We’ve never been big fans of ChaCha, the human powered search engine that pairs you up with a “guide” who attempts to answer your questions in real time. The search model was obviously unscalable from the outset, but ChaCha’s botched implementation hasn’t helped much. When it first launched, ChaCha allowed users to initiate full on chat sessions with their guides, which predictably led to a flood of pranksters who overwhelmed the service.
After a year of trying to make the ridiculously flawed system work, the company abandoned the chat sessions in favor of one-off question and answers, primarily targeting users through a mobile service.
Despite its glaring issues, ChaCha has managed to ring up $16 million in funding, which is probably why it has survived this long. And to the company’s credit, it has amassed a following of loyal “guides” - the people who do the heavy lifting and find the search results for visitors to ChaCha.
Many of these guides are only interested in making a quick buck, which is why there are so many laughably bad search results. But for some, ChaCha is an extension of the workday, offering some relatively easy money to help supplement their incomes. And now ChaCha is going to screw them.
Yesterday ChaCha sent out a message to its guides explaining that it was introducing a “Pay-For-Performance” system that was designed to improve search quality - not a bad idea, given the shoddy results we’ve seen before. Unfortunately, it seems that ChaCha has blundered this plan too.
Under the new program, “Top Guides” will receive 20 cents per question, which has been the standard rate for experienced guides for some time. Everyone else gets 10 cents per question - half of what they would have gotten under the old system. To become a Top Guide, users must do the following:
* >95% Quality Measurement.
* 95% and above completion of answers to questions:
* Minimum 300 Searches a week.
That’s a lot of searches, given the fact that most experienced users average around one search per minute. In effect, ChaCha is forcing users to work five or more hours per week if they want the higher payrate - something that will totally alienate the site’s more casual (but accurate) users. What’s worse, there’s currently no way to readily see your accuracy score, so users are forced to trust ChaCha’s word.
Users are up in arms on the site’s private forum (you can see some of the complaints here), with many planning to abandon ChaCha entirely. It’s clear that ChaCha is trying to trim their workforce down to a small army of accurate and hardworking searchers, but enraging its entire community only seems to solidify its place in the Deadpool.
Thats a job for my 5 spare monkeys that sit on the computer all day number crunching.
Also the monkeys from Cuil are looking for a job. Maybe the new startup of the day should be a headhunter for jobs the monkeys can do?
With a name like chacha what did you expect. The sooner this site gets put to sleep the better.
I can tell you instantly if a web company will die or succeed instantly just by hearing its name.
16 million bucks on what? Damn. Its probably for ‘ChaCha Business Solutions’ (whatever that is) or the studio photos of all the twentysomething hipsters on the site. What a waste of money.
According to me the whole base concept of Chacha is not so good……..very few percentage of people will call to find anything..they will prefer google first and besides that there are whole lot of other issues.
Well, it makes sense for humans to do what humans do well and for computers to do what computers do well and according to Jimmy Wales, humans should be there to make editorial judgments while computers go through the original data.
ChaCha rocks my world…
(linkback) ChaCha: Thrive or Fail? [VOTE] http://www.thriveorfail.com/78a07
On my human powered search engine at http://www.findinfo.com I offer 24/7 live chat search help using workers in an office India. The main searches on the site are powered by Google, and then if the user does not find what they are looking for they can use the free chat search help, with no registration required. About 5% of the visitors to the site use the live chat help. It costs me $300/month to run the site and it only makes $50/month from the ads (from the Google results feed). Pranksters are a problem, but most of the live searches people do are real. The main problem is that traffic to FindInfo.com has not gone up significantly since I added the live search guides 7 months ago.
just tried your search engine … no operators online …
Just gave a try with your setup and before the live support could reply me he closed the chat box
Excellent service there!
If it would have been great i would have recommended to my readers but well everything is not always perfect.
Oh my God, that’s a crappy service. I asked what color the car in Back to the Future is, and the guy (”Ryan” btw, lulz) just sent med a link to imdb.com and copy-pasted random quotes from that very same page.
If ChaCha joined the Deadpool today, it wouldn’t be soon enough.
Well, there are things that I’ll never understand. 16M for what? I don’t get it.
DIGG IT!!!!
http://digg.com/tech_news/ChaC....._Implosion
I’ve been doing the ChaCha guide thing for about 6 weeks - on top of my regular job, in hopes of being able to pay off some credit card debt. I try to answer things well, but 8/10 of the answers I see from other guides are craptastic, and then I see the people using the service getting pissed off (understandably!) because they got a flip answer, not what they wanted.
Example, the other day there was someone who asked for the easiest way to get to a town. The first guide said “take a helicopter”, the asker replied angrily that they wanted a real answer, that response got marked as abuse, THEN I got it and gave them the answer, along with an apology. The problem is, answering questions well increases the time it takes which decreases the likelihood that you’ll make their quality standard.
Also, there is NO WAY to know if you’re meeting that 95% mark. That’s a hidden number, and so would be very easy for ChaCha to simply say “yeah, you have X searches, but you weren’t accurate enough”.
I looked into ChaCha, thinking it could be an easy way to make money… wrong! You can make more money by doing online surveys and by reading frugal blogs, learning how to save money. One of my fave frugal and money saving blogs is Engineer a Debt Free Life at engineeradebtfreelife.blogspot.com. There are also links to 3 legit survey sites on there - you won’t get rich from them, but can make some money on the side… and lots of free sample links there too.
I can’t wait until I read Mahalo’s obituary on here.
The world needs less Calacanis. Much less.
It appears chaCha is altering their business model a bit. See http://www.marketwatch.com/new.....;dist=hppr
It is amazing the bad ideas that get funding. I can’t believe chacha got $16m
CEO: Thanks for your investment in ChaCha, what can I do for you?
VCs: we’d like you to make some profit so we can get a return on our investment
CEO: OK
CEO: Doing that now
VCs: k
(18 months pass)
CEO: What is profit?
My first thought when reading the ‘Top Guides’ requirements was “they get 300 searches a week?”
It is quite unfortunate that ChaCha can’t make their business model more profitable for guide it looks like they will be losing a lot of guides.. But in the long run this is the best way for ChaCha to survive in the ever-growing competitive mobile search market.
They are clearly focusing on finding a better, more dedicated user base, which in turn will create a better product. You guys act like this is the one of the worst concepts in the world, while personally you may feel the concept is subpar, it’s growth is pretty impresive . ChaCha has won a couple of awards and it is starting to become a household name amongst the college crowd (given I am from Indiana, where ChaCha was founded originally). Their recent partnership with Coca Cola shows me that ChaCha may have found a way to monetize their service.
Cha Cha means SLOW SLOW in Thai.
I am a guide and now I am leaving because of this. I cant do 300 questions a week i have a full time job…It’s outrageous
i am a guide as well. so many of us will quit when 10 cents a question will hit. it is a bad business concept to do this. They WILL lose a lot of guides. And when questions aren’t answered in a timely manner, many people will not use ChaCha.
I just have to ask this…
The last Techstench posting was in April. 4-5 months ago!.
Yes, I realize you hate ChaCha…but how is it in those 5 months ChaCha has seen astounding growth and success in the Mobile space (i.e; averaging over 250,000 mobile searches a day, closing on 8 million by the end of August)…getting deals with the likes of Coca-Cola, other major players getting ready to sign, etc…) and yet not even a peep about any form of success the site has had? At least try and be somewhat fair in your assessment of the company.
seriously.
I tried this service the guide was an idiot and had a bad attitutude. I’m so happy this company went under!!!
Yet, it is a good idea, if you could employ people who really are passionate about searching like the guys over at searchlores. And if the guide explained his sophisticated searching techniques, you would learn something from it. I would pay a nominal fee for that!!
All the poor responses that the people here love to quote and get lulz from are what ChaCha should be cutting, not the pay of the hard working accurate Guides who give intelligent, well researched and witty answers.
We’ve heard through the grapevine about some unhappiness in the ChaCha ranks. If you’re a ChaCha guide who wants to know more_ about joining a community where your knowledge will be valued, e-mail specialagents@kgb.com. Our kgbkgb product is in Beta. Text us to try out our service
When ChaCha transformed themselves to a mobile only service, I started using all the time. On the web, I am better at searching than a guide is. But on my phone, I can’t find answers to my questions quickly, which is why ChaCha is awesome. I love this service, and a bunch of my friends now use it. Occasionally I get bad responses, but for the most part, the responses are pretty good. Have you even tried the service? I know it is fun to trash people, but grow up and be more objective TC.
I completely agree. TC has slammed ChaCha for a long time, but since going all mobile, chacha has been the first service i’ve used that makes me not miss google. The CEO is brilliant too–look at his track record. I’m very long on this co.
And I don’t think I have ever given a shoddy answer. The paycut will turn away the pests, those who do give junk answers, but also penalizes loyal guides who don’t want to sit on the computer for hours on end. I might complete 10 searches an hour; not all of mine are “what’s the weather going to be like in zip 90210″ — no I get the “Who’s Joe Schmo from Podunkville, IA and why is he famous?” which takes time to ferret out at times. I wish I could do a query a minute! I think that a query a minute is an extremely conservative estimate. More like 3-4 minutes per query on average which means hours of hearing a door bell ring for queries popping up. I do this part-time on weekend nights and I am looking into cashing out and quitting all together.
I feel for you man, hope they sort things out. I love using you guys’ service.
I disagree. I think there will be more shoddy answers because you have to answer twice as many questions to get the same amount of money. What ChaCha is going to lose is a lot of good guides that can only search a few hours. I love using ChaCha, but I just became a guide and I won’t get rich off of it, but it’s fun for me to learn new things that I have to search for. For 10 cents a search though I think I’ll walk away too.
What were they smoking when this got funded?
If you can’t find what you’re looking for using Google you shouldn’t be allowed to use a computer.
Well, genius, if you had paid any attention at all, you would notice it’s MOBILE ONLY answering service. Most of people in the US do not have iphones, and most people, even those with web browser-enabled phones, do not use their cell phones outside of calling and texting.
Anyway, as for the pay cut, I think it’s a risky move to alienate the foundation of the company, the guides, as well as creating bad publicity. You may not know it by reading TC, but ChaCha is successful. I like reading TC, but I think you guys have a unfair bias against this company. I mean, where were you guys in the past four months? ChaCha has grown exponentially to amounting almost 3 million texts a week, has received national attention and several awards. They just signed a deal with Coke, so definitely they’re not going under.
And if you want to question the investors, go to the company’s website and look at the resumes of those investors before you speak. In fact, by looking at the resumes of the founders alone will give you confidence in ChaCha. Well, maybe not anymore… after they pulled this move.
I like using ChaCha and for the most part it has helped me out. No, I’m not a shill and I’m not being paid to say nice stuff. I have no loyalty whatsoever to ChaCha, if there is a better service, I’ll switch right away. I’ve tried ASKME but they really don’t provide the answers I need in the same timely manner with the same accuracy.
However, I do feel bad for the guides, especially those who are actually making a living with it (I don’t know how they do it). And as I said, this move is extremely risky, if all the guides start dropping out.
At least Arrington didn’t write this article…
The only time anyone has made money with ChaCha was in the case of certain forum moderators who have family that work at ChaCha were paid hourly to beta test new programs (of course, these moderators stoutly denied being paid anything at all, working endless hours seemingly for free, until some moderators became irate and left, exposing the free Amazon gift cards, and other payment and perks for the oh-so-special forum moderators). Of all the independent contractor work at home jobs on the internet, ChaCha is by FAR the worst, and borderline illegal scheme. Back in the day, good ole’ Scott used to talk about how this wasn’t a pyramid scheme , well if you look up the patent for ChaCha, http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20070174244.html, the guy refers to ChaCha having PYRAMID REWARDS in the freaking PATENT.
“56. A method as recited in claim 55, wherein the reward is a pyramid reward.”
Oh, but that was back when you could actually refer your friends and make a bonus according to how much they worked. It is also illegal to change the rate of future pay according to speed of previous work, which ChaCha has done since the BEGINNING. Also, the bank that ChaCha encourages you to use, First Internet Bank, has none other than Scott Jones on the board or whatever, and they also charge you $2.00 (basically an hour or more of work) each time you would like to transfer your earnings to their bank. ChaCha also made a mistake once and overpaid some guides a little bit, and WITHDREW THE DEPOSITS MADE DAYS LATER, OVERDRAWING MANY GUIDES. Apparently, the company ChaCha can reach right into your BANK ACCOUNT and TAKE YOUR MONEY with absolutely NO PERMISSION. Sure, you can have direct deposit or check if you’d like, but you can only have these options once a month. And furthermore, you can only change your method of payment twice. Pretty much scares you into using FIB and the pay me now option, eh? Let’s not go into all the people that have been silenced, fired for no reason other than disagreeing with ChaCha or saying anything negative about ChaCha in any forum or medium.
I’ve got proof of all this and more, and I can’t wait for the class action to kick in like Chuck Norris. ChaCha is a waste of time, the ‘questions’ that we get asked are 99% offensive, as they always have been.
For any desperate guide that reads this, please consider other work from home, ChaCha is the worst there is.
I have been waiting for my Pay Me Now button since the first of JULY! I still don’t have it. But yet I get at least 1 email a day about contests and logging on to win money. Accordingly to most of the posts on the ChaCha forum these people that have been announced as winners haven’t received their money for winning. ChaCha is not responding to Feedback requests but as soon as you hit that 300 mark you all of a sudden get a qc email stating that you screwed something up in a response (generally it’s because a guide didn’t capitalize the C in ChaCha.) therefore your pay won’t be .20. Does anyone know if ChaCha is actually paying people? Who can we contact to force them to pay us other than a lawyer?
ChaCha = Crap
As a guide who just started and was working my way to whopping .20c/message status, I was angry to learn that there would be no way of me getting to that benchmark. ChaCha can say all it want about trying to rid the guides who did not properly answer questions. However, they could cut costs at our expense, so they did.
I tried using the “For Guides, By Guides” message board to organize a guide boycott for 24 hours to protest the pay change. My post was automatically moved within a minute of being posted. My other attempts were the same, and my profile was immediately deactivated. I felt like I was in Nazi Germany. So, myself and other friends in law school are scouring our texts to see if there is a suit we can file.
Thanks for using Cha Cha!!!
What about laws covering independent contractors vs employees?
Hello, ChaCha?
Can you hear yourself?
Are you listening?
In public relations circles, Brad Bostic’s article in the Guide Blog and comments to TechWeb are called damage control. ChaCha HQ is running interference with the media to minimize PUBLIC IMAGE damage based on a leadership decision. It doesn’t take a huge leap in logic to figure out that if you’re running damage control, then something got damaged: You have 10,000 Guides crying out in the wilderness.
In the past, the ChaCha HQ group listened and responded when Guides offered suggestions and feedback. It is more important now than ever that you listen.
Esther, Brad, Scott: Ask yourselves: If the company told you that for missing one day of work during any pay period, regardless of reason, you’d be cut to half pay, would you continue to work for the company? Death in the family? Too bad; half pay. In the hospital? Too bad; half pay. In an auto accident on the way to work? Too bad; half pay.
It sure doesn’t sound like HQ cares anything about you, does it? And this kind of treatment after all the work you did helping them get where they are today!
I thought ChaCha was different, but it appears I was wrong.
I’ve worked in the automotive industry for nearly 20 years. Every time there’s a money shortage, or a need to reduce spending, the first cuts hit the floor workers and employee benefits. Pretty soon, management realizes that those people were ACTUALLY MAKING STUFF and when they’re gone nobody’s making anything. (Then they start cutting superfluous administrative and staffing positions.)
If this is a decision to cut the Guide force, then bravo, I expect it’s working great. If it’s to reduce spending, then it’s a bad decision: It’s not going to get you anything but a shortage of trained Guides. I, for one, will not put forth the same effort for half the pay. As much as I like being a Guide; I’ve got better things to do with my time.
Thanks for listening.
ChaCha is not your employer, as far as I could tell, all you “Guides” are contractors. I’m sure ChaCha has lawyers, and they have prepared the contract for you to read. And I’m 90% sure that there is a clause in there that they can change the pay at anytime. tough luck!
It seems like ChaCha could use some lessons in how to conduct business. I’m currently a guide and consider myself a good one. I’m a recent college grad who is working toward my MBA. I work full time, go to class, and do ChaCha when I can to earn a few bucks. ChaCha claims that this is to weed out those below “top guide” status. But I ask, how do you expect to do that? By allowing your top guides to be unemployed, uneducated people who have nothing to do but sit around and ChaCha all day? And then you will just eliminate some of your most educated guides? NONSENSE! And thanks for the short two-week notice ChaCha….you rock!
