ChaCha Vs. kgb_
Should it be kgb_ Vs. ChaCha or ChaCha Vs. kgb_? Well, anyway works. The real deal here is that ChaCha now has a competitor whom it will share the ever increasing mobile search market with. I won’t be talking much about their market sizes, but I will surely touch some bits about these two mobile search service providers.
First, we know ChaCha mobile search launched in January of 2008 and they currently have exceeded 3 million users in about a year. On the other hand, kgb_ , formerly Infonxx is fairly new into the kind of service ChaCha provides here in the U.S., but they won’t tell you they’re. kgb_ claims to have been the the “knowledge business” for over 15 years(through acquisition and subsidiaries) and in 2007, they answered over 1 billion questions– pretty impressive.
So what similarities do these companies have? On the business side, they both are mobile search providers with the sole aim of providing quality answers to their customers on the go. They also recruit humans to answer questions sent to their short codes; 242242 for ChaCha and 542542 for kgb_.
What You Should Know About ChaCha
- Who don’t like free stuffs? ChaCha is free.
- Another prop for ChaCha is that they give you free unlimited voice questions; that is, you can ask questions through their voice system 1-800-242-2242 and have answered delivered to you via text.
- Some say they’re free because they provide less quality answers. I think this is untrue.
- Their automated service is great. With this, you can get automated answers for word definitions, weather, jokes, trivia question, and many more. just text MENU to 242242 to see what I’m talking about.
- You may ask only 4 questions within a 72 hours period. This means 40 questions per month
- ChaCha is ranked 2nd in mobile search behind almighty Google.
- Good and reasonable pay. If you’re a Top Guide you get paid 20 cents per question and if you don’t make the Top Guide status, you’ll be paid 10 cents per transaction.
From a consumer point of view, I can’t ask for more.
What You Should Know About kgb_
- They’re new and promising.
- kgb_ is “global” not just in the US, but in Europe and Asia.
- There hasn’t been too much criticism, but it will only take time.
- They charge you 50 cent per question. In my opinion, it’s not the best way to compete with a free service from ChaCha.
- Their agents are paid 10 cents per question irrespective of whether you’re providing good or not so good answers. I won’t take anything away from kgb_, but one would assume since they charge 50 cents, they should be able to pay their agents more than ChaCha. That’s not the case.
Overall, I don’t have too much to complain about the services kgb_ and ChaCha provides, as I will leave all the complaints for my readers to do. But what strikes me is that kgb_ offers 10 cents when ChaCha offers just about the same and more for their Top Guides.
kgb_: http://www.kgbkgb.com
ChaCha: http://www.chacha.com
What were your experience(s) like with either of ChaCha or kgb_? Feel free to comment below.
JD 
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4 Responses to “ChaCha Vs. kgb_”
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ChaCha all the way. KGB doesn’t even make sense to me. I was going to sign up to answer questions til I realized I’ll get paid a flat 10 cents per question and I have to set schedules.
Also, who wants to pay 50 cents for the answer when you could just ask ChaCha? I asked KGB something and they sent a message that it would cost 50 cents to get the answer, reply YES.. I never did..
Yes, KGB should pay more if they’re going to charge half a dollar or “fifty pennies” as they put it to make it sound like it’s not as expensive.
KGB for 15 years? They’ve been doing this since 1994? That’s stupid ridiculous. So they claim that at the very beginning of the internet and when cell phones were just booming they started this project? Lie. Blatant lie. That’s like me saying I’m 24 years old but I was born in 1970 so I’m actually a MORE EXPERIENCED 24 year old cause I have been alive longer than most 24 year olds.
I guess I just don’t like KGB, stupid competition. I think ChaCha is beutiful. Yes it has flaws, but so does everything.. it makes it real.
I agree. ChaCha seems more sophisticated and they are friendly with their Guides too(this is not to say kgb_ is not). ChaCha Thumbs up!
Better revisit that pay issue again. ChaCha just pulled in 30 million in funding and cut guide pay by an average of 30-40% and told them to make it up through working more. One of ChaCha’s primary advertisers, Predicto, is verging on a class action lawsuit for slamming, already having been a factor in a suit lost by AT&T on 3rd party billing practices and controlling companies that slam.
kgb_ pays 10 cents per, however, they’ve not implemented a promised bonus program based on answer performance. They also treat their contractors with far more respect, communicate with them far more effectively and are extremely responsive to issues that are brought up by their agents, implementing changes sometimes within hours to improve performance.
Internally, kgb_ systems are far more functional and flexible than ChaCha’s could ever hope to be. Changes are intuitive and functional and well explained where as ChaCha’s system updates tend to end in poorly thought out fiasco’s.
Over time, I think you’re going to see a serious reduction in quality from ChaCha, but you get what you pay for.
ChaCha’s bread and butter is sex education for the tweenie masses. As a guide it feels like you’re working a soft porn site some days, others a sex ed site with terrifying misinformation being directed at you.
kgb_ appears to be chasing a little more sophisticated customer. Every test I’ve put each through, as a contractor and as a user, kgb_ has come out on top. Better information, better response time, not inundated with commercials and multