ChaCha Makes Its Crazy Business Model…Profitable
Updated: 2009-12-31 10:43:54
Tech Gadgets Mobile Enterprise CrunchBase Crunchies 2009 Gift Guide 2009 More Beta Invites Crunchies Elevator Pitches Gillmor Gang Podcasts TechCrunch50 TechCrunch Europe TechCrunch Trends TechCrunch France TechCrunch Japan About Advertise Archives Company Index Contact CrunchCam Jobs Trends : Subscribe ChaCha Makes Its Crazy Business Model Profitable 11 Comments by Michael Arrington on December 31, 2009 We’ve always had a lot of fun with Indianapolis-based startup ChaCha They launched in 2007 as a human powered search engine meaning a human found you answers when you typed in a query . Pranksters , obviously , loved it And we noted the high cost of hiring humans to basically do Google searches and return results to . people The human powered web search never really worked out . But ChaCha evolved . In 2008 they launched a mobile version of the service that lets users ask questions via SMS . Putting a human into the mix makes sense with mobile , with poor or no data connectivity and hard to use keyboards . But all phones have SMS , and ChaCha had a hit on their hands they also had the infamous Eiffel Tower incident And ChaCha also made another smart move . They started archiving
As the Web becomes more social, privacy becomes harder and harder to come by. People are over-sharing on Facebook and Twitter, broadcasting their whereabouts every ten steps on Foursquare and Gowalla, and uploading photos and videos of their most private moments to the Web for all to see. It's easy to say that privacy is dead, we all live in public now, and just deal with it.
But things are a bit more complicated. It used to be that we lived in private and chose to make parts of our lives public. Now that is being turned on its head. We live in public, like the movie says (except via micro-signals not 24-7 video self-surveillance), and choose what parts of our lives to keep private. Public is the new default.
In about 12 hours’ time, it will be 2010… It’s a brand new year… It’s time for setting your new year resolution! It’s a way of setting goals to achieve within a year for yourself and your loved ones.
I watched “The Secret” movie quite some time ago. This movie came into my mind [...]
It's almost January 1st, 2010 and we've been mulling over our favorites of 2009 - and the previous decade. Here we present another installment in our "Of the Decade" lists.
The aughts were a great time for gamers. The decade began auspiciously with the launch of the PlayStation2, and is ending quite nicely with a Nintendo victory that would have been thought impossible a few years ago. More people than ever are gaming, and the business has grown to enormous size. We've chosen the following games as the best representatives of this decade of gaming.
Newsflash: Tomorrow is the last day of 2009. That means we're moving into the first new decade of the 2000s. And we have a decision to make.
Say "2009" outloud. Chances are you're saying "two thousand and nine." But if you think about it, that's weird. Say "1909" outloud. Chances are you're saying "nineteen-oh-nine." It makes some sense, since we weren't going to pronounce "2000" as "twenty hundred," but for whatever reason, going forward, we never moved to something like "twenty-oh-one" for "2001" and so forth. A new website is urging us to do just that for the next decade.
. Tech Gadgets Mobile Enterprise CrunchBase Crunchies 2009 Gift Guide 2009 More Beta Invites Crunchies Elevator Pitches Gillmor Gang Podcasts TechCrunch50 TechCrunch Europe TechCrunch Trends TechCrunch France TechCrunch Japan About Advertise Archives Company Index Contact CrunchCam Jobs Trends : Subscribe Did You Get A Magic Mouse This Holiday Download MagicPrefs . Immediately 19 Comments by MG Siegler on December 30, 2009 Back in November , I wrote up a review of the new Magic Mouse , noting that it was Apple’s best mouse ever , but Essentially , the problem is a software one . Apple gave its new mouse multi-touch capabilities , but only takes advantage of a fraction of what it can do . And yes , it’s fully multi-touch capable A new third-party program called MagicPrefs enables all the multi-touch capabilities you could ever want for the device and even some you likely . don’t MagicPrefs , which is made by developer Vlad Alexa , is a free piece of software that runs in the background once you start it up . It gives you a boatload of new multi-touch options for your Magic Mouse , broken into three main categories : Clicks Taps , Swipes , and Drag , Pinch , etc . Clicks Taps are the
. Tech Gadgets Mobile Enterprise CrunchBase Crunchies 2009 Gift Guide 2009 More Beta Invites Crunchies Elevator Pitches Gillmor Gang Podcasts TechCrunch50 TechCrunch Europe TechCrunch Trends TechCrunch France TechCrunch Japan About Advertise Archives Company Index Contact CrunchCam Jobs Trends : Subscribe Third Release of Tickets For The Crunchies Awards On Sale . Now 2 Comments by Michael Arrington on December 30, 2009 The third and likely final batch of 150 tickets to attend the Crunchies Awards are on sale now courtesy of Eventbrite . Balcony seats are 45 orchestra is sold out . If you’re dead set on an orchestra seat , please contact Jeanne Logozzo for sponsorship options . We have creative packages available in all shapes and sizes , such as champagne cocktails , card-game tables , demo tables , photo booths or walls , product giveaways and . more Remember that voting is open through midnight PST , Wednesday , January 6. Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote daily for their favorite people , products and companies of the . year The Crunchies Awards celebrate the best tech accomplishments of 2009 and will be held at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco on Friday , January
When Swype was nice enough to give us the world's first hands-on with their ultra-nifty alternative keyboard on the Android platform, I wasn't about to leak the installation files. It's just not my style. Now that someone else has gone and leaked them, though, I'm more or less obligated to show you how to get it up and running. I tell you, folks -- this blogging thing is one endless inner conflict.
I've been using a Macintosh computer for a few years now, but just a few a weeks ago, I decided to look in my Utilities folder—one of those spur of the moment kind of things.
I found the regular utilities like Activity Monitor, Airport Utility, Console, and Migration Assistant, but what I just stumbled on was something that has saved me so many times from that point on. DigitalColor Meter. Apple likes to secretly tuck away their best utilities in folders that people will most likely never end up using.
So what makes DigitalColor Meter so special? The app does a lot of things, but what I found most useful was the ability for me to hover over any pixel on my screen, and to find out the exact RGB value (read up on RGB here). Video after the jump.
We all do it. We come to a new year with high hopes. We’re going to turn over a new year and take the world by storm – next year.
Then, the year goes by. Perhaps there was a momentary burst in activity in January. The obligatory visits to the gym. Maybe write a few [...]
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I typically use the Weather iPhone app once a week, at most. The only reason I would ever use the application is if a friend asked me the weather for a certain day of the week. Outside is trying to change the way we see weather applications on the iPhone with their new iPhone app developed by Robocat.
Outside combines current weather and local forecasts with custom push notifications on the iPhone. With Outside, you can setup push notifications to for various weather conditions and get alerts when the weather matches your criteria, even when the app isn’t running. To get the notifications, you have to sign up for a subscription service. You get 30 days of push notifications when you purchase Outside, and then for $1, you get another 90 days of notifications. A yearly plan is in works as well.
Today, I have launched a brand new report. After all, I couldn’t let the new year go by without doing something interesting.
It is called….
Pro Blogging in 2010 And Beyond
The report is completely free.
In this report, I talk about some of the trends which have led up to 2010 and why I’m excited [...]
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Photo Credit: Erasmus T
I happened to see a tweet by @clickTRUE that they worked with Panasonic to drive quality traffic to their asia website. This is in response to my thoughts about this very simple “drive-traffic” marketing.
I read through their post and come to realize that their strategy is a little weird.
In short, they are trying to drive [...]
I am a self-proclaimed Google whore. I use many of their free services and there is rarely a time when I don’t have at least one of my browser tabs open to a Google property.
This last week, I was reminded of Google Voice. I was reading the revised edition of the 4-Hour Work Week [...]
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New to Internet Marketing?
I get a lot of new people asking me what they need to get started as an internet marketer. I have compiled a list here of the accounts and other important programs I use often in my business and if you have these things you will be well on the way towards [...]Post from: InternetMarketingSpeed.com - Download this FREE report...Essential Accounts for Internet Marketers
Last night (at midnight) my friends Nathan Hangen and Mike CJ launched their new book, Beyond Blogging.
Now, I’ve seen several ebooks that are full of interviews. In fact, most of the time, the author didn’t do much of the actual writing – they just copy/pasted what the interviewee said and called it a book.
Beyond Blogging [...]
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Have you ever found yourself caught in an endless rat-wheel of indecision? The kind that just paralyzes you and nothing happens?
It is a rat-wheel. You just sit there and spin, but you go absolutely nowhere.
There are three options to any decision or action in life:
Yes
No
Maybe
There are only two answers you should [...]
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Photo credit: the tartanpodcast
I happened to stumble upon a blog mentioning that social media can save your brand. This blog post triggered my thought about using the social media as part of your marketing strategy. I thought of mentioning my two cents worth about social media strategy…
Background
There are many companies out there who are very [...]
Photo Credit: Obi-Akpere
I was busy sorting out my messy files worth of 141 GB in size… Until then, I found this very interesting note that I have written it in a word document. I believe it came from some great people out there… But I just couldn’t recall how I put all the words into [...]
As we head into the Christmas holiday, I thought I would end off the week by featuring two more bloggers who are doing it right.
Corvida Raven
Corvida is young tech blogger who discusses social media and all things tech. She really is the consummate blogger and networker.
I believe she first crossed my radar back when [...]
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It’s just charles ramblings
It’s a 24 Dec today. I have just gotten back from Bangkok. It was a really nice little trip with my wife, her mum, and her mum’s sister and family. I have gotten a few interesting items from Pantip Plaza.
Media Player which can play music, video and pictures on the TV from [...]
Meet Elyana. She just turned 2 years old. And even at her age, she has things figured out that many adults just fail to get.
My daughter wants what she wants. And, dammit, she’s gonna get it.
Case in point… while I was typing up some posts for this week, my daughter popped onto the couch. [...]
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Is 2010 going to rock or is it going to suck?
For bloggers, I mean.
There are certainly changes afoot. The landscape is moving quickly. The market is growing. Some would say it is saturating. On top of that, the FTC threw a rock into our pond with their new rules concerning [...]
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Many companies still don’t understand the whole idea about doing email blast. Many of them simply put in a “<adv>” in the email subject title, and thinking that their monotonous action will do the trick of impressing their recipients to buy their products. That is so childish, and is another number game.
It’s like taking several [...]
Doing online business with RSS or Really Simple Syndication feeds can be a boon to your marketing strategy. It contains hyperlinks, headline and summary of updated web content; therefore your readers are informed each time automatically that your website or blog is updated.
Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog E-mail Twitter Blog Feed Subscribe By E-Mail Enter your email : address Delivered by FeedBurner Dion's Speaking : Calendar View Dion's Detailed 2009-2010 Speaking Schedule Twitter Updates What is Web 2.0 O'Reilly's What is Web 2.0 The Leading Web 2.0 Explanations The State of Web 2.0 Visualizing Web 2.0 Web 2.0 in Business Wikipedia Entry for Web 2.0 Recent Readers Web 2.0 Blogs A Venture Forth Ajaxian Ajit Jaokar Alex Barnett Alex Muse's Web 2.0 VC Blog Bill Scott Changing Way Designing for the Sandbox Dion Hinchcliffe Duane Nickull Enterprise Web 2.0 Hooman Radfar J.LeRoy James McParlane Jeremy Geelan Jeff Jarvis John Battelle Joshua Porter Kendall Clark Map of the Web 2.0 World Marshall Kirkpatrick Matt Biddulph mediatope Microcontent Musings Mike Gaffney Peter Cashmore's Mashable Peter Rip Phil Wainwright Planet Web 2.0 Programmable Web Ray Ozzie Read Write Web Roland Tanglao RSS Feed for This Blog Silkworm Steven Berlin Johnson Stowe Boyd TechCrunch Tracking Web 2.0 TECHNOSIGHT Blog The Long Tail Blog The Social Software Weblog Tim O'Reilly Troy Angrignon Web 2.0 Cafe Web 2.0 Central Web 2.0 in Ireland Web 2.0 Show Web 2.0 Journal Web 2.0
This is just Charles’s rambling time…
Time really flies. It’s coming to a new year very soon. This recently, I have been working on a website revamp project for my company. Met a lot of obstacles along the way… so much so that it has become a “norm” to face all these problems. I don’t really [...]
Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog E-mail Twitter Blog Feed Subscribe By E-Mail Enter your email : address Delivered by FeedBurner Dion's Speaking : Calendar View Dion's Detailed 2009-2010 Speaking Schedule Twitter Updates What is Web 2.0 O'Reilly's What is Web 2.0 The Leading Web 2.0 Explanations The State of Web 2.0 Visualizing Web 2.0 Web 2.0 in Business Wikipedia Entry for Web 2.0 Recent Readers Web 2.0 Blogs A Venture Forth Ajaxian Ajit Jaokar Alex Barnett Alex Muse's Web 2.0 VC Blog Bill Scott Changing Way Designing for the Sandbox Dion Hinchcliffe Duane Nickull Enterprise Web 2.0 Hooman Radfar J.LeRoy James McParlane Jeremy Geelan Jeff Jarvis John Battelle Joshua Porter Kendall Clark Map of the Web 2.0 World Marshall Kirkpatrick Matt Biddulph mediatope Microcontent Musings Mike Gaffney Peter Cashmore's Mashable Peter Rip Phil Wainwright Planet Web 2.0 Programmable Web Ray Ozzie Read Write Web Roland Tanglao RSS Feed for This Blog Silkworm Steven Berlin Johnson Stowe Boyd TechCrunch Tracking Web 2.0 TECHNOSIGHT Blog The Long Tail Blog The Social Software Weblog Tim O'Reilly Troy Angrignon Web 2.0 Cafe Web 2.0 Central Web 2.0 in Ireland Web 2.0 Show Web 2.0 Journal Web 2.0
Meeting objectives
I think the whole idea of being in a career is to meet your objective, as well as meeting your customers’ objectives.
There are many people out there who are only trying their best to meet their own objectives so much so that they are not meeting their customers’ objectives. Taking in a lot of [...]