ChaCha, a free search service that lets you call or text in a question and get an answer in minutes via a return text message, got a confidence boost yesterday. AT&T announced a “strategic relationship” with the company that, to start, gives callers a cobranded greeting from both AT&T and ChaCha.
To use the service, call or text a query to 1-800 2ChaCha (1-800-2-242242).
We’ve questioned the scalability of the business, which uses human guides to answer questions. And we’ve also made fun of some of the answers that have been sent to users.
ChaCha says that they are approaching profitability on a per-call basis, though. And the usefulness of the service is undeniable.
What we’re digging to find out is how deep this relationship with AT&T goes. AT&T says “The two companies also will work together to further enhance ChaCha’s free mobile-answers service and explore opportunities in both text and voice ad-based services.” This may be a first step towards an acquisition. ChaCha has raised $16 million in capital.
Perhaps, this service might be good for people needing travel directions in a hurry.
But under most circumstances you can wait until you get to the home or office to surf.
The only other possible use would be to do comparative price shopping for something you are about to buy
This is very encouraging. Interesting Stuff…
To be honest twitter can be used for this kind of service if you have enough followers. Tweet your question and generally you get the answer within 10 minutes.
Interesting Stuff. Nice Business Model
If no money went into this ChaCha thing, I’d say it’s a “funny” business. But like this, it’s just an unbelievably ridiculous “business model” IMHO, that’ll not hold past the curiosity stage of its users.
Good for both of them. I use chacha on mobile frequently and have been a big fan for many months now. There are things that Google SMS is better at and yes, as one poster notes, Twitter or LinkedIn friends can also sometimes be a good resource. But it’s a huge time saver when you know how/when to use it.
Cha Cha is a trademark that is already in use :/
http://www.wipo....jsp?KEY=755971
That is Cha-Cha.. this is ChaCha.
The two marks (ChaCha and Cha-Cha) are similar enough to be an issue, legally speaking, but the trademark you referenced is in a different class of goods/services — so, unless ChaCha wants to get into the business of selling cheese, beer, coffee, tea, and meat, ChaCha (and their trademark) should be just fine.
http://www.wipo....jsp?KEY=905909
I’m sure ChaCha has its own team of fine patent experts and lawyers. If not, Scott Jones has enough of them.
Back from the dead i guess?
Where is Ajay? He needs to make an appearance. Jesus Christ himself could bless this company, and Ajay will bash it everytime.
I’ve actually used their text service a lot. It’s really useful when you have a question and can’t/don’t feel like doing research. My wife and I were on a long car ride and used it a bunch during conversation, just to find out random stuff.
There is definitely a trend here.. carriers partnering with mobile search providers. Its good to see AT&T recognizes the viral natural and popularity of ChaCha.. they’ve become quite a force in the market.
It’s great to see the largest mobile carrier partnering with ChaCha. Mobile is the next big thing and Google is trying hard to contunuosly have complete domination, I think ChaCha will soon blow them out, especially as fast as they are growing. First worthy competition for Google. I think soon will be dominating the market.
How do I invest?
Michael: Does “profitability on a per-call basis” mean it’s approaching profitability? Or does that qualifier mean it’s approaching profitability before taking overheads etc. into account?
the latter
So they’re bragging about how they’re now managing to sell their goods above what it costs to make them. Gotcha.
Michael, why don’t you text your question about the depth of the AT&T relationship to ChaCha’s search? Let’ me know what’s you are getting back
I am really excited and happy for this partnership. It means big things for ChaCha! I love the service, use it all the time and tell everyone I know about it as well.
My family uses ChaChat mostly for phone numbers and addresses. It’s free and my cell provider charges for 411 service!
Over Thanksgiving weekend, I found out my younger sister “works” for ChaCha. She showed me the interface and told me about how it works.
The site only started getting over 500k monthly visitors since August, according to Compete.com.
She can usually sit there for up to 2 hours waiting on a question to come through from a user. The problem isn’t scalability, its finding customers who actually want to use the darn thing.
She made a little over $20 for the entire month of November. Their internal message boards are filled to the brim with hundreds of other workers who complain about never getting questions. The reason ChaCha stopped accepting new workers a few months ago seems to be that they outstripped the supply of people asking questions.
An important policy that seriously restricts the usefulness of ChaCha’s answers is that its workers are restricted to the sites they get their answers from. They are not allowed to use 3rd party search engines, such as Google or Yahoo. They are also restricted from using Wikipedia and almost any kind of message board.
ChaCha has an internal directory of human-categorized approved links across a number of directories, ala Yahoo’s early attempts to create a categorized view of the web by employing librarians to index sites. That was the 1st gen business model that pretty much failed for Yahoo.
I ran a series of questions by her and the answers she could find were a combination of inaccurate, incomplete, or occasionally right.
