Brad Bostic's Mobile Search and Technology Blog

Walt Discusses ChaCha in the WSJ and on CNBC

2008-04-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

ChaCha was featured today in the Personal Technology section of the Wall Street Journal. In this video, Walt talks about our mobile answers service. How does 1-800-2ChaCha work for you? Post a comment to let me know!

Answers in the palm of your hand, with Walter Mossberg, Wall Street Journal and CNBC's Michelle Caruso Cabrera

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=721603319

Aunt Bee Would Like ChaCha

2008-04-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

I had to share this recent article. Although ChaCha is much more than a modern-day Mayberry operator (we are precisely routing questions to the optimal guide and answer delivery is facilitated in a sophisticated, scalable manner) it is great to see these real-life experiences relayed by people who are objectively evaluating the value of mobile answers from ChaCha. This writer would have saved more than an hour finding a digital camera by starting with ChaCha... Let me know what you think of this writer's take...

The Free Lance-Star - Fredericksburg,VA,USA

ONE MIGHT expect ChaCha, the new cell phone search engine powered by actual flesh-and-blood human beings, to be as slow as a choo-choo chugging up a hill. ...

ONE MIGHT expect ChaCha, the new cell phone search engine powered by actual flesh-and-blood human beings, to be as slow as a choo-choo chugging up a hill.

It's essentially a cyber- version of the Mayberry telephone operator Andy and Barney used to call up whenever they wanted to know if the diner had a special on meatloaf.
(You can actually do that with ChaCha, by the way.)

Users call, text or e-mail a real, live human being with a question and he or she quickly and carefully researches it for you, delivering a snippet of personalized advice along with the single best Web site link to your mobile phone.

The service works on any cell phone, and it's surprisingly fast--usually delivering results in a few minutes. It's also uncannily on the nose in terms of personal advice.

My cynical editor suggested that ChaCha might be pulling a fast one on us, delivering what advertisers pay it to tell us.

So I put the service to a tough test.

I spent over an hour on the Web, trying to figure out what the best digital camera would be as a gift for my 7-year-old son's birthday.

Robbie's grandmother had asked me to do this. She then turned her nose up at a few possibilities I came up with. Finally, we agreed that one looked like a good choice.

I put ChaCha to a real test by texting "What's the best digital camera for kids?"

And I posed this question at 12:15 a.m., believing I wouldn't get an answer till the next morning.

A short time later, I had my answer.

And, like some kind of magic card trick, it was the same Fisher-Price camera Robbie's grandmother and I liked after more than an hour's painstaking research.

Ask ChaCha where the cheapest gas is. Ask it where you can get the best bowl of clam chowder in town. Ask it what the weather will be like.
Aside from the human touch factor and the fact that there's dependable personal advice involved, ChaCha is special because users don't have to sift through link after link on tiny cell phone screens.

Indianapolis-based Cha-Cha recently won out over 100 other mobile software developers at the third annual Fast Pitch contest held at the annual CTIA wireless show in Las Vegas. Indianapolis-based ChaCha, won the $25,000 first prize.

ChaCha also has gotten a promotion deal on AT&T's wireless portal MEdiaNet, providing exposure to more than 70 million customers.
Andy and Barney would like it.

For more information, go to chacha.com

ChaCha Selected as Best New Mobile Service by AT&T at CTIA

2008-04-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a big day for ChaCha at CTIA. Thanks to some outstanding work by the ChaCha team, we were selected by AT&T as the best new consumer mobile product in their fast-pitch competition. What does this mean?

We received $25,000 in prize money (giant "Happy Gilmore" style check being held by Kevin Mazzatta, VP of Biz Dev at ChaCha) and, much more importantly, we will be working with AT&T to introduce ChaCha to their customer base (about 70M folks). What a great way to kick-off the second quarter!

To win, ChaCha competed with hundreds of companies from around the world that applied. Only 66 were selected to present to the judges at CTIA and ChaCha was selected as the winner.

The Fast-Pitch program is considered the wireless industry’s equivalent of American Idol, with emerging mobile technology companies presenting their wireless applications directly to AT&T’s decision makers. Hundreds of companies applied from around the world and were judged based on the following criteria:

1. Originality / Innovation

2. Market appeal

3. Interface design

4. Number of platforms and handsets supported

This news will hit the wire tomorrow but I wanted to get the word out here. Let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to answer them! We are still working with AT&T to define the rollout plan but I will keep updating here as things progress.

