Miss Tormenting ChaCha Operators? Let Me Introduce You To Stumpedia

stumpedia.jpgStumpedia, a “human powered search engine” we’ve not covered before has added live search results ChaCha style.

This is how they spin it:

Stumpedia.com, the social search engine that relies on human participation to index, organize, and review the world wide web is launching another human-powered search feature similar to the guided search model that was recently ditched by ChaCha.com. Our approach to the guided search model is dependent on crowdsourcing and the benefits of social media participation.

They don’t provide any details on their site, but given the “DOWNLOAD PLUG-IN SO YOU CAN ALSO ANSWER QUESTIONS” link on the page and the mention of crowd sourcing I think this translates to users also provide the live answers.

The wisdom of offering a service like this, unless simply a publicity stunt, is flawed: as we know 90% of the users on ChaCha were pranksters and as ChaCha eventually found out, the model doesn’t work. Stumpedia adds another dimension though to the process: now you can not only torment the person giving the answer, you can suprise those asking the questions as well, offering a whole new world of joke blog posts and corresponding screenshots.

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