ChaCha (search engine)
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Carmel, Indiana (September 1, 2006)Brad Bostic, founder
ChaCha is a mobile answers service that uses human guides to answer questions for users. This is a technique known as social searching. ChaCha was created by Scott A. Jones, inventor and entrepreneur, and Brad Bostic, the chairman of Bostech Corporation. ChaCha is based in Carmel, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis.
The alpha version of the search engine was launched on September 1, 2006. A beta version was introduced on November 6, 2006.[1] The service reported 20,000 guides had registered by year end.[2] ChaCha also raised US$6 million in development funds, including support from Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment firm owned by Jeff Bezos, the entrepreneur behind Amazon.com.[3]
The guideless search function is based on the idea that the system will learn from the acquired results through storing the best-rated search results and providing the same results for similar searches in the future.
ChaCha is receiving accolades from third parties in the media, business and technology industry. The Wall Street Journal’s personal technology columnist, Walt Mossberg, characterized ChaCha as having “fast, accurate, useful answers†in his April 24, 2008 column “If You Have ChaCha and a Cellphone, You Have Answers.[4] Additionally, Frost & Sullivan recognized ChaCha as its 2008 North American Product Innovation Award winner, which is presented to the company that has demonstrated excellence in new products and technologies, saying, “ChaCha has clearly identified the missing pieces in mobile search and developed a unique solution to address the key requirements of mobile subscribers.â€[5]
Contents
[edit] Products
[edit] Desktop search
ChaCha had originally been founded with the intention to offer human-guided search from within a web browser and for the search engine to "learn" from the results provided by their guides. The system offered a chat on the left side of the page where users could chat with the guides and conclude their search. The center of the page contained the results that a guide could add or remove (later users could also add or remove these results). The right side of the page contained ads that were relevant to the search.
Desktop search was phased out in April 2008 in favor of mobile products.
[edit] SMS search
On January 3, 2008 ChaCha launched a new textChaCha service that allows users to ask questions and receive answers via text message[6] Unlike similar mobile search services ChaCha doesn't require special character codes to get results as searches are answered by humans instead of computer interpretation. A plain sentence question will get an answer along with a link to a short URL that takes users to a page that contains a link to the page where the guide gathered the results and the guide's name or handle.
[edit] Voice search
ChaCha launched its beta version of a call-in search service on April 1, 2008, while discontinuing its less effective guided web search.[7] Users call a toll-free number, and their questions are answered by a guide via SMS messaging.
[edit] Mobile marketing
In July 2008, ChaCha launched a successful campaign for Coca-Cola to promote its My Coke Rewards program to users interested in NASCAR racing.[8].
[edit] Guides
ChaCha uses three types of guides to provide users with answers. Text guides answer text and voice questions, while transcribers (or voice guides) transcribe questions made by phone calls and send them on to be researched and answered via text message. As of August 2008, Expeditors rephrase questions if necessary (ChaCha refers to this as "succincting"), standardize spelling and capitalization, then categorize them and send them to the text guides.
Guides are paid a flat fee for each answer or message; as of August 2008, expeditors received $.03 per question, transcribers received $.04 to transcribe a message, guides received $.10 for each answer and those ranked as "top guides" received $.20 per answer. ChaCha changed its payment plan in August 2008, then modified it after multiple complaints so top guides" will continue to earn at 20 cents, while lower quality and/or lower volume guides will receive a reduced payment of 10 cents per transaction.[9] Guides report that the average pay per hour is between $3-8. This measurement includes active time only, and does not include idle time spent logged in when questions are not available.[10]
