 "Photo: Bob Al-Greene")
The meaning of life could be just a text message away.
Ask and you shall receive answers from search service ChaCha. Since January, employees from the Indiana-based company have been answering inquiries about all subjects via text message, like a search engine with a human touch.
"It's like having really smart friends with you at all times," Lisa Kennedy, a publicist for ChaCha, said.
The company's name comes from a Chinese word for search, 'cha,' as well as the dance the cha-cha because it is an exchange between two humans, Kennedy said.
Employees search questions online and respond with what they think is the best answer, and sometimes, a little personal insight.
Lincoln citizen Zachariah Birdwell tried to stump the search team when he began using
ChaCha a few months ago. Some questions went unanswered, he said, but some surprising answers came back as well.
He sent "what is love?" to
ChaCha's inquiry line, 242242.
ChaCha responded philosophically, Birdwell said, with "something along the lines of 'in the eye of the beholder.'"
With human insight comes human error.
ChaCha sent incorrect driving directions to Justin Fyfe, a 2007 graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who learned about the service from Birdwell.
"I was asking for directions to a Wal-Mart in Nebraska City, but they gave me directions to one in Lincoln," he said.
Apparently ChaCha's 35,000 guides may make mistakes now and then, but it doesn't seem to be stopping the company's growth.
Kennedy said someone new tries ChaCha every six seconds. The company has answered 27 million questions to date - about 300,000 searches per day.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that ChaCha's popularity caused a ruckus at an Indiana high school, where administrators were concerned about misuse of the service for cheating on schoolwork.
Many UNL professors require cell phones be put away during class to prevent distraction and academic dishonesty, but ChaCha has a different idea.
ChaCha's founder Scott Jones thinks teachers should give ChaCha a shot in the classroom, Kennedy said. Professors could ask students to ChaCha a question and discuss reasons for resulting answers.
"Scott is of the opinion that services like ChaCha and cell phone technology can really augment learning," Kennedy said. "Why memorize facts for no other purpose than test-taking when it's really about analyzing data?"
rachelalbin@dailynebraskan.com
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