A first: ChaCha invests in its dotcom wordnumber variants

ChaCha Search, Inc., the internet corporation known for its human-powered search engine at ChaCha.com, which recently launched a 'mobile answer service,' appears to be the first company to apply the traditional corporate domain acquisition strategy of registering trademark-domain variants to dotcom wordnumbers.

The dotcom wordnumber for ChaCha is 242242.com (242242 spells ChaCha on a phone keypad), which Scott Smith of numericdomains.com said earlier this month on his blog was owned by a family member who received an anonymous offer through a broker late last year. Smith believed, at the time, that the broker was the proxy for ChaCha, and made the decision to sell. Smith turned out to be right - it was a broker for ChaCha - and ChaCha added 242242.com to its portfolio of numeric domains relating to its wordnumber that it had been building that included 242242 in 'TLD and CC extensions including .net, .org, .co.uk, .info, .biz, .mobi -and potentially others.'

Jamptap has just discovered that last week ChaCha Search, Inc., bought two typo-variants of 242242.com. Those domains include 2242242.com and 2422422.com, which were registered on January 14, 2008. While researching domain registrations, we also learned that in October 2007 ChaCha registered 224242, 242422, 244242, 242224 and 422242 in the following TLD extensions: .com, .net and .org. Other permutations may exist.

Also, we found that last week ChaCha registered 8002242242 (800-2-ChaCha) in at least 5 TLDs, which may indicate that ChaCha is considering providing a breed of toll-free voice-activated search in the future.

What does this all mean? As we learned from the happenings of New Zealand-based WordDial, when a company realizes that a domainer/company/investor beat it to its own dotcom wordnumber, then they tend to over-react. When Yahoo, Inc., discovered that WordDial registered (before it did) the domain 92466.com , which spells among other things 'Yahoo' (which has several definitions in the dictionary, not just 'a leading search engine'), Yahoo, Inc., proceeded to buy 92466 in every other TLD and an incredible array of ccTLDs as well.

Our impression is that ChaCha reacted in a similar fashion. ChaCha even succeeded in purchasing its dotcom wordnumber. Yahoo didn't but has a continuing content partnership with WordDial.

The difference between the ChaCha and Yahoo 'case studies' is that ChaCha bought not only its dotcom wordnumber in various TLDs but also mistypes of its numeric domain. This is a development in the numeric domain field that is significant for two reasons. First, by registering the many typo-variants of 242242.com whereas no other company is known to have done this (with dotcom wordnumbers), ChaCha is demonstrating an elevated intention of actually using 242242.com as a mobile portal since the company is apparently concerned with redirecting (type-in) traffic from mistyped URLs to its mobile webpage. Second, and perhaps most interesting, this new piece of information may mean that since ChaCha is registering these typo-variants, then there could be a market for dotcom wordnumber mistypes in the foreseeable future.

ChaCha's actions indicate that its dotcom wordnumber is not some 'crazy' idea but that it is serious about using 242242.com as a key part of its mobile strategy. ChaCha's actions, therefore, may serve as a catalyst to the numeric domain land rush and inspire investors and internet companies alike to not only put their money into numeric domains but, like ChaCha has done, also numeric domain variants.