This is a new one. Fernande L. actually painted each of her nails with the ChaCha logo. I don’t want to come right out and say that painting the ChaCha logo on your body will automatically get you on the blog, but it will definitely help.
Thanks Fernande!
Scott and Liza were out in NY this week doing some interviews with a few big-time media outlets (I’ll be sure to post them on here when they come out). While they were there, Scott did an interview with CNBC’s show, Squak Box. This is what Liza said about the whole experience:
This was such a wild experience. In the heart of NYC is this huge studio (picture the Today Show studios where people can stand on the street and watch tapings. The NADAQ studios look exactly the same. So we were whisked in, Scott was immediately thrown in front of a camera; they attached a microphone to him and put on his earpiece. I went back into the control room to watch the interview. At first I was worried because I look at the monitors and Scott is making faces and drinking his water on camera. I’m thinking OH NO! WHAT IS HE DOING?! But then I heard him counting to 10 and figured he had either lost his mind or they were working on getting his sound just right. (Turned out to be the latter.)
The interview was great and Scott spends a lot of time talking about the business side of ChaCha, not just the revolution in search that is usually covered.
Click here to see Scott chat it up on Squak Box.
The Sydney Morning Herald did a story on us a little over a week ago and introduced ChaCha down under. We had a great response on this piece and received a boat load of really positive comments after it ran. Australia seems to think we’re pretty cool!
Click here to read the Sydney Morning Herald story.
The Boston Globe. This is us in the Boston Globe.
Click here to read the Boston Globe story.
The Indy Star. This morning our local paper, The Indy Star, wrote a story on us that puts our position in Social Search into a little more context.
Click here to read the Indy Star story.
Current in Carmel. This is the even more local paper. It’s small, but they give a great overview of ChaCha.
Click here to download the PDF.
Campus Technology. This is a really great article that puts a lot of emphasis on the Underground and social-networking aspects of ChaCha.
Click here to read the Campus Technology story.
In slightly related news…
Last time Liza was in NY she took on Times’ Square traffic to get a shot of the Naked Cowboy for us. This time she was able to get her picture with Clive Davis (founder of Arista Records and pretty big deal). Liza (and all of Dittoe PR) rocks so hard that I’m surprised Clive didn’t approach her with a record contract and a tour schedule opening up for P-Diddy.
Pandia, which is a great search engine and SEM blog, put together quite a helpful search engine tutorial. I’ve been looking for the time to do something like this for ChaCha and all of our Guides but now I don’t have to. If you use an algorithmic search engine and care at all about how to find something you should read this (i.e. this would be a good refresher for our Guides).
Despite two cases of car trouble and single digit wind-chill, we made it back from Chicago alive and in one piece. Booyah.
Very first thing we did on Tuesday morning was meet and hang out with two of our Guides, Caryl and Veronica. We had breakfast and talked about ChaCha from their perspective. This session was absolutely invaluable to us. We spend so much time trapped in our office that we get set in a loop. Breakfast with two Guides helped us think of so many different ways we can make ChaCha better for all of our Guides. Look for some of these enhancements in the coming weeks.
Bottom line: Our ChaCha Meet and Greet was a huge success and we will be doing it much more and will be coming to a town near you! Check back for tour dates and concert t-shirts.
After breakfast we went down to the conference room floor. We handed out Tshirts to people, which were a big hit. Even people who didn’t know what ChaCha was wanted a Tshirt because they thought it was such a nice looking shirt. This brings me to my shameless advertising point: ChaCha Tshirts make fabulous gifts.
Anyway… This is us (click the photo to make it bigger)! From left to right, Me, Danielle, Guide Caryl, Darin, and Guide Veronica right after we had our jam session. You may notice that Veronica is holding a football autographed by Rex Grossman (the Chicago Bears’ QB) that we gave her. Fun fact: Rex Grossman is going to be a Guide for us very soon here, soon to be joined by other celeb experts. This is why ChaCha rocks!
Or Dugg? I’m not totally sure how we conjugate that one. Anyway…
We made it to the front page of Digg.com for the first time ever! Although, at the time I’m writing this it looks like we’ve dropped down a page or two. If you want to pump us back up, feel free to do so by clicking right here and Digging in.
You may have noticed that the title for the article is “Weirdest Search Engine EVER.” And I’m cool with that. That means we’re different. The reason the umpteen-thousand other search engines have popped up haven’t made much of an impact is because they were indistinguishable from one another. Plus, how do we know they guy that originally Dugg us wasn’t a weirdo? (but thanks for digging us anyway, dude!)
Click here to Digg us (but only if you really, really want to.)
I’m in Chicago right now for the 2006 Search Engine Strategies conference. We’re going to be meeting up with a few local Guides tomorrow for some muffins and meetings before the doors open to the conference. This is the first time we’ll have ever really had face-to-face contact with our Guides and we’re pretty excited about it. This is something we hope to do more and more and ChaCha grows and we get less busy with the development and growth of ChaCha. Maybe we’ll even take a North American ChaCha tour in a big red bus! How much fun would that be?
