Hi, Chris Lenzo here. As director of the Product Management team at ChaCha, it is my pleasure to introduce what I hope will be a number of informative and interactive discussions in the ChaCha blogdom.
The role of product management at ChaCha is to help bring new features to our solution. And what a great role this is, creating, often inventing, applications that our customers, guides and employees use on a daily basis to fulfill the vision of “Simple Access to Better Answers”.
I say inventing, because in nearly 20 years of designing and building software solutions, I have not worked on anything quite like ChaCha. Sure there are hundreds of search technologies out there, but how many can provide the kind of access to information that ChaCha offers. It is incredible, how the promise of timely access to credible, authoritative information appeals to our users. After all, there is only so much that one can do with the “10,000 results in .02 seconds” produced by more traditional algorithmic-based search technologies.
So, what kind of topics and posts can you expect to find from Product Management? Well, for starters, we will try to provide insight to new and upcoming features from ChaCha. Some of these discussions will be high level, but in other editions, we will try to focus on a particular area of the solution in greater detail. We’ll be sharing portions of the product roadmap, providing the opportunity to view comments related to ChaCha products and provide a means to gather feedback on features we have planned for upcoming releases.
So let’s get started… What comprises the ChaCha solution set?
ChaCha is comprised of several major outward-facing (Search) solutions. The first of these are:
- ChaCha.com, the original desktop (web) search solution
- textChaCha, the mobile SMS text-based search solution
Additionally, there are a number of applications that enable or support the ChaCha solution for our Guides and Employees. These include:
- ChaCha Universe, the new browser-based Guide solution
- ChaCha Administration and Reporting tools
The product management team is aligned with these specific solution sets to better coordinate the features and activities for their delivery. As we begin to share the vision for the whole ChaCha solution set, you will have the opportunity to meet the other PMs responsible for each functional area.
In this first writing, I want to share the some of the ideas around our new textChaCha product and how it leverages the Unified Search environment of ChaCha.com.
For mobile phone users who wish to have simple access to any answer, anywhere, anytime, textChaCha provides a unique method of obtaining answers via SMS-enabled mobile phones. Unlike other mobile answer services that limit the type of information available (like stock quotes, weather updates or phone numbers), textChaCha will answer any question, even those that are of a local or time-dependent nature. Because ChaCha matches your question to human experts with specific, relevant subject knowledge, textChaCha is uniquely positioned to provide answers that you won’t find with any other SMS text service.
The textChaCha solution makes it easy to search for information without the need for expensive smart phones or complicated or cryptic SMS keywords.
- Need the number of the ink cartridge for your printer, while you’re at the office supply store - why not textChaCha
- Out with friends and want to find that new club that opened last week - just textChaCha
- Can’t remember the place that worked on your car last winter and need the phone number - simply textChaCha
- At the mall and looking for a gift for your grandmother that loves to cook, play bridge and knit - you guessed it, textChaCha
It’s as simple as sending 242242 (chacha) through any text-enabled mobile phone. (For list of all approved mobile carriers, please visit www.chacha.com)
The options are unlimited and the power is tremendous. Best of all, because textChaCha supports the concept of Unified Search, you can view all of your human-assisted searches from within the login-secured areas of ChaCha.com. Text or desktop, they are all there, ready to be viewed when you need to see it.
We have only just begun. We have a number of new features that we will be discussing in coming editions. So stay tuned for more in-depth looks at the ChaCha solution.
Next week: ChaCha Universe
About Chris L.
Be the first to leave a comment