Aaron Strout Interviews Me for Podcast on WeAreSmarter.org

2008-04-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the great podcast, Aaron!

Check it out here

Here is another podcast that also offers more detail on ChaCha's mobile answers service.

See the post and podcast

1-800-2ChaCha Officially Launched at CTIA

2008-04-01T07:19:00.000-07:00

We are having a great show at CTIA so far. Please take a look at the following release from ChaCha regarding our 1-800-2ChaCha service (800-224-2242). Let me know what you think once you try it!

Regards,

--Brad

-------------Press Release-----------------------

ChaCha’s Industry Breakthrough Makes Searching Easy

from Mobile Phones

Call 1-800-2-ChaCha. Ask in your own voice. Receive free answers by text.

LAS VEGAS, April 1, 2008 — From the scoop on the hottest martini bar on the Vegas strip to advice on where to buy the cheapest gas in Manhattan, ChaCha’s ingenious new

1-800-2-ChaCha (800-224-2242) mobile answers service allows mobile phone users to ask an extensive range of questions in conversational English while on the go — and the free answers are texted back within minutes.

The online and mobile search company is announcing its free new voice service today at the CTIA Wireless 2008 global convention in Las Vegas.

You can ask ChaCha almost anything:

· How much sodium is in a McDonald's Big Mac?

·What hotel in downtown Austin has a business center?

·Who won the last Boston Marathon?

·Where can I get the cheapest gas in Orlando, Florida?

·Who stars in the new movie “21”?

ChaCha’s valuable new service instantly routes each question to a human guide — dramatically expanding the questions you can ask well beyond simple phone numbers or addresses. The guides utilize powerful tools to search the Web and quickly return a succinct, relevant answer in a text message with a Web reference link.

“On mobile devices, traditional 411 has been the only easy to use option and it is limited to the basics of only finding a phone number or address,” explains ChaCha CEO Scott A. Jones. “More recently, desktop search engines have attempted to enter the mobile market by forcing users to enter a restricted query with their thumbs on a tiny keypad in a specific way, which causes most people to find other ways of meeting their information needs, such as calling a friend or waiting until they get to a computer, or, worse yet, making less-informed decisions. Using ChaCha is like having thousands of informed friends available by phone to help answer your questions 24 hours a day.”

Moreover, ChaCha works on any mobile phone — from simple flip phones to sophisticated smart phones — with no voice recognition prompts or menus to muddle through.

“With our innovative combination of human intelligence and sophisticated technology, ChaCha’s mobile answers service does the work for you,” explains ChaCha President Brad Bostic. “Another groundbreaking feature is that you can easily reply with follow-up questions, as you might do in a conversation, further demonstrating how superior our new service is compared to 411 or algorithmic search engines.”

ChaCha’s new voice capability further expands upon its award-winning text service launched in January of this year. After only two months of deployment, ChaCha demonstrated at the “My Search is Better than Your Search” competition at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Manhattan that it dominates the mobile search arena by taking top prize for its service’s technical efficiency, relevance and practical functionality.

Additionally, ChaCha was ranked as the “No. 1 Alternative Search Engine” in February — beating out hundreds of companies — by Charles Knight of the blogging network, ReadWriteWeb. Last month, out of 70 promising start-ups presenting at Dow Jones’ “Web Ventures”, ChaCha was selected as a “Top Ten” company by VentureWire’s judges.

"ChaCha's new voice capability pushes the boundaries of mobile 411 beyond its historical name and address limitations," says Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence and the Program Director for Local Mobile Search. "It represents a next step in the evolution of the industry from directory assistance to voice search."

About ChaCha: ChaCha, a mobile answers service, allows users to call 1-800-2-CHA-CHA (800-224-2242) or text questions to CHACHA (242-242) on mobile phones and receive answers within minutes. ChaCha guides — trained and skilled individuals — use ChaCha's powerful internal search tools to respond to any query. Created by serial entrepreneur Scott A. Jones and Brad Bostic, ChaCha is funded by Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment firm of Jeff Bezos; Morton Meyerson, former President and Vice Chairman of EDS and former Chairman and CEO of Perot Systems; Rod Canion, founding CEO of Compaq Computer; and Jack Gill, well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist. For more information about ChaCha’s newest features, go to http://www.chacha.com/.