To get “TOP GUIDE” pay you must do 300 searches a week (which most guides can’t do.Most do this part time),and have 95% accuracy (which they don’t even tell you how to improve).You just work and at the end of the week some guides “make” it while others(MOST) don’t.Also ChaCha doesn’t even help you get another job.If you put them as a previous job experience on an application they won’t offer proof they contracted you.
As a guide this was a slap in the face.They could have at least put a system in place letting you know how to improve your accuracy.I mean what’s the right answer to the question ” How do you eat out a girl while eating mac and cheese?”
Most questions are about sex,teen love,Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers,Chuck Norris facts,and dead baby jokes.Oh yeah and everyday I get like 10 questions that all ask “What’s a Dirty Sanchez?”
Why doesn’t ChaCha ban all the pranksters and give guides better questions to give better answer to?
Because they want the eyeballs.Who better to sell advertising to, than little kids and teenage idiots?
They got Coca Cola as a sponsor (they target youth) and they whored themselves out at the X games. And they have a “rock” competition coming.
This is about money and them keeping it.All the defenders saying “It’ll help weed out the bad guides” need to grow up. Guides work hard and give the best answers they can with all the bad questions they get.
I am a ChaCha guide and I found the paycut offensive. You can go to http://www.petitiononline.com/chacha/petition.html
to petition the paycut (this is for everyone, guides and customers alike). Hopefully through this petion, ChaCha will succeed in the future.
I am a ChaCha guide and I found the paycut offensive. You can go to http://www.petitiononline.com/chacha/petition.html
to petition the paycut (this is for everyone, guides and customers alike)
Can somebody please address the following issue?
The ability to ‘increase’ one’s wages to 20ยข per search is based on the Quality Score from a previous week. We have asked for the documentation which defines this Quality Process, but have not received it. And this ‘Quality Rating’ is underway at this moment, being used to calculate next week’s wages.
In order for the quality process to serve it’s purpose, don’t you think we should have ACCESS to the quality methods being employed? Don’t you think we should know exactly what factors are being assessed, and how the total score is calculated?
How can they base our pay on a closeted system? And all that we receive is a notification that we did or didn’t make the cut. I believe we have a right to also receive the report showing just where and how we succeeded, or failed.
Funny. Aug 5th, when this story was released, was the day I passed my final test to become a paid ChaCha Guide. I found the initial screening adequate to weed out the joke guides and have had a great time working with the service since I started. (yeah,yeah,yeah except the Does Billy like Amy? questions)
I agree that the pay cut was a little drastic, but maybe it was a move to cut the fat off and keep the ‘real’ employees. The ones that have a commitment to the company.
Yes, seriously. This is ridiculous. I can answer about 40 questions in an hour… but I cannot devote 7 hours a week to this.
I have been using ChaCha via text messaging for the last week and am very impressed with the results. For me, it is easier than any mobile search solution (I have a 3G Black Jack and iPhone). I wanted to know about an ‘04 Tuscan red before I ordered, and while conversing with friends, the answer came back in less than 1 minute. The human touch is also nice, here are some queries with the answers:
Q: Is Halle Barry Single
A: The Oscar winner and her boyfriend, Gabriel Aubry, welcomed a daughter on March 16, 2008. Halle is not single, sorry.
Q: Did the US Men’s Team Win The Beach Volleyball Gold
A: The US won the Gold Medal, They Played Awesome
I believe their business model could be tweaked for success:
1. its a mobile search solution that is quick and easy and works on the majority of mobile phones with text message adoption roughly reaching over a 40% active adoption rate in the US, 80%+ with the younger demos
2. they could make it a premium SMS service (either per request or subscription).
I use to work in data services for a major US carrier and you can’t under-estimate the ubiquity of SMS and willingness of consumers who bill to phone for on the go services. In 2000, there were many folks who believed that consumers would not pay for text messages, mobile IM, picture messages, or ring tones — all of which generate billions per year in revenues. The question is how much of the pie the carriers will take from that margin and having enough left over for the company and the guides, and generating enough free-marketing to achieve scale.
I don’t work for ChaCha.
I am looking for a site that is legit and pays out like chacha. Something that is free to start and easy to do but with a better pay check. ChaCha is getting under my skin!