Aunt Bee Would Like ChaCha

I had to share this recent article. Although ChaCha is much more than a modern-day Mayberry operator (we are precisely routing questions to the optimal guide and answer delivery is facilitated in a sophisticated, scalable manner) it is great to see these real-life experiences relayed by people who are objectively evaluating the value of mobile answers from ChaCha. This writer would have saved more than an hour finding a digital camera by starting with ChaCha... Let me know what you think of this writer's take...

The Free Lance-Star - Fredericksburg,VA,USA

ONE MIGHT expect ChaCha, the new cell phone search engine powered by actual flesh-and-blood human beings, to be as slow as a choo-choo chugging up a hill. ...

ONE MIGHT expect ChaCha, the new cell phone search engine powered by actual flesh-and-blood human beings, to be as slow as a choo-choo chugging up a hill.

It's essentially a cyber- version of the Mayberry telephone operator Andy and Barney used to call up whenever they wanted to know if the diner had a special on meatloaf.
(You can actually do that with ChaCha, by the way.)

Users call, text or e-mail a real, live human being with a question and he or she quickly and carefully researches it for you, delivering a snippet of personalized advice along with the single best Web site link to your mobile phone.

The service works on any cell phone, and it's surprisingly fast--usually delivering results in a few minutes. It's also uncannily on the nose in terms of personal advice.

My cynical editor suggested that ChaCha might be pulling a fast one on us, delivering what advertisers pay it to tell us.

So I put the service to a tough test.

I spent over an hour on the Web, trying to figure out what the best digital camera would be as a gift for my 7-year-old son's birthday.

Robbie's grandmother had asked me to do this. She then turned her nose up at a few possibilities I came up with. Finally, we agreed that one looked like a good choice.

I put ChaCha to a real test by texting "What's the best digital camera for kids?"

And I posed this question at 12:15 a.m., believing I wouldn't get an answer till the next morning.

A short time later, I had my answer.

And, like some kind of magic card trick, it was the same Fisher-Price camera Robbie's grandmother and I liked after more than an hour's painstaking research.

Ask ChaCha where the cheapest gas is. Ask it where you can get the best bowl of clam chowder in town. Ask it what the weather will be like.
Aside from the human touch factor and the fact that there's dependable personal advice involved, ChaCha is special because users don't have to sift through link after link on tiny cell phone screens.

Indianapolis-based Cha-Cha recently won out over 100 other mobile software developers at the third annual Fast Pitch contest held at the annual CTIA wireless show in Las Vegas. Indianapolis-based ChaCha, won the $25,000 first prize.

ChaCha also has gotten a promotion deal on AT&T's wireless portal MEdiaNet, providing exposure to more than 70 million customers.
Andy and Barney would like it.

For more information, go to chacha.com

1-800-2ChaCha Officially Launched at CTIA

We are having a great show at CTIA so far. Please take a look at the following release from ChaCha regarding our 1-800-2ChaCha service (800-224-2242). Let me know what you think once you try it!

Regards,

--Brad

-------------Press Release-----------------------

ChaCha’s Industry Breakthrough Makes Searching Easy

from Mobile Phones

Call 1-800-2-ChaCha. Ask in your own voice. Receive free answers by text.

LAS VEGAS, April 1, 2008 — From the scoop on the hottest martini bar on the Vegas strip to advice on where to buy the cheapest gas in Manhattan, ChaCha’s ingenious new

1-800-2-ChaCha (800-224-2242) mobile answers service allows mobile phone users to ask an extensive range of questions in conversational English while on the go — and the free answers are texted back within minutes.

The online and mobile search company is announcing its free new voice service today at the CTIA Wireless 2008 global convention in Las Vegas.

You can ask ChaCha almost anything:

· How much sodium is in a McDonald's Big Mac?

·What hotel in downtown Austin has a business center?

·Who won the last Boston Marathon?

·Where can I get the cheapest gas in Orlando, Florida?

·Who stars in the new movie “21”?

ChaCha’s valuable new service instantly routes each question to a human guide — dramatically expanding the questions you can ask well beyond simple phone numbers or addresses. The guides utilize powerful tools to search the Web and quickly return a succinct, relevant answer in a text message with a Web reference link.