I brought a video camera to document the trip and to do some interviews with people… So be looking for the very first ChaCha Vlog here in a few days.
Aside from the meet-and-greet with our Chicago Guides, we’re going to be making the rounds at the conference mingling. If you’re going to be at the expo too, look for some people in ChaCha shirts and say hello. Also, if you’re going to be here, make sure you dress warm… it’s really, really, really cold.
It was announced yesterday that Google would be pulling the cord on Google Answers. The Google Blog chalked it up to an “experiment coming to an end” but that seems like more of a posthumous explaination rather than a working auspice. One might argue that Google’s fantastic growth called not so much for the death of Google Answers, but rather Google trimming off the fat to concentrate on what they already do well rather than develop new products as they’ve resolved to do. Regardless of the reason, that leaves Yahoo Answers as the top contender in the social search realm and, in my opinion, this bodes very well for us.
Compared to Yahoo Answers, Google Answers was able to provide great results with well thought out answers and appropriate links. Sure you had to pay for the service, but you got what you paid for by getting comprehensive answers like the ones below. Yahoo! Answers, on the other hand, is free. There are plenty of users on there who just love being right and knowing the answer and can provide similarly good answers, but there are also plenty users who provide some unsavory results. However, Yahoo! has recently begun to index their answers which is a great step forward for them.
Scott Jones, ChaCha’s CEO and mastermind, was mentioned on Greg Sterling’s blog, which said this:
“Unlike Google Answers, ChaCha’s service is FREE, is conducted in real-time (through an instant-message chat interface) and questions are answered by people with specific knowledge about your topic (AND they care about providing a good answer because their rating and pay is based on a good experience!)”
So farewell Google Answers. You did what you did well and provided some great answers like this, this, or this. Besides, who’s to say that its departure isn’t just a passage into purgatory in before some revamped service in the same vein is launched? Despite Google’s withdrawl from this arena, social search is HOT right now; we’ve noticed new social search services and engines popping up left and right. None of them seem to have mechanics worked out quite as well as we do and for being alive just under three months anyone would have to say we’ve made a great impact in the industry.
Even more impressive is the amount of technological breakthroughs we’ve made behind the scenes that make this whole system work… and we’re not even close to done. Some of the things we still have up our sleeves will knock your socks off. The cherry on top of the whole awesome-search-engine-sundae is the stellar amount of growth we’ve seen in our community of users and infoseekers. These things are still TOP-SECRET so I can’t spill any beans; just make sure you keep an eye on us! Our traffic is steadily growing and we’re thoroughly refining our Guide pool to get ready to let a flood of fresh Guides into the system. In the wake of Google Answers’ demise, things at ChaCha are taking off like a rocket.
With that said, I’d like to extend an offer to all Google Answerers to come search for ChaCha! I can say with confidence that things will definitely be getting more and more exciting and you would be great assets in helping us climb to the top of Mt. Social Search to show who is who. If you’re interested, shoot me an email or leave me a comment. I’m sure our ChaCha Guide Community would welcome you into the fold.
I got this picture in my inbox this morning. This is really awesome. Malonie H. from Michigan put a gigantic ChaCha logo on the side of her car and she did an extremely not bad job of (hand) painting it. This is a great way to help spread the word about ChaCha! (May I suggest including the www.chacha.com?)
Malonie, send us your address and we’ll send you some ChaCha Gear to match your car. You ROCK.
In Other News: It’s Thanksgiving Eve. Happy Thanksgiving Eve everyone! I happen to know that ChaCha boasts and incredible arsenal of excellent cooks (one might say it’s the largest live searchable cook community on Earth). So if you’re looking for any last minute stuffing recipes, ask a Guide. I, on the other hand, am going to go and look for some good Tofurkey recipes right now.
Happy Thanksgiving from ChaCha!
Hey Guides:
The new search without a guide capabilities recently incorporated have mistakenly taken over some of our search with a guide functions. This should NOT be happening. The different and special thing about ChaCha is our human touch and Guides just like you! This is why we contacted you last night to be ready for the GMA traffic. We want users to talk to you, we want you to keep busy and we want you to make money! We are the world’s largest live search site for a reason – YOU!
We are working feverishly to correct this error ASAP. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention and thank you for all you do to support ChaCha! We greatly appreciate it!
Oh no! We were all up bright and early to catch ourselves on Good Morning America… and we weren’t on! Although, all of the data they collected from us was featured, no mention of ChaCha.
We asked Tory what happened. She told us that she fully intended to mention us but they ran out of time. These things tend to happen on live TV. Tory did tell us what a huge fan of ChaCha she is and that she’s working on some local profiles of our Guides. Tory remains an avid ChaCha supporter and we can’t thank her enough for all that she’s done for us.
She pointed all of the viewers to this website, where we are listed. If you want to see the full story she did on us last month, then click here.
Not to worry though, we’ve got a lot more press on its way and a few things up our sleeves to bring the world to ChaCha!
