Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIf Britney Spears is having a bad behavior day, the mobile search engine ChaCha Search might gear up to deliver in bulk
answers to important questions such as “What is Britney’s bra size?” or “How many piercings does Britney
Spears have?”
Jones But the increasingly popular creation of serial inventor Scott Jones was bombarded last month
after early reports that Michael Jackson had died.
ChaCha’s mobile search guides—contract employees
who accept inquiries via text message or phone—had, in just a few hours, 100,000 questions about whether the King of
Pop had died, reports MobileInsider, a Web site covering mobile marketing and advertising.
“Let that be
a lesson to mobile media. We’re not playing around anymore. People are expecting answers, the right answers, from your
little startups,” wrote MobileInsider.
ChaCha skews toward the wireless-phone-obsessed, age-25-and-under
crowd. At the end of last year, Jones’ Carmel-based service was the 7th-most-trafficked service, not far behind such
giants as Google, Facebook and Twitter, according to Nielson and Co.
Jones has attracted big-shot investors
for ChaCha, including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and Compaq Computer founder Rod Canion.•
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