaCha is doing and frankly after that, I feel like a dumberer writing that comment. What i though they are (should be) doing and what they are doing as I now understand are two very different things.

    I stand corrected. But I still feel “What is the temperature in New York city” is a wrong question to ask. Although something like “Which is the best place to have lunch in and around XYZ location - something spicy and easier on the pockets?” is a question that a person will be able to answer very well…

    More than search I think this will be great as a discovery tool for some very narrow domains - that actually leverages people’s tacit wisdom.

  19. Paolo

    January 3rd, 2008 at 1:42 am

    @ Michael
    of course anyone can argue that this is not a viable business, not as long as it’s free I guess… now I just wanted to add a piece of information to Chris’ comment, regarding the UK based AQA service (hope they don’t mind…).

    AQA was launched in the UK in 2004, broke-even in 2006 and made a profit in 2007. They charge 1 pound per answer in the UK and 2 euros in Ireland. Now, I don’t know how serious these chacha guys are, but for sure IMHO they could make some serious business out of it.

    It’s extremely viral at the customer level (in the UK they use to say: let’s ask god…) and may also be licenced as a smart CRM application to various companies or institutions.

    /best

    Paolo

  20. Jools

    January 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 am

    If you could get directions to the nearest (and best smelling) restroom in a foreign city it would do the trick for me personally. I am not sure 4 minutes will do the trick though :-)

  21. micfo.com

    January 3rd, 2008 at 4:22 am

    Another question is, how many people will actually use particularly that feature.

  22. Parul Bindra

    January 3rd, 2008 at 4:33 am

    Lets say the idea takes off because of their ease of use. One can text in any question, from a directory-style inquiry to ones seeking information, rather than scrolling through mobile web pages on a tiny screen.

    But the big question of course, is what happens to them when the mobile web browsing experience improves? I don’t mind getting paid for my searches, but I certainly don’t want to pay for my searches. This company won’t last long I guess.

    Parul
    http://www.bhopu.com

  23. Bob Caswell

    January 3rd, 2008 at 6:13 am

    Hey Mike,

    Help me draw the connection between “it isn’t scalable” and “they suck.” I could be convinced that the two are related, I suppose. But I think it’s a little sloppy to equate the two so quickly without a bit more analysis.

    Meaning, for me anyway, something that is “useful, definitely” doesn’t by default “suck” just because it isn’t scalable even if scalability is definitely a big problem.

  24. BlogReader

    January 3rd, 2008 at 6:21 am

    [ Prashant : “What is the temperature in New York city” is a pretty dumb question to ask ChaCha… and I guess that is why their researcher just googled it and gave u the answer… ]

    No, that is exactly the kind of question someone would ask on their mobile device.

    [ For eg., if ChaCha can answer a question like “How much fuel does a boeing 737 need to fly from New York to San Francisco?” or “Which is the most popular Ruby on Rails book?” in 4 minutes.. that’s pretty good. ]

    That might be okay for a web user, but a cell phone person isn’t going to ask the first one. I can see them asking the 2nd as they might have just heard about Rails in a conference and want to order a book.

    The questions in mobile tend to be very basic 1 or 2 word queries, mainly as it is a pain to type in and also people are on the go when they are using their cell phones. Also this 4 minute response might be okay for some questions, but for ones like “sushi 10125″ or “flights to SFO” the answer has to be nearly instant as the user expects that.

  25. Jarrod

    January 3rd, 2008 at 6:31 am

    It’s a cool product, but, IMO it would become obsolete as the average person gets better access to mobile browsers that can tell us most of what we would ask chacha

  26. Prashant

    January 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 am

    Zook from Ziva Softwares is also offering simillar search functionality . although its only focused on Indian market but their Tech is same .

    BTW Mike any Plan to start an TC India ??

  27. Bryan

    January 3rd, 2008 at 7:42 am

    The reason it took so long (4 minutes) for a basic Google Answer is because your text message, whether simple or complex, has to follow the same path to get into our system, find an appropriate and available Guide (keep in mind, this just went as a press release today, so we are getting a ton of traffic), have the Guide determine where he/she wants to get the answer (in your case, Google was there easiest/quickest choice), and then send you the answer.

    there are a couple of things here.

    1. Depending on the service you are using (Sprint, Verizon, etc…) there can be lags/delays when sending text messages or pictures.

    2. Your question, again regardless of it’s simplicity, could have been in queue.

    The point is, just because the question is about basic temperature doesn’t move it to the front of the line to get answered immediately. It doesn’t mean that a future enhancement might include an automation feature for basic questions such as yours, but its just not there “today”.

    If Google can provide a Guide a super quick answer, then so be it. Who cares. The next question a Guide may receive will require them to spend 10 minutes searching some obscure site that isn’t even indexed by Google.

    The Guide’s goal is to retrieve accurate relevant information using the quickest/easiest resources at their disposal. This could be a search engine, a bookmarked site, heck maybe even an existing opened tab they just read a story from.

    Just because ChaCha is a search engine doesn’t mean that a Guide using Google’s results is wrong. Someone submits a search (from the desktop or mobile) to a Guide so “they” don’t have to spend the time finding the answer or they are in a location where searching the internet is not easily accessible.

