REVIEW: ChaCha’s answers much better than anticipated

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Yay or Nay. Every week we’ll review a new wireless application or service from the user’s point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and what doesn’t. If you wish to submit your application or service for review, please contact us at rcrwebhelp@crain.com.
Application: ChaCha
Running on: Samsung Instinct on Sprint Nextel network
Yay: Answers to all of life’s questions at the touch of a few buttons. The service is free.
Nay: Better have a text package or this could get ugly. Relies on the “truth” available on the Internet.
We say: While the idea seems ludicrous at first, in execution ChaCha is hard to beat. Once you realize how easy it is, you likely will go overboard asking every question that pops into your head.
Review: Have you ever wondered who directed that awesome flick “Hot Rod,” or who won the 1998 Giro d’ Italia bike race, or if there is a cure for herpes? Well wonder no longer as the answer to all these questions and more is now at the tip of your finger thanks to ChaCha. (For those wondering: Akiva Schaffer, Marco Pantani and no, but vaccines help.)
ChaCha is able to provide such answers through its cadre of proprietary algorithms and “guides” who stand at the ready in front of their computers to search the Internet for answers to your questions. Sure, you could probably track down the answers yourself if you have a Web-enabled phone, but where is the gee-whiz factor in that?
After sending off the first question, the service sent a quick response thanking us for using the service and that our answer would be coming shortly. A short time later, that answer did come back (the capital of New Hampshire is: Concord) and all future answers were without the welcome.
In testing, answers to life’s questions were returned in a few minutes, with some of the answers even showing the human side of ChaCha. A simple question as “Whose house?” returned an answer of “Runs house!” (That alone sold us on the service.) Most answers also come back with a link to the profile page of the person who did all the searching work for this lazy questioner.
The service also offers more useful information such as weather and stock quotes and even has text shorthand to get such information quickly. We were also able to get movie show times by simply entering the movie name and a ZIP code.
ChaCha says that 53% of people who try the service come back again and 20% become consistent users. As more people use the service, the response time actually gets faster, the company said. The service also understands slang and terms like yesterday and tomorrow.
ChaCha also has a voice option that allows users to call in and ask a question from a cellphone and receive the answer via text message. The voice option is also a good way to bypass the 160-character limitation of sending in questions via text message.
The only downside to the service is that the sometimes several-minutes-long wait for answers could make for interesting stall tactics if using the service to play a time-based trivia game, but then again using outside assistance in such an environment would be wrong, wouldn’t it? Also, for those with an addictive personality, the service could spell major text messaging overages if not on an unlimited texting plan.
Also, we are not sure how the business model works as of yet, but there does seem to be some potential for brief text ads to be placed in answers.
Overall, the service performed much better than anticipated and proved more worthy than expected.