“On mobile devices, traditional 411 has been the only easy to use option and it is limited to the basics of only finding a phone number or address,” explains ChaCha CEO Scott A. Jones. “More recently, desktop search engines have attempted to enter the mobile market by forcing users to enter a restricted query with their thumbs on a tiny keypad in a specific way, which causes most people to find other ways of meeting their information needs, such as calling a friend or waiting until they get to a computer, or, worse yet, making less-informed decisions. Using ChaCha is like having thousands of informed friends available by phone to help answer your questions 24 hours a day.”

Moreover, ChaCha works on any mobile phone — from simple flip phones to sophisticated smart phones — with no voice recognition prompts or menus to muddle through.

“With our innovative combination of human intelligence and sophisticated technology, ChaCha’s mobile answers service does the work for you,” explains ChaCha President Brad Bostic. “Another groundbreaking feature is that you can easily reply with follow-up questions, as you might do in a conversation, further demonstrating how superior our new service is compared to 411 or algorithmic search engines.”

ChaCha’s new voice capability further expands upon its award-winning text service launched in January of this year. After only two months of deployment, ChaCha demonstrated at the “My Search is Better than Your Search” competition at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Manhattan that it dominates the mobile search arena by taking top prize for its service’s technical efficiency, relevance and practical functionality.

Additionally, ChaCha was ranked as the “No. 1 Alternative Search Engine” in February — beating out hundreds of companies — by Charles Knight of the blogging network, ReadWriteWeb. Last month, out of 70 promising start-ups presenting at Dow Jones’ “Web Ventures”, ChaCha was selected as a “Top Ten” company by VentureWire’s judges.

"ChaCha's new voice capability pushes the boundaries of mobile 411 beyond its historical name and address limitations," says Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence and the Program Director for Local Mobile Search. "It represents a next step in the evolution of the industry from directory assistance to voice search."

About ChaCha: ChaCha, a mobile answers service, allows users to call 1-800-2-CHA-CHA (800-224-2242) or text questions to CHACHA (242-242) on mobile phones and receive answers within minutes. ChaCha guides — trained and skilled individuals — use ChaCha's powerful internal search tools to respond to any query. Created by serial entrepreneur Scott A. Jones and Brad Bostic, ChaCha is funded by Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment firm of Jeff Bezos; Morton Meyerson, former President and Vice Chairman of EDS and former Chairman and CEO of Perot Systems; Rod Canion, founding CEO of Compaq Computer; and Jack Gill, well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist. For more information about ChaCha’s newest features, go to http://www.chacha.com/.

###

Headed to CTIA Las Vegas

I made onto my Southwest airlines 737 this morning and will be departing to Las Vegas for CTIA shortly. This is my first trip out to this conference and I suspect it will be massive and loud -- full of new product announcements that both excite and under-whelm the attendees.

I am accompanied at CTIA by our (ChaCha's) head of business development Jay Highley and Kevin Mazzatta and Darin Leach who are also on the biz dev team.

We have a major announcement regarding ChaCha's mobile answers service coming tomorrow so please check back here to learn more!

Doors are closing - time to sign off.

ChaCha at SXSW - Mobile Answers Big Hit

The ChaCha marketing team (including me) made a trip down to SXSW in Austin, TX last week. It was an exciting, eventful trip and the ChaCha team did a great job getting the word out about our service. We also met a lot of cool bands, fans, industry folks, and SXSW full-timers. Thousands of new users started texting 242242 (ChaCha) to get answers about when bands were playing, where the big parties were, and what the status of their flights back home were.

We partnered with Spin Magazine, iHeartComix, and PureVolume. The highlight was when one of our folks hung out with Vampire Weekend backstage. They loved ChaCha's text answers service and thought it would be extremely valuable to them while on the road. I had a great time talking to Tommie Sunshine, a 20-year veteran of the DJ and remix scene. Tommie thought ChaCha rocked!

Justin shot a few videos that you can checkout - SXSW part 1; SXSW part 2; SXSW part 3.