  28. bart

    January 3rd, 2008 at 8:09 am

    This sounds a bit like Powerset to me, in terms of posing your question. Are people gonna take more time to write a really long question and wait a few minutes for a reply? Or you can just use the Google SMS service: http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/sms/ and to ask just use keywords in your questions to get an immediate reply, try these folks:

    1) “NYC sushi 42nd”
    2) “NYC Temperature”

    They both return pretty good results to me.

  29. David Bain

    January 3rd, 2008 at 8:28 am

    If you are coming to NY, better wear your wool knickers– its colder than the proverbial witch’s nipple here. Can I host you for a hot cup of joe here at the top of the Empire State bldg?

  30. Daniel

    January 3rd, 2008 at 8:59 am

    Bryan,

    You and Scott have some serious obstacles. Pls. not another Escient…

  31. Ujwal

    January 3rd, 2008 at 9:18 am

    Every one has an opinion. We are here to read Michael’s opinion.

    Funny thing is if the post makes you think, then it has already done its job.

    this post delivers !

    Ujw
    exoticbuddha.com

  32. skcus notgnirra

    January 3rd, 2008 at 11:46 am

    Michael,
    I can’t criticize you for what you said in this post, because the post is not really harsh, but the title is (because it’s meant to be). You guys are good, because 95% of the population don’t even know what the f they are reading.

    They think you are slamming these guys, but in reality you are promoting them, meanwhile building a ‘Bad Ass’ image for yourself as well. You are definitely smart though, and in fact do work hard and have an ability for being sneaky.

    Even their PR person (I would assume), who has the second comment here, is still kissing your ass in an indirect way, while promoting their product.

    Arrington, you are not as good as you think you are. Need to work at being even more sneaky if you want to have a shot of conquering the ‘Right’ people. Also, I don’t understand why you are trying to ruin your blog, by being sneaky. Keep it real (have you figured out my name yet?)

  33. Shanya

    January 3rd, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    funny question that I asked Cha Cha …”Why is Michael Arrington a douche bag”…the response..”I don’t know if Michael Arrington is a douche bag or not. He’s very negative to new ventures. http://chacha.com/u/guo2sisw

    great response, I love this service!!!

  34. stebeballmer

    January 3rd, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    “they still suck”? Mikey such great journalism.

    fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  35. Mike Ma

    January 3rd, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Hi Michael,

    The service is great. Just that it’s not scalable doesn’t mean that “they still suck” With micro-payments in the future, there maybe a business model for this service. I would easily pay up to 99 cents for an instant answer i wouldn’t have access to otherwise. If i were to pay, i would want some kind of service level agreement like response within 15 mins or something like that.

    The title of your blog itself leads one to believe your as “fair and balanced” as the FOX News channel! =P

  36. My 2 cents

    January 3rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    Hi Michael,

    I think your “article” shows how much time you spent thinking about the service.

    First of all, not everybody out there is a nerd who likes or is able to browse for such things as the actual temp in NYC via a mobile browser.

    Second of all mobile browsing is still user unfriendly (how about writing something useful like that) and in comparison to text messaging expensive.

    Third - there are “developed” countries out there, where text messaging is extremely popular and cheap - see SE-Asia and Europe. The US mobile market is far - and I mean lightyears - behind them in regard of availability, quality of service and acceptance of text messaging.

    Fourth, the question for temps in NYC is not dumb or useless. It’s a normal question and somebody who has a cellphone has other needs. Cd somebody pls explain to me, why I should give a dime about the fuel needed for a 737 - this is imho a dumb question.

    Fifth, making statements like - this is not scalable is just plain wrong. Why should this service be not scalable? Maybe your definition from scalability differs from mine, but the service is of course scalable, if it is profitable is a different question. You should make proper statements.

    Last but not least, the answer from Cha Cha given in comment 33 should have been “He is a arrogant person, who makes public statements without reflecting on new ventures…”

  37. David Kahn

    January 3rd, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    Question
    i am cold where is the nearest clothing shop

    Answer
    I am sorry your cold. Since don’t know where I can suggest look in the windows around you do any have clothing displays?

    It would be nice if they had a tracking system. Google has that. You don’t even have to have a gps to see where you are with Google.

  38. SK

    January 3rd, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    Arrington thrives on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth he must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk (Chacha?) is probably more meaningful than his criticism designating it so.

    -adapted from Anton Ego, Ratatouille

  39. Michael Arrington

    January 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 pm

    #33 - haha. added that to the forums. good one.

    http://forums.techcrunch.com/f.....834啊

  40. Jake

    January 11th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    ChaCha is indeed sticking a human between you and Google. I don’t see anything wrong with that. If I need to know the forecast while not on a computer, ChaCha is the best resource to go to. Not everyone uses the painful mobile browsers.
    How about this for an example?

    “I’m driving from Chicago to Indianapolis, about 30 miles north of West Lafayette. When is the rain going to stop?”
    5 mins later:
    ” You are currently on the edge of the rainstorm, keep going and you should be out of it in 10 or 15 miles.” They were off by 5 miles.

    Of course, I pulled over and texted that.

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