CHACHA

ChaCha: Pioneering Q&A on the web

What I learned being a part of a $96 million dollar startup that answered over 2 billion questions for users around the world, was one of the top 5 most trafficked sites in its day, but failed to adapt to Google algorithm changes and the smartphones revolution.

THE COMPANY

ChaCha

ChaCha was a free human-powered search engine that answered over 2 billion questions for over 45 million people through the web, mobile, text message, and voice service. ChaCha’s “ask-a-smart-friend” platform received over three million questions per day from users.

The service was co-founded by serial entrepreneur, inventor, Scott A. Jones, famous for inventing the massively scalable voicemail system. ChaCha built the largest Q&A database in the world with over two billion questions to date and counting. Founded in 2005, ChaCha skyrocketed in growth by becoming a Top 100 website and Top Five mobile website.

SERVICES

• UX Research
• Brand Marketing
• Wireframes
• UI Design
• Prototype

Top 5

Mobile Website

2 Billion

Questions Answered

Top 100

Desktop Website

CHALLENGE 1: THE WEBSITE

The early days of ChaCha were centered around SMS text messaging of questions, so the website did not get a lot of attention. Because of that, the original ChaCha website was very text-heavy, image light, and felt like web 1.0.

My first initiative at ChaCha was to re-design the desktop web presence to be more engaging and usable for information searching. The second version of the website also needed to include new features like image galleries topic pages, and quizzes. Post-re-design, we attracted enough traffic to be consistently placed in the top 100 websites in the US at that time.

The state of the ChaCha homepage when I joined.

“ I wanted to be able to ‘ask a smart friend’ instantly about anything. ChaCha is on a journey to fulfilling that mission.”

Scott Jones, ChaCha Founder

“ChaCha defeats Google, Bing, and Siri in delivering the highest quality responses consistently across the largest group of categories and question types.”

Butler University Research Study

CHALLENGE 2: THE MOBILE APP

With the iPhone only a few years old and fast internet speed were not ubiquitous across the country yet, ChaCha was the #1 way to get real-time answers on your mobile phone.

However, the interactivity of smartphones started to change the game fast. ChaCha needed a mobile app to help route answers between AI and human guides on the backend. For the massive user base, the app needed to enhance the usability of Q&A with features like questions near me, questions and answers about local/regional/national trending topics, and the ability to rate the quality of answers.

Early prototype of the ChaCha mobile app.

KEY MOBILE FEATURES

• “Qs Near You,” which highlights questions being asked by other users in nearby locations

• “Live Stream Qs,” where users can view up-to-the-minute questions being answered on trending topics in real-time.

• “Rate Answers” function, allowing users to choose their favorite answers and mark answers they were not pleased with.

CHALLENGE 3: LAUNCHING CHACHA IN THE UK

“The UK is known for its very clever and active mobile population, and the ChaCha team is anxious to show this new audience why we’ve become the world’s #1 real-time mobile Q&A service. Our unique blend of technology and human intelligence has allowed ChaCha to construct a one-of-a-kind system for answering natural language questions very quickly and cost-effectively without sacrificing quality.

Launching in the UK is an exciting and important milestone in achieving ChaCha’s long-term plans for broad global expansion.”

Our mission was simply to provide quality answers at 1/15 the cost of the current competition. After months of direct advertising, branding events, marketing advice from UK leaders, and initiatives designed to help spread the word socially, we’ve found that adoption rates for new price-competitive services are quite low in the UK

ChaCha UK photo gallery

CONCLUSION

ChaCha was an innovator in the tech landscape. The vision was based on mobile and voice search, which was ahead of his times. In 2008, Kgb offered to purchase the 2-year-old firm for $100 million, but ChaCha didn’t accept the offer.

In the end, ChaCha sold its database of 2 billion questions to one of the silicon valley giants while I gained an invaluable education on startups, user behavior, international brand launching, and how fast things can go from good to bad.