###

Headed to CTIA Las Vegas

2008-03-31T04:24:00.000-07:00

I made onto my Southwest airlines 737 this morning and will be departing to Las Vegas for CTIA shortly. This is my first trip out to this conference and I suspect it will be massive and loud -- full of new product announcements that both excite and under-whelm the attendees.

I am accompanied at CTIA by our (ChaCha's) head of business development Jay Highley and Kevin Mazzatta and Darin Leach who are also on the biz dev team.

We have a major announcement regarding ChaCha's mobile answers service coming tomorrow so please check back here to learn more!

Doors are closing - time to sign off.

ChaCha at SXSW - Mobile Answers Big Hit

2008-03-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

The ChaCha marketing team (including me) made a trip down to SXSW in Austin, TX last week. It was an exciting, eventful trip and the ChaCha team did a great job getting the word out about our service. We also met a lot of cool bands, fans, industry folks, and SXSW full-timers. Thousands of new users started texting 242242 (ChaCha) to get answers about when bands were playing, where the big parties were, and what the status of their flights back home were.

We partnered with Spin Magazine, iHeartComix, and PureVolume. The highlight was when one of our folks hung out with Vampire Weekend backstage. They loved ChaCha's text answers service and thought it would be extremely valuable to them while on the road. I had a great time talking to Tommie Sunshine, a 20-year veteran of the DJ and remix scene. Tommie thought ChaCha rocked!

Justin shot a few videos that you can checkout - SXSW part 1; SXSW part 2; SXSW part 3.

Next up for ChaCha marketing, partnerships with some major sports franchises - more to come!

Ask.com Targets Women

2008-03-04T19:00:00.001-08:00

So I knew Ask was not making any headway in its quest to make gains against Google and I expected Diller to continue pushing his unique features in an attempt to change all of that but what I just read on MSNBC is really a surprise. Ask.com has announced that it is shifting its focus toward married women who are trying to better manage their households. At ChaCha, we call that the "Dynamic Household".

According to their new CEO, Jim Safka (who I believe ran Match.com), the employees are really excited about this move.

"Everyone at Ask is excited about our clear focus and the trajectory-changing results it will deliver,"

I surely hope Ask is able to make progress with this new niche - as Walt Mossberg points out and I concur, the Ask.com user experience is better overall than rivals such as Google.

What's Happening with Micro-Yahoo!?

2008-02-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

As you all know, Microsoft made an offer to purchase Yahoo! on February 1 and that offer was rejected. It seems that the most commonly held view on the offer and subsequent rejection is that Yahoo! realizes just how badly Microsoft needs them and that Microsoft is willing (and obviously capable) of paying much more for the company.

What's at stake is a stake in the rapidly growing online advertising industry that some project will reach $80 billion by 2010. It's apparent that Yahoo! and Microsoft both need some kind of a spark if they expect to have any chance at competing with Google over the next several years in the online advertising and search markets.

So let's assume that Microsoft will ultimately prevail in taking out the once dominant Yahoo! What is going to happen to the employees? What about the products? Locations? Culture? Etc...? Following are some thoughts on these items based on what is being said among the senior ranks at Microsoft:
* Microsoft expects that, if and win Yahoo! agrees to the transaction, it will close in the second halof of 2008.
* The number one reason for the take-out bid is stated as, "the industry needs a more compelling alternative in search and online advertising."
* Microsoft believes the R&D talent that would pick up could help them better innovate to compete with Google.
* For agencies and advertisers this would result in a more efficient management process for campaigns with a higher yield. Also, they would be pushing hard to extend the ad platform a la Google's multi-channel strategy which is something agencies and advertisers are asking Microsoft to do.
* Of course, they think this will reduce redundant expenses and increase revenue resulting in "greater shareholder value."
* On the topic of cutting duplicate positions in the merger, Microsoft mostly dodges the question pointing to the fact that MS has hired over 20,000 employees since 2005 and that there are many challenges that need to be tackled across the company. I read this to mean some people will surely get canned and that's just part of reality in any merger - especially of this magnitude.
* Microsoft would definitely retain the Yahoo! brand due to its strength in the consumer market. They will not comment on which Yahoo! and Microsoft brands would survive once the companies are combined.
* Microsoft will have a bit of a quandary with their technology integration given that Yahoo! is anti-Microsoft. I am glad to not be leading that integration process... However, Microsoft does claim that in certain cases they are good with leaving open source technologies in place and making the interoperability happen with all of their other Microsoft-based stuff. This has got to be a big concern for all of the engineering talent at Yahoo! If they migrated to MS platforms it would have a massive impact on Yahoo!'s talent pool and would likely result in a massive elimination of jobs. Even though MS s head of their own religion, I actually think it is unlikely that MS would attempt to crater all of the great technology Yahoo! has created.