Next up for ChaCha marketing, partnerships with some major sports franchises - more to come!

What's Happening with Micro-Yahoo!?

As you all know, Microsoft made an offer to purchase Yahoo! on February 1 and that offer was rejected. It seems that the most commonly held view on the offer and subsequent rejection is that Yahoo! realizes just how badly Microsoft needs them and that Microsoft is willing (and obviously capable) of paying much more for the company.

What's at stake is a stake in the rapidly growing online advertising industry that some project will reach $80 billion by 2010. It's apparent that Yahoo! and Microsoft both need some kind of a spark if they expect to have any chance at competing with Google over the next several years in the online advertising and search markets.

So let's assume that Microsoft will ultimately prevail in taking out the once dominant Yahoo! What is going to happen to the employees? What about the products? Locations? Culture? Etc...? Following are some thoughts on these items based on what is being said among the senior ranks at Microsoft:
* Microsoft expects that, if and win Yahoo! agrees to the transaction, it will close in the second halof of 2008.
* The number one reason for the take-out bid is stated as, "the industry needs a more compelling alternative in search and online advertising."
* Microsoft believes the R&D talent that would pick up could help them better innovate to compete with Google.
* For agencies and advertisers this would result in a more efficient management process for campaigns with a higher yield. Also, they would be pushing hard to extend the ad platform a la Google's multi-channel strategy which is something agencies and advertisers are asking Microsoft to do.
* Of course, they think this will reduce redundant expenses and increase revenue resulting in "greater shareholder value."
* On the topic of cutting duplicate positions in the merger, Microsoft mostly dodges the question pointing to the fact that MS has hired over 20,000 employees since 2005 and that there are many challenges that need to be tackled across the company. I read this to mean some people will surely get canned and that's just part of reality in any merger - especially of this magnitude.
* Microsoft would definitely retain the Yahoo! brand due to its strength in the consumer market. They will not comment on which Yahoo! and Microsoft brands would survive once the companies are combined.
* Microsoft will have a bit of a quandary with their technology integration given that Yahoo! is anti-Microsoft. I am glad to not be leading that integration process... However, Microsoft does claim that in certain cases they are good with leaving open source technologies in place and making the interoperability happen with all of their other Microsoft-based stuff. This has got to be a big concern for all of the engineering talent at Yahoo! If they migrated to MS platforms it would have a massive impact on Yahoo!'s talent pool and would likely result in a massive elimination of jobs. Even though MS s head of their own religion, I actually think it is unlikely that MS would attempt to crater all of the great technology Yahoo! has created.

The Microsoft staff has been told to continue with "business as usual" and to compete aggressively with Yahoo! on deals. They are also not to start any integration discussions until they hear otherwise.

The tone of what I am hearing out of Redmond tells me they are really serious about making this deal happen.

My bet is that Micro-Yahoo! will be a reality by the second half of 2008 and that the focus on integrating the two companies will only serve to distract them and allow Google to distance itself.

I also think emerging players should view this is a great opportunity to continue driving rapid adoption while the big three sort all of this out. For ChaCha, we believe our mobile answers capabilities are truly different than anything the search Goliaths are focusing on. I was recently asked what I thought of my partner stating that ChaCha could "blast right past" Google in mobile. My view is that the race we are running today is demonstrating that we are tapping into a massive base of demand that is not served at all by the big three. Namely, the need to simply ask a question (about anything) and get the answer on any type of phone. With ChaCha, every phone is a smart phone.

If you have yet to try it out, go ahead and text ANY QUESTION to 242242 (spells ChaCha). You will see the difference.

As for Micro-Yahoo!'s mobile plans, it looks like those are about fourth or fifth on a list that looks something like: advertising, search, video, mobile, commerce, and social media.

What do you think of this proposed merger? Will Micro-Yahoo! compete favorably against Google? Or will this all result in more distractions and less competition?

Please post a comment to let me know what you think!

Mobile Advertising "Uncharted Territory"

In Barcelona at the recent mobile industry summit mobile advertising was discussed. Many points were raised regarding the applicability of current online ad models in a mobile environment.

