http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/13/AR2010081303979.html?wpisrc=nl_tech
ChaCha, KGB see text messages as alternative to search engines on cellphones
By Sarah Halzack
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Need to know the weather forecast for Boise, Idaho? Trying to settle a bar bet
about the colors of the Zambian flag? Wondering which Pauly Shore movie came
first, "Encino Man" or "Son in Law"?
For many people, finding an answer has practically become a reflex: Google it.
But as mobile technology becomes increasingly entwined with daily life, at
least two companies -- ChaCha and KGB -- are betting there's a growing appetite
for a different way to get answers on the go.
Both firms are banking on the premise that cellphone users want a single,
direct answer to a question. Many people still don't have phone plans that
allow for Web use, and those who do, the companies' executives contend, cannot
be bothered with sifting through search results on a tiny screen.
"The search experience is fundamentally different on mobile," said Bruce
Stewart, chief executive of KGB.
Enter the idea of human-powered search.
Instead of using an algorithm to produce results, as Google and Yahoo do,
ChaCha and KGB rely on people to generate their answers. ChaCha provides a free
service that allows users to send queries by text or voice message and then
receive a text reply, often accompanied by an advertisement, from one of the
company's approximately 50,000 part-time responders. Competitor KGB has a
similar setup, although its users pay 99 cents per answer and are spared the
outside advertising with each response.
Executives of both companies say they are convinced that they can find a niche
on cellphones, even as Google and Yahoo dominate the search market on
computers. And both firms are getting some traction: The Nielsen Co. reports
that in the first quarter of 2010, ChaCha's text service had almost 3 million
unique users, while KGB's had about 1.7 million users. ChaCha saw a 4.3 percent
increase in unique users from the fourth quarter of 2009, while KGB saw a 17.7
percent rise, according to Nielsen.
Despite those increases, some critics see difficulties for the companies as
they try to gain footing in the shadow of giants in the search universe. Danny
Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land, a trade publication about search
engines, said human-powered search "has a place" but cautioned that "it's not
going to become Google. They're not even on the radar screen of becoming
Google."
Sullivan and other skeptics have noted that the quality of the companies'
answers is inconsistent.
"Typically when I've looked at them, the answers have been really poor,"
Sullivan said.
The texting services are most popular with teens and early-20-somethings.
Although it wasn't ChaCha's initial plan to target that demographic, ChaCha
chief executive Scott Jones said it makes sense that young people have been the
service's earliest and most loyal adopters.
"Teens and young adults, that's where they live," said Jones, referring to the
textosphere
Jones, an entrepreneur, hatched the idea for ChaCha more than four years ago
when he was slated to give a speech about the future of the Web. He began to
use Google and other search engines to do his research but wasn't having much
success. So he began calling friends at venture capital firms and other
companies to pick their brains.
"I thought, 'Gee, why couldn't Google tell me this? My friend was able to,' "
Jones recalled. For this and other queries, Jones said he wondered, "What if I
could call some smart friend in real time?"
Soon, he and co-founder Brad Bostic were building out the technology to support
the Carmel, Ind.-based company and establishing their network of part-time
contractors. The privately held firm, which has received $52 million to date in
venture capital money, launched in January 2008. Most of its revenue is
generated from advertising, and the company expects to break even for the first
time in mid-2011.
KGB launched in January 2009 as a sister brand of a British directory
assistance company called the Number 118 118, which provides services similar
to those received by dialing 411 in the United States. When the company set up
shop stateside, they decided to branch out from providing addresses and phone
numbers to answer virtually any question.
Known as "guides" at ChaCha and "agents" at KGB, the people who generate
answers make their own hours, work from home and are paid according to the
number of questions they answer. At KGB, they make anywhere from 5 to 10 cents
per question answered, depending on the how much work was required to answer
the question. ChaCha's pay also works on a sliding scale, with workers earning
2 to 25 cents per answer.
"They're working from dorm rooms, work-at-home moms and dads, retired people,"
Jones said.
At both companies, potential workers must go through a training process and
pass a test to qualify. They are not required to specialize in one topic area,
but many informally stick to answering questions about subjects that interest
them.
Many of the questions sent to ChaCha and KGB have straightforward answers, with
users seeking practical information about public transportation schedules and
store closing hours, or obscure trivia on sports statistics or historical
events. Both companies maintain databases of answers to commonly asked
questions, enabling them to provide responses in seconds.
But other queries can be tricky. Some call for subjective responses (such as
"What is Chris Farley's best 'Saturday Night Live' sketch?" or the cliched yet
existential "What is the meaning of life?"), while others are complex or
obscure enough that they demand in-depth research. These answers can take a few
minutes to churn out.
One of the biggest challenges for ChaCha and KGB's business model is breaking
news. Details of fast-moving stories often trickle out slowly and are revised
and clarified over time, so it can be hard for the companies' databases and
workers to keep up.
"The day Michael Jackson died was a big event for us," Stewart said. Questions
poured in to KGB as conflicting reports began to surface, with some outlets
saying Jackson was dead and others saying he had been hospitalized.
"We had to be a breaking-news source," Stewart said. His workers had to keep
checking and rechecking answers to give the most accurate, up-to-date
information on a quickly evolving story.
No matter the type of question, both companies monitor their answers for
accuracy and relevance and flag workers who aren't making the grade.
With more people snapping up smartphones, ChaCha and KGB have launched
applications for iPhones, Droids and other devices to keep up with advances in
the mobile market. Still, Jones and Stewart emphasize that text will remain
core to their strategies because it's a lowest common denominator on
cellphones; virtually every device is equipped with it.
And, Jones said, the ubiquity and convenience of a text message are hard to
rival. "It's hard to interrupt it because it's so bite-sized," he said of
texting, "but yet text interrupts everything else."