The Microsoft staff has been told to continue with "business as usual" and to compete aggressively with Yahoo! on deals. They are also not to start any integration discussions until they hear otherwise.

The tone of what I am hearing out of Redmond tells me they are really serious about making this deal happen.

My bet is that Micro-Yahoo! will be a reality by the second half of 2008 and that the focus on integrating the two companies will only serve to distract them and allow Google to distance itself.

I also think emerging players should view this is a great opportunity to continue driving rapid adoption while the big three sort all of this out. For ChaCha, we believe our mobile answers capabilities are truly different than anything the search Goliaths are focusing on. I was recently asked what I thought of my partner stating that ChaCha could "blast right past" Google in mobile. My view is that the race we are running today is demonstrating that we are tapping into a massive base of demand that is not served at all by the big three. Namely, the need to simply ask a question (about anything) and get the answer on any type of phone. With ChaCha, every phone is a smart phone.

If you have yet to try it out, go ahead and text ANY QUESTION to 242242 (spells ChaCha). You will see the difference.

As for Micro-Yahoo!'s mobile plans, it looks like those are about fourth or fifth on a list that looks something like: advertising, search, video, mobile, commerce, and social media.

What do you think of this proposed merger? Will Micro-Yahoo! compete favorably against Google? Or will this all result in more distractions and less competition?

Please post a comment to let me know what you think!

Mobile Advertising "Uncharted Territory"

2008-02-14T18:29:00.001-08:00

In Barcelona at the recent mobile industry summit mobile advertising was discussed. Many points were raised regarding the applicability of current online ad models in a mobile environment.

"Advertising is not just a straight move from the PC to the mobile phone," Marco Boerries, head of Yahoo's mobile business, said in a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

"We're trying to invent mobile advertising."

Mobile ad revenue estimates over the next four years range broadly - but all believe that the value of this market will be in the billions annually.

For mobile search, ChaCha's team is working to pioneer new models for mobile advertising that will deliver enhanced value to users. That's all I will mention on that... but expect more on that front from ChaCha in the coming months.

Microsoft Buys Danger to Rival Google's Android

2008-02-11T18:17:00.000-08:00

In Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress wireless fair Microsoft announced its acquisition of Danger, maker of the Sidekick, calling it critical to winning over key mobile customers to its brand of mobile Internet.

Andy Rubin, who is heading up Google's Android open handset alliance initiative, was co-founder of Danger.

Who do you think will win the mobile handset battle waged by Google and Microsoft?

Alt Search Engines Names ChaCha Text Answers #1

2008-02-04T19:28:00.000-08:00

Alternative Search Engines, by Charles Knight, has named ChaCha's text answers service the number one alternative search engine for February. It is great to see the leading authority on alternative search engines has again chosen ChaCha atop such an innovative group of companies.

ChaCha Mobile Answers Save Lives :-)

2008-02-02T13:50:00.000-08:00

I have been blogging about the great experiences ChaCha mobile answers users have been getting with texting their questions to 242242. A particularly good example of this was recently posted by Jesse Stay on his blog.

Then I remembered Cha Cha had a “Human Powered” search engine. I sent a question to “242242″ (CHACHA on your cell phone) via text message on my iPhone asking why my brother was at a standstill. Within just a couple minutes I received a response saying they were cleaning up after near white-out conditions, and to wait out until they cleared up the roads. A link was attached, which also told me there were several accidents ahead and the road was closed (I love my iPhone’s browser!). I quickly called my brother and told him the details so he could decide to find the nearest hotel and wait it out.

ChaCha definitely delivered in this case as it is in thousands of cases every day! If you want to see the full post click here.

Brad, 'er, Brian, 'er Brad What's this ChaCha Search Thingy?

2008-01-30T05:35:00.000-08:00

Every day I learn about a lot of new things - which is one of the reasons that I love building technology companies - especially a fast-growing mobile search company in ChaCha. In the past week, I learned that Fox has yet another new cable TV channel called Fox Business. I then learned that I was going to be on the Fox Business channel live to talk about ChaCha, which I did yesterday.

