ChaCha launches mobile answer service

ChaCha, the 'human-powered search engine', has launched a SMS search utility, an unique twist on mobile search that SearchEngineLand calls a 'mobile answer engine.' The difference between ChaCha's SMS search tool and Yahoo's, Google's, 4Info's, etc... is that users can send full search phrase (natural language) text messages using ChaCha. ChaCha's competitors still require their texters to construct search phrases using formatting rules and text shortcuts that don't give the user much search flexibility. What's more is that ChaCha uses live search experts to tackle the challenges of mobile searching with a small mobile device. Those challenges include input - abbreviated search phrases, spelling errors ('wiat color's the gr8 wall of china?) - and output - very few (one or two) results fill up a mobile screen. ChaCha can solve both problems with a live person who can understand what the heck the user is trying to say and also sift through the web to find the best-suited web snippet for the user's needs. Google SMS has a 'web snippets' function but that is poorly rated.

ChaCha is also lucky to have a very attractive shortcode, 242242, and ChaCha owns its dotcom wordnumber 242242.com, which it purchased a year ago in late 2007 and doesn't currently resolve; it isn't forwarded to a website or a parking page. ChaCha's ownership of its dotcom wordnumber might not be a tell-tale sign that the mobile search company will use it as its future mobile web domain. It may have been ChaCha's knee-jerk reaction to numeric domain speculators who have been grabbing up all easy to type numeric patterns (i.e., 123123.com) that usually don't mean anything. Or not. Whichever the case may be, ChaCha has the ability to establish 242242.com as its mobile web portal and give their customers a near tapless, text-messaging-cost-less, barrier-free method of mobile searching.