ChaCha has extended its “social Q&A” service ChaCha.me to mobile devices. This allows users to ask questions via their mobile phones and have those questions sent to their networks via their news feeds on Facebook networks and Twitter feeds. ChaCha’s traditional service uses trained guides (and automated response) to answer questions called in or sent via SMS.
In its release, ChaCha added that:
[A]dditional major features are coming to the social network soon, including:
ChaCha.me users will be able to search all other users by demographic, including location, gender, and age. For example, it will be easy for users living in New York to find and interact with others their age living in New York.
Users will be able to post and find out what others are doing “in the moment” with a new “what are you doing now?” feature.
Google of course recently bought Aardvark and there are a range of other “Q&A services in the market,” including kgb and Quora, among several others. ChaCha’s business model relies on ads inserted into SMS return messages.
The company has a large audience of teen and young adult users and has proven to be an effective channel for targeting that demographic segment.