While on the show, I learned that my name can actully be used interchangeably with "Brian". I also learned that, with only a few minutes to explain how ChaCha's mobile text answer service 242242 can allow you to get an answer to any question on your mobile phone, it was not worth the effort and time required to tell the host that my name is Brad...

We certainly appreciate the coverage from Fox - I suppose they can call me whatever they want as long as they keep talking about ChaCha!

ChaCha (242242) Mobile Answers via Text Continue to Build Momentum

2008-01-29T15:35:00.000-08:00

ChaCha focused tremendous energy on its launch event at the Sundance Film Festival and I am excited to report that the momentum gathered with thousands of festival goers has continued to build post-Festival. I will be sharing more details soon, but thought I would share this story from CNet by Michelle Meyers. We had a great discussion while I was still at the Festival.

Check out the story here.

All is Now Well with ChaCha (242242) on Sprint

2008-01-29T15:31:00.000-08:00

I commented recently that we were having issues with Sybase / Sprint properly handling requests for answers from ChaCha (242242) on Sprint phones. I am happy to report the issue has been resolved and all is running properly so Sprint users can consistently receive timely, accurate answers by texting questions to 242242. Thank you for your patience as Sprint and Sybase resolved these issues.

Sprint / Sybase Issues with New ChaCha Text Answers Service

2008-01-27T11:05:00.000-08:00

Since Friday evening sometime (probably about 5PM ET) Sybase and Sprint have managed to somehow "break" the flow of questions sent to ChaCha (242242) and answers returned to Sprint handsets. Our network ops team at ChaCha have been working through the weekend with Sybase in an attempt to resolve these issues. One of the more perplexing facts is that the service does occasionally work on Sprint but more often than not it fails.

We have a longer term strategy that will put us in more direct control of these situations but right now we are left to the devices of Sybase who is proving to provide lackluster service at best.

Incredible that Sybase, who is the biggest aggregator of text traffic, is this inept with respect to customer support and basic implementations of what is supposed to be their core competency. I don't generally speak out about partners in this manner but at this point the truth needs to be told.

All Carriers Live and Well on ChaCha Mobile Text Answers

2008-01-24T20:18:00.000-08:00

The ChaCha team worked with Sybase to resolve all carrier issues. Now ChaCha's mobile text answers service - 242242 - works perfectly on all major carriers! Please continue to share your best examples with me. The testimonials are rolling in constantly.

242242 ChaCha Text Answers Soar while Sybase Stumbles

2008-01-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

ChaCha's text answers trend continued today with another record-breaking day of volume. We continue to optimize systems and processes daily to provide an continuously improving mobile answers product.

Last night, Sybase, the company that aggregates our messages and routes them through the carriers, made what was believed to be a "simple" migration of routing for Sprint, Nextel, and Boost mobile. This occurred late-night and has caused a disconnect somewhere in the communication chain within Sybase's routing process. The net result is that anyone on these carriers are unable to receive answers. It's really incredulous given that Sybase is the largest provider of this type of routing services. We are working with their team diligently to get this issue resolved.

I will post an update as soon as the status of this routing issue changes so all users are able to again access ChaCha's text answers service.

ChaCha's Mobile Text Answers are a Hit at Sundance!

2008-01-22T21:16:00.000-08:00

ChaCha's mobile text service (2-4-2-2-4-2 = "ChaCha") is a hit with the crowd at the Sundance Film Festival where it is "The Official Text Answers Service". We have really been blown away by the popularity of the service among all festival goers ranging from teenagers gawking at celebrities to the celebrities themselves. The ChaCha team has regularly been stopped by people on the streets who want to convey just how much they love our new text answers product.

I had the opportunity to be at Sundance from the opening Thursday through Sunday (and will return this Friday for the closing weekend) and experience the buzz that ChaCha has created first-hand. One of the biggest fans of ChaCha that I encountered was Quentin Tarantino. Above he is pictured with me and a group of mutual friends we had made at Sundance in the Stella Artois VIP room. He left wearing a ChaCha Beanie and with a ChaCha eGrip on his phone (Sticker with ChaCha logo that keeps phone from sliding off your dashboard).

All-in-all ChaCha's mobile text answers launch is really going well. Please let me know if you have seen us at Sundance or if you have any feedback regarding the service!

Carriers Pushing Texters to Bundled Plans

2008-01-22T19:42:00.000-08:00

Text messaging is quickly becoming one of the most profitable and highest growth offerings for carriers in the US.