"Advertising is not just a straight move from the PC to the mobile phone," Marco Boerries, head of Yahoo's mobile business, said in a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

"We're trying to invent mobile advertising."

Mobile ad revenue estimates over the next four years range broadly - but all believe that the value of this market will be in the billions annually.

For mobile search, ChaCha's team is working to pioneer new models for mobile advertising that will deliver enhanced value to users. That's all I will mention on that... but expect more on that front from ChaCha in the coming months.

Alt Search Engines Names ChaCha Text Answers #1

Alternative Search Engines, by Charles Knight, has named ChaCha's text answers service the number one alternative search engine for February. It is great to see the leading authority on alternative search engines has again chosen ChaCha atop such an innovative group of companies.

ChaCha Mobile Answers Save Lives :-)

I have been blogging about the great experiences ChaCha mobile answers users have been getting with texting their questions to 242242. A particularly good example of this was recently posted by Jesse Stay on his blog.

Then I remembered Cha Cha had a “Human Powered” search engine. I sent a question to “242242″ (CHACHA on your cell phone) via text message on my iPhone asking why my brother was at a standstill. Within just a couple minutes I received a response saying they were cleaning up after near white-out conditions, and to wait out until they cleared up the roads. A link was attached, which also told me there were several accidents ahead and the road was closed (I love my iPhone’s browser!). I quickly called my brother and told him the details so he could decide to find the nearest hotel and wait it out.

ChaCha definitely delivered in this case as it is in thousands of cases every day! If you want to see the full post click here.

Brad, 'er, Brian, 'er Brad What's this ChaCha Search Thingy?

Every day I learn about a lot of new things - which is one of the reasons that I love building technology companies - especially a fast-growing mobile search company in ChaCha. In the past week, I learned that Fox has yet another new cable TV channel called Fox Business. I then learned that I was going to be on the Fox Business channel live to talk about ChaCha, which I did yesterday.

While on the show, I learned that my name can actully be used interchangeably with "Brian". I also learned that, with only a few minutes to explain how ChaCha's mobile text answer service 242242 can allow you to get an answer to any question on your mobile phone, it was not worth the effort and time required to tell the host that my name is Brad...

We certainly appreciate the coverage from Fox - I suppose they can call me whatever they want as long as they keep talking about ChaCha!

ChaCha (242242) Mobile Answers via Text Continue to Build Momentum

ChaCha focused tremendous energy on its launch event at the Sundance Film Festival and I am excited to report that the momentum gathered with thousands of festival goers has continued to build post-Festival. I will be sharing more details soon, but thought I would share this story from CNet by Michelle Meyers. We had a great discussion while I was still at the Festival.

Check out the story here.

Sprint / Sybase Issues with New ChaCha Text Answers Service

Since Friday evening sometime (probably about 5PM ET) Sybase and Sprint have managed to somehow "break" the flow of questions sent to ChaCha (242242) and answers returned to Sprint handsets. Our network ops team at ChaCha have been working through the weekend with Sybase in an attempt to resolve these issues. One of the more perplexing facts is that the service does occasionally work on Sprint but more often than not it fails.

We have a longer term strategy that will put us in more direct control of these situations but right now we are left to the devices of Sybase who is proving to provide lackluster service at best.

Incredible that Sybase, who is the biggest aggregator of text traffic, is this inept with respect to customer support and basic implementations of what is supposed to be their core competency. I don't generally speak out about partners in this manner but at this point the truth needs to be told.

242242 ChaCha Text Answers Soar while Sybase Stumbles

ChaCha's text answers trend continued today with another record-breaking day of volume. We continue to optimize systems and processes daily to provide an continuously improving mobile answers product.

Last night, Sybase, the company that aggregates our messages and routes them through the carriers, made what was believed to be a "simple" migration of routing for Sprint, Nextel, and Boost mobile. This occurred late-night and has caused a disconnect somewhere in the communication chain within Sybase's routing process. The net result is that anyone on these carriers are unable to receive answers. It's really incredulous given that Sybase is the largest provider of this type of routing services. We are working with their team diligently to get this issue resolved.

I will post an update as soon as the status of this routing issue changes so all users are able to again access ChaCha's text answers service.