After having seen ChaCha from the inside, more or less, I can’t say there’s anything there that shows me it has any value to the user. Go hit Google, Yahoo, or even Live.com. You’ll get better results.
nope. ChaCha’s guides can use whatever search engine they want to – there’s only a few restrictions on wikianswer type sites. sometimes their directory of links is really helpful to me, other times not so much and I’ll use the goog.
also i don’t get what Yahoo’s directory biz model fro long ago has to do with ChaCha? Their links are for guides, not a way to make money as far as i can tell.
Well, I’ll be sure to google or use yahoo when I’m on the road.
The links site that you’ve related to Yahoo is the ChaCha internal quicklinks site for guides. It is a page that has categorized links, fit with a custom GOOGLE search engine, to allow guides to give faster and more accurate responses. I find those pages absolutely helpful, but we are not required to use them at all.
Your sister told you that ChaCha guides cannot use Google? Maybe she needs to get trained again.
I do have to disagree with the wikipedia policy, because for the most part, they are a good resource but I think ChaCha is trying to prevent a bad answer from a vandalized page.
Message board are banned because, well, are you not seeing the obvious? They are not Yahoo Answers!
You’ve ran a series of questions by your sister and she has answered incorrectly. What does that have to do with ChaCha? She is an incompetent guide and probably will not last very long. Most guides do give good answers and I feel sorry for the unfortunate few whose questions are handled by your sister.
When I first started, I had the same problem of not getting questions. But once I understood (unlike others who just sat there and complained) why I wasn’t getting questions (I did not set my expertise categories correctly), I set them up and questions were coming in one after another.
Oh yeah, you said the “site” only got 500k visitors. Maybe your sister should’ve informed you better about what ChaCha does. Seriously, I’m a guide and I only visit ChaCha.com once in a blue moon, what’s the use for the website? ChaCha is a MOBILE answering service!
BTW, did your sister educate you on how many MILLIONS of queries that ChaCha has received per month? If not, then she needs to get educated herself.
Please excuse my rudeness, but I have no tolerance for ignorance.
First I’d like to thank “ajay will be here” for the kind introduction. (I’m not sure but I think he compared Michael to Jesus. Impressive.) Next it’s nice to see so many insiders posting to this message board to hype up their service. I see some nice chacha catch phrases here. But come on: “they’ve become quite a force in the market” and “First worthy competition for Google. How do I invest?” Seriously???
This is actually a good announcement for chacha. Congrats! I’m still not a believer in the model, but it’s okay that we disagree. And it looks like at&t IS preparing to acquire them – http://www.bizj...01/daily28.html
I think chacha has already “cobranded” themselves with a bunch of companies though, because anytime you ask a question now you get an ad followed by your abbreviated answer + another ad.
And I thought we already knew that “they are approaching profitability on a per-call basis”. Didn’t they cut paying their guides from 20 cents a call to 10 cents a call?? [See one of Michael's other posts about that.] Sounds like “approaching profitability” to me.
I’ll give chacha some credit though to be fair. They usually do a good job of finding answers to simple questions like the weather or a phone number. But anything much more difficult than that is a crap shoot.
Maybe chacha can convince at&t to stop using the iPhone now! *Find out more. Reply DEADPOOL
ChaCha guides are barely getting any traffic lately because of how buggy ChaCha’s Universe system currently is. Tons of questions go unanswered to users and ChaCha is still under a 20 question text limit. I wonder if AT&T realizes they’ve just partnered themselves with a company that’s the equivalent of a car with three blown tires.
All this good news and they’re finding ways to quietly continue to cut guide pay. Using still undisclosed methods of “statistical sampling” to cut people’s pay in half. Adding “bad” and “wow” buttons, promising to “QC” bad answers, wow answers? Who knows. Maybe they’re going into their new PAQ (previously answered questions) that are near instantly incorporated.
ChaCha is losing the human touch, as the same question, if it’s been asked before you’ll get an answer from a pre-selected drop down menu.
ChaCha on!
We are not allowed to use Wikipedia, Yahoo answers, answerbag, or Q&ALive to find our answers because they are unreliable sources. We are to use reputable, reliable sources for information.
ChaCha is a useful service for a lot of people. While it is extremely useful for phone numbers and addresses, it is also useful for directions, traffic reports, and school closings. These are things that may come up when your computer is not handy. Not everyone has a smartphone or one that is web enabled so they can’t look it up themselves.
While we do get an abundance of kids texting silly questions, we also get many legitimate questions.
Some kids text in for help with homework, some text for side effects of a certain medication, or symptoms of a certain medical condition.
The types of questions are endless and range from absurd to really interesting. Our answers are only as good as the information we can find. Which, coincidentally is the same information any other computer user can find.
We try to answer questions as accurately as possible according to what we perceive the question to be. If you send an obscure, jumbled up question you will either get a response to clarify or we will attempt to answer it the best we can.
I like ChaCha’s idea of actually answering the question instead of providing multiple links to look it up yourself.
ChaCha is still in infancy. It has kinks to work out like any other company.
I truly can’t understand why some of you bash ChaCha. It is a FREE service. It may be limited at the moment, but still absolutely free.
A service that is new and free is not going to live up to everyone’s expectations but honestly, why bash it?