meriyaslounge
Solid State Member
- Messages
- 6
Scott Jones knows it's probably not wise to try to out-Google Google. But he's also not ready to concede that the world's leading search engine, or any of its main competitors, has the Web search trick down completely.
The Indiana tech inventor, who helped pioneer voice mail, is working on a new search engine model that employs thousands of paid "guides," who will provide live one-on-one help to users who need extra assistance tracking down online information. The free service, called ChaCha.com, goes live today as a test and is expected to go into full beta later this year.
Jones helped create voice mail technology through his first company, Boston Technology, and later created Gracenote, one of the software systems employed in iTunes. He said 30 percent of Web users either do not get their questions answered or take an average of 11 minutes to find information using traditional algorithmic-based Web search engines.
The value of a service like ChaCha lies in its ability to connect users immediately to a knowledgeable guide, who has experience or background a particular field. Think of it as calling 411 directory assistance on the Web.
"When people try us, they're blown away," said Jones, the founder and chief executive officer of ChaCha. "The results are significantly better because we're incorporating human intelligence into the mix."
Users will connect to a live guide via instant messenger from the ChaCha home page. After a connection is made, within 1 minute or less, the user can ask all kinds of questions of their guides until they get the information they need. The guides, who are organized by their areas of knowledge, will pass on information and Web site addresses that will appear on the user's screen.
Guides paid on sliding scale
Jones said the company will have about 3,000 guides when the program is released and is prepared to add many thousands more as business warrants. They will be typically paid from $5 to $10 an hour and the company will recruit among college students, retirees and stay-at-home parents. The guides will be trained and will compete against each other for rankings, determined by customer satisfaction. Guides who get higher scores will earn more -- up to $20 an hour for top earners.
When the guides are not answering questions, they will be doing test searches on popular terms, helping with the second part of ChaCha's offerings. If users don't want to use the live guides, they can pull up instant search results that are organized by the guides. Jones believes a majority of searches in the beginning will be quick searches, but, over time, users will probably be inclined to use guided searches for complicated questions.
"This is a paradigm shift for people," said Jones of handling both guided and instant searches. "You can't stray too far from the paradigm that people know today."
Brad Bostic, president of ChaCha, based in Indianapolis, said the business depends on recruiting, training and keeping guides who will keep the system running. He said new guides can join only after being invited by other guides. they will be trained by their peers. Some will specialize in a certain field, but can also be trained to handle large subject categories. The service also allows guides to earn up to 10 percent of the income of guides they've helped recruit.
The company said it will earn revenue through advertisements, mostly videos that will be shown while users wait for their guides and during the search.
ChaCha is seizing on a trend in Web searches, incorporating human know-how into the process of answering people's questions. Yahoo recently released Yahoo Answers, which allows users to pose questions, which can be answered by other users. Answer Bag, another Web site, offers a similar service. Google offers a fee-based question-and-answer service called Google Answers.
Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group in San Jose said ChaCha is on the right track and thinking outside the box to gain users.
"You can't build a better Google. You have to approach this market differently," Enderle said. "If these guides can get you information more quickly, it could be more popular than any other current generation of search tool."
All about guide training
Alan Weiner, an analyst for Gartner, a research firm, who was briefed on the service, agrees ChaCha holds enormous potential and could be very popular with users who seek reliable information. But he said it all comes down to execution.
"It has a lot of moving parts to it. It's all in the training of the guides, developing them, the system for compensating them," said Weiner. "It looks good on paper but the proof will be in how it scales. There is a lot of load testing for it to be a truly operational."
Bostic said it will take a while to attract traffic like Google, which handled 2.75 billion searches in July. But he's confident the service can work and ultimately provide a viable alternative to Google and Yahoo. It all comes down to injecting a little human touch into the search world, he said.
"We're not trying to (cover) the Web better than Google. Computers get smarter but they don't have a brain," said Bostic. "The only way to assimilate what's on the Web and deliver precise results, the only way to make that big leap is not a new algorithm -- it's human intelligence."
