ChaCha's 242242.com goes live

When we checked yesterday, 242242.com didn't resolve.

We checked today and that changed.

242242.com now resolves to a webpage at ChaCha.com at the following URL, http://www.chacha.com/textchacha, which discusses the basics of ChaCha's 'mobile answer service' and its shortcode, 242242.

Although ChaCha has not yet launched its mobile website and so no pages on the ChaCha website are optimized for mobile, ChaCha's decision to finally resolve 242242.com - its dotcom wordnumber - to its website further demonstrates that ChaCha intends to incorporate its dotcom wordnumber into its overall mobile strategy. It is quickly becoming more believable that when ChaCha Mobile launches any cell phone user anywhere will be able to enter 242242.com into their cell browser and be connected directly to ChaCha's mobile web site. 242242 is a 50% 'savings' in taps over the word 'ChaCha' and, pending adoption of the wordnumber idea among its users, ChaCha stands a chance of leveraging its dotcom wordnumber to catch up to its competitors.

How much more market share ChaCha can gain through its incorporation and implementation of the wordnumber concept is the million dollar question. Two of ChaCha's competitors, Live and Yahoo, are at the mercy of WordDial, which owns their dotcom wordnumbers and apparently will perpetually insist on resolving those domains to one of its portals. Therefore, both search engines' users will always be an extra screen away from any mobile destination. That is a somewhat significant disadvantage when compared to Google, for instance, which owns its own dotcom wordnumber, 466453.com, which has resolved directly to Google.com (and its mobile version) for many years.

When ChaCha.com goes mobile, ChaCha's 242242.com will stand toe-to-toe, tapwise, to Google's 466453.com. Although Google has more experience as a search engine company, a mobile search engine service and as innovator of mobile tools such as Google Number Search, ChaCha has two advantages over Google. ChaCha, as a young organization whose founders are playing an active, daily role in its growth, is nimble; it can react more quickly to demands and forces in the marketplace. Second, ChaCha is more apt to take risks since it has less to lose than the search engine juggernauts. Not weighed down by fears of tarnishing its reputation or eroding shareholder confidence, ChaCha can take risks and do what Google hasn't done in more than six years: advertise its dotcom wordnumber. Although 466453.com resolves to Google, that is a fact not advertised by Google for many reasons including one we discussed in May 2007 that 'It's a daring move to associate a nearly billion dollar asset to a string of un-trademarkable numbers.'

Associating a brand with a string of numbers that is a shortcode is one thing, to tell the world that your online property IS a set of numbers is another. ChaCha may not be burdened by these 'large cap' internet company concerns and so has all the trappings of the little search engine that could climb to the top of the mobile search world. Having decided to purchase and resolve its dotcom wordnumber and also register a near-complete set of numeric domain variants, ChaCha's next step is to navigate the dance floor with the daring move of marketing 242242.com to the masses.