Text messaging is booming. Nearly 80% of U.S. 18- to 24-year-olds use text messaging, says research firm In-Stat. Text messaging -- formally SMS, for short message service -- set records in 2007, says the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association trade group.

Along with this explosion comes massive revenue growth.

Portio Research says global text messaging revenue will hit $67 billion in '12 vs. $52.5 billion last year.

Casual text messaging users tend to have rate plans that are pay-per-use while heavy texters are moving to bundled rate plans that offer unlimited text messaging. Mobile services such as ChaCha's text answers are only serving to further accelerate use of text messaging.

ChaCha Debuts Mobile Text (242242) Answers

2008-01-07T20:45:00.000-08:00

You might notice that the name of my blog has changed! It is subtle, but what was "Brad Bostic's Human Powered Search Blog" is now "Brad Bostic's Mobile Search and Technology Blog". The reason for the change? We finally launched our first mobile product at ChaCha!

After a year of tirelessly building and optimizing our online community of roughly 30,000 ChaCha Guides (real people with expertise in providing online answers to your specific question) and making real-time answers available online, we announced our new text service on January 3rd. The response has been tremendous!

When you get a chance please text your question to ChaCha at 242242. It's easy - Just create a new text message, enter 242242 as the number you are sending the text to, type your question, and send it off! ChaCha will respond with the answer (usually in a couple minutes but difficulty of question will impact the speed of your response).

I want to know what you are asking and how you like the service! Please give it a try and please POST A COMMENT WITH WHAT YOU ASKED AND HOW IT WENT.

Having ChaCha answers available via text has been absolutely amazing for me. I look forward to hearing how you like it.

Facebook Platform, Twitter, and Ning Among "Hits" Says CNet

2007-12-27T21:39:00.000-08:00

This time of year it's always fun to look back at the interesting (and not so interesting) businesses that have been spawned on the Web during the past twelve months. In doing so I came across CNet's "Hits and Misses" article published on December 11.

Facebook scored high marks for its open platform initiative that allows developers to create "widgets" that bring new features to Facebook users. Facebook also received a "Miss" for its Beacon initiative which CNet dubbed one of the "Creepy ad platforms" of 2007.

Twitter is given props for its easy (but not too easy) set of social features that don't ask too much of its users. While blogging supposes that the writer is giving something careful thought in most cases prior to posting, Twitter merely asks "What are you doing right now?" which is seemingly easy to answer for most... I think the toughest parts to truly embracing Twitter are 1) believing that every move you make would be of interest to an intelligent life form and 2) deciding that you want to unveil many moves each day to "Followers" across the 'net. I am personally working to become an active Twitterite but have not yet mastered numbers '1' and '2' mentioned above. However, I have found that an interesting facet of Twitter is the active engagement that it establishes between people relative to traditional blogging. On a blog, you know you have some readers and subscribers but you aren't sure who they are exactly and even when they post it is difficult to establish much of an ongoing dialog or relationship with those who post. On Twitter, you are able to "Follow" others who are notified you are following them and they are in-turn able to easily follow you as well. This simple difference is the main thing that is keeping me Twittering. I came to the realization that this was really powerful when I began following Robert Scoble and within a few minutes I received notice that he was also following me. Given that Scoble is one of the pioneers of blogging and open customer communication who I have been following for a while, it was exciting to create this active connection with him... Now if I can just bring myself to type What I am Doing Right Now into Twitter!

Ning is something I had never heard of and therefore I have nothing to offer in the way of novel thoughts about this CNet Hit. The gist seems to be that anyone can use Ning to create a private social network. The example CNet gives is the ever-important ability to "track and rate local lunch spots" which is a use CNet's staff actually has for the product. I am unsure of there revenue model but if they charge enterprise dollars perhaps this can become a viable business. If the strategy requires blogs to have more than a million users for the economics to work I would bet Ning will have trouble over time as I believe only a handful (maybe a dozen) social networks will have the critical mass required to generate meaningful financial returns.

Surprisingly the iPhone was not mentioned in the article. I am now seeing many who are cursing its issues and threatening (already) to move on to new and different gadgets. At lunch with my business partner at ChaCha Scott's iPhone spontaneously went black and would not turn back on for a few minutes. (Check out Scott's new blog when you have a chance).

So my question is whether the iPhone was a Hit or a Miss in 2007? What do you think about the iPhone and other products that debuted in 2008?

Google's "knol" Experiment Highlights Need for Credibility

2007-12-14T12:54:00.001-08:00

Today Google's VP of Engineering, Udi Manber, blogged about a new project called "knol" Google is working on. This project is intended to "to find a way to help people share their knowledge".

This announcement is exciting to the ChaCha team because it validates for the masses something that we have believed deeply from the beginning - that leaving it up to the crowd to give you an answer is not a good idea when accuracy and authority count.

My sense is that Google has Wikipedia in its crosshairs with this initiative as Google sends millions of visitors to the not-for-profit everyday. By capturing this traffic rather than shuttling it off to Wikipedia, Google stands to grow revenue and extend its brand to include the provision of knowledge by actual authorities.

It is Not the Critic Who Counts...

2007-11-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

ChaCha recently announced that we closed an additional $10 million in funding and we also started a pilot of a new service that will be launching nationally in January (we are in stealth mode on that now but expect details in early January time frame - hint: What if you could ask anything in natural language and get the answer anywhere at anytime?).

A behavior pattern I find intriguing is that of the naysayers and detractors, who really don't understand our business, coming up with all their many profound reasons that ChaCha is doomed each time we announce another positive milestone has been completed. As I see those who muse wittily (at least they try to be witty) about ChaCha's shortcomings, I can't help but wonder why anyone would feel compelled to be so negative. Then, after wondering for about two minutes, I realize that it is only natural for those who aren't truly informed of where we are headed to misunderstand our business. Additionally, the mere potential of ChaCha and the attention and involvement we have gained from visionaries such as Jeff Bezos and Morton Meyerson can prompt people to feel threatened by the possibility that we could actually become a disruptive force that gains massive global traction. In the latter case, the motives of those who are intent upon knocking ChaCha and others seem to be generated by a possible combination of envy and a conflicted circumstance where, say, you are good buddies with someone who perceives their business to be competitive with ChaCha (even though it really isn't). But what's the point in guessing why the mad bloggers and negativity generators are so darn mad? Well there probably is no point so I will not make any further attempts.

In any event, the amount of weight I place on the brilliant assessments by the usual critics is minimal due to the many cases where the critiques in question are, well... bad critiques that are poorly written as they are void of substance, depth, or any true current basis to support their claims directly (For example, how can you keep pointing to an example from a year ago where a user purposely created a bad experience because the negativity propagator induced that user to go purposely game the system? Just a thought, but perhaps your efforts could be more productively applied in a different pattern). The following random items are worthy of consideration as we consider the relative weight that should be placed on those who just love to criticize...

1) AMAZON DOT BOMB - In early 2001 many brilliant prognosticators of the blogosphere were trumpeting the almost certain demise of Amazon.com. Yeah, they had just terminated more than 1,000 employees so there was some cause for concern. But the main point is that this disruptive retail giant is now trading at record levels and it is clear that Jeff Bezos had a great plan and strategy in place for unleashing a disruptive force on the retail world unlike anything shopping has ever seen. The first time I met Jeff was actually at a Retail Systems conference in Chicago circa 2003 when Amazon had recovered and he actually put the "Amazon dot bomb" headline on the screen during his presentation and commented that his "mom did not care much for this headline". Jeff now has several billion reasons he can point to that prove he was right and the critics were, well... pontificating to get people to read their negative propaganda without any true basis for pumping so much negativity out there about Jeff and Amazon in general. I tend to side heavily with the innovator over the naysayer - and, of course, the innovator tends to create much more value.

2) Theodore Roosevelt - So you are thinking "What!? Why in the world are you thinking about Teddy Roosevelt at a time like this, Brad?" Well, this ties back to the heading of this post. It's Not the Critic Who Counts. Which is an excerpt from one of the more powerful quotes out there when considered in the context of modern media and the negativity that eminates from many (often quite popular) journalists and bloggers. The quote in its entirety is:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

I welcome all feedback that is constructive coming from those who actually take their time to truly understand a new, startup business that dares to try something different that can truly transform the way people live everyday. However, my patience and respect for those who find it appropriate to knock startups without any solid, relevant, current data to support their claims is negligible. Especially when the person doling out the criticism is someone who is or has been an entrepreneur. As a graduate of Indiana University during the Bob Knight era, I heard a few good quotes for the critics that I won't mention here but those of you who are sports fans know what I am referring to...

Now you know my view - What are your views on the "brilliant" bashers out there?