The Indiana tech inventor, who helped pioneer voice mail, is working on a new search engine model that employs thousands of paid "guides," who will provide live one-on-one help to users who need extra assistance tracking down online information. The free service, called ChaCha.com, goes live today as a test and is expected to go into full beta later this year.
Jones helped create voice mail technology through his first company, Boston Technology, and later created Gracenote, one of the software systems employed in iTunes. He said 30 percent of Web users either do not get their questions answered or take an average of 11 minutes to find information using traditional algorithmic-based Web search engines.
The value of a service like ChaCha lies in its ability to connect users immediately to a knowledgeable guide, who has experience or background a particular field. Think of it as calling 411 directory assistance on the Web.
"When people try us, they're blown away," said Jones, the founder and chief executive officer of ChaCha. "The results are significantly better because we're incorporating human intelligence into the mix."
Users will connect to a live guide via instant messenger from the ChaCha home page. After a connection is made, within 1 minute or less, the user can ask all kinds of questions of their guides until they get the information they need. The guides, who are organized by their areas of knowledge, will pass on information and Web site addresses that will appear on the user's screen.
Guides paid on sliding scale
Jones said the company will have about 3,000 guides when the program is released and is prepared to add many thousands more as business warrants. They will be typically paid from $5 to $10 an hour and the company will recruit among college students, retirees and stay-at-home parents. The guides will be trained and will compete against each other for rankings, determined by customer satisfaction. Guides who get higher scores will earn more -- up to $20 an hour for top earners.
When the guides are not answering questions, they will be doing test searches on popular terms, helping with the second part of ChaCha's offerings. If users don't want to use the live guides, they can pull up instant search results that are organized by the guides. Jones believes a majority of searches in the beginning will be quick searches, but, over time, users will probably be inclined to use guided searches for complicated questions.
"This is a paradigm shift for people," said Jones of handling both guided and instant searches. "You can't stray too far from the paradigm that people know today."
Brad Bostic, president of ChaCha, based in Indianapolis, said the business depends on recruiting, training and keeping guides who will keep the system running. He said new guides can join only after being invited by other guides. they will be trained by their peers. Some will specialize in a certain field, but can also be trained to handle large subject categories. The service also allows guides to earn up to 10 percent of the income of guides they've helped recruit.
The company said it will earn revenue through advertisements, mostly videos that will be shown while users wait for their guides and during the search.
ChaCha is seizing on a trend in Web searches, incorporating human know-how into the process of answering people's questions. Yahoo recently released Yahoo Answers, which allows users to pose questions, which can be answered by other users. Answer Bag, another Web site, offers a similar service. Google offers a fee-based question-and-answer service called Google Answers.
Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group in San Jose said ChaCha is on the right track and thinking outside the box to gain users.
"You can't build a better Google. You have to approach this market differently," Enderle said. "If these guides can get you information more quickly, it could be more popular than any other current generation of search tool."
All about guide training
Alan Weiner, an analyst for Gartner, a research firm, who was briefed on the service, agrees ChaCha holds enormous potential and could be very popular with users who seek reliable information. But he said it all comes down to execution.
"It has a lot of moving parts to it. It's all in the training of the guides, developing them, the system for compensating them," said Weiner. "It looks good on paper but the proof will be in how it scales. There is a lot of load testing for it to be a truly operational."
Bostic said it will take a while to attract traffic like Google, which handled 2.75 billion searches in July. But he's confident the service can work and ultimately provide a viable alternative to Google and Yahoo. It all comes down to injecting a little human touch into the search world, he said.
"We're not trying to (cover) the Web better than Google. Computers get smarter but they don't have a brain," said Bostic. "The only way to assimilate what's on the Web and deliver precise results, the only way to make that big leap is not a new algorithm -- it's human intelligence."
