ChaCha (search engine)
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| Founded | September 1, 2006 |
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| Headquarters | Carmel, Indiana, United States |
| Area served | USA |
| Founder(s) | Scott A. Jones, Brad Bostic |
| Services | Web search, mobile search |
| Revenue | $6.3 million (2010) |
| Employees | 71 (2010) |
| Slogan(s) | Powered by People |
| Website | ChaCha.com |
| Alexa rank | 1,192 (global), 418 (USA) (September 2012[update]) |
ChaCha was a human-guided search engine. It provided free, real-time answers to any question, through its website, or by using one of the company's mobile apps.
The company, founded in 2006 by Scott A. Jones and Brad Bostic, was based in Carmel, Indiana, United States, part of the Indianapolis metropolitan area. Its name came from the Mandarin Chinese word cha (Chinese: ; pinyin: chá; Wade–Giles: ch'a), which means "to search."
ChaCha answered questions through the use of independent contractors called Guides. Guides were paid $0.02 per answer. The owner moved to Hawaii and refused to pay the Guides the money they were owed after shutting down the program without notice.
The alpha version of ChaCha was launched on September 1, 2006. A beta version was introduced on November 6, 2006. ChaCha said 20,000 guides had registered by year's end and that it had raised US$6 million in development funds, including support from Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment firm owned by Jeff Bezos, the entrepreneur behind Amazon.com.
By January 2008, ChaCha had 5,000 freelance guides with at least 500 working at any one time. MogoNews.com reported that ChaCha's first round of equity financing was $14 million plus a $2 million grant from 21st Century Technology Fund.
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Wikipedia