so i was just reading about this new search engine called ChaCha, where you can search with a “guide,” that apparently hand-selects search results for you. while it’s an interesting concept, i can’t imagine it will be too commercially viable. just to test it out, i did a search for carolina tar heels and here’s the chat that ensued.

JoeS: Welcome to ChaCha!
You: so what are some good tar heels sites
JoeS: let me look. hang on a minute!

blank screen …

You: for example how come i am not seeing anything
JoeS: i haven’t given you any results yet.
You: oh

~10 seconds has passed, wikipedia link shows up

You: wow this is amazing
You: how did you find that page

~5 more seconds, insidecarolina (scout.com) pops up, and then a few seconds later, the espn clubhouse page for the heels (football)

You: nice inside carolina
You: ah yes espn
You: digging deep
JoeS: just good with search terms.
You: so how do you do this
You: are you literally searching for me
JoeS: yeah, i am.
JoeS: that’s what we do here
You: are you getting paid to do that?
JoeS: yeah
You: that is a SWEET job
You: do you just basically use google
JoeS: yeah, i always do
You: and then show the results one at a time

about a minute has passed – i have 6 results

JoeS: well, we weed through the results and find the best sites
JoeS: and then pass those onto you
JoeS: that way you don’t go to sites with a lot of BS on them
You: so do you actually know anything about carolina basketball
JoeS: i sure don’t.
You: well i could recommend some good sites
You: but i guess that’s not the way this works
You: so why the personal touch
You: don’t computers do this pretty well for us
JoeS: yeah they do
JoeS: that’s why i’m not sure how well this company will do
JoeS: i think, on the surface, it’s a great idea
You: yea it’s an interesting concept
JoeS: but one, too much of our resources are taken up by prank searches
You: yea i can imagine
JoeS: and two, google is just too damn good at indexing
JoeS: but hey, it’s a fun side job
JoeS: for $10/hr to sit here and play with google
You: yea thats not so bad
JoeS: considering i do it from home
You: really
You: that’s not so bad
You: not bad at all
JoeS: not at all man, not at all
JoeS: anything else i can do for you?
You: that just about does it i just wanted to check this thing out
JoeS: right on
JoeS: have a good one

well all in all i ended up with a page with 6 mediocre links, and wasted two minutes of my time and someone else’s, when i could have just looked directly at wikipedia. brownie points for showing inside carolina, however. i’m sure i could have worked the interactive angle a little more, but i was more just amused by the whole concept. it will be interesting to see how this one does.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 12:53 am and is filed under Sports, Technology, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.