Today I came across a search service that I’d never heard about before. Although it was pointed out to me as a way of completing my ICT task with ease, ChaCha has got my attention and has fascinated me. ChaCha gives you the option to search the web with a guide – another person who is payed to quickly assist you in your quest to find what you want. I don’t know of any other service that actually puts you in contact with another human who will help you search – and for free. There’s also the option just to search the web normally but I think in some situations, ChaCha could be an invaluable tool for some people with little time and with little patience.
About ChaCha
ChaCha was launched late last year and has grown to a company with thousands of guides. The basic principle of it is that you search for whatever and you’re connected to a guide who is experienced in searching on that particular topic. He or she provides a number of links for you which they deem most likely to be what you want. When you’ve got the information you wanted, you then have to rate the guide – either good, okay or bad. Hence why they’ll always be nice to you. This service is free.
The ChaCha Experience
I’ve been playing with ChaCha for a few hours now and I am a little impressed with the service. When I first used it I thought that it would be much easier just to search for the things myself. Although this was true in some respects, in others it wasn’t. The times when the service was most useful was when I was searching for a particular type of document or a website for a company or organisation that isn’t well known. I tried searching for the same things with Google and it took me quite a bit longer to find the same documents they had provided me. Other requests such as the website for Dell and Microsoft was a waste of time.
All the guides that I used were very friendly and actually used proper English unlike other live chat applications I’ve used (ahem Dell, Linksys). Another plus about this service is that is leaves you to do other things while the guide is fetching your results. This could be particularly useful in the workplace and I found it useful searching for sample business plans during ICT class.
Final Thoughts
As it’s a free service, it must get most, if not all, of it’s earnings from advertising displayed next to the search results. This, I would imagine, would not provide a lot of money for them so I think that there will have to be a limit to the number of guides they hire. At $5 to $10 an hour, they get payed a reasonable amount for what they do but the limiting of the number of guides leads to another problem. If ChaCha gets extremely popular then there won’t be enough guides to satisfy the number of requests; and as being a guide is supposed to be a part time appointment, the number available will be even lower. This will not please the users.
As I said earlier, ChaCha is both a normal search engine and a search engine made personal. I don’t think Google or Yahoo have anything to worry about any time soon but I do feel that ChaCha is a very useful outlet to find specialised items of interest and is a lot quicker than searching for them yourself. Try it out for yourself. You’ll obviously get a varied response because there are many guides waiting to help you but give it a go and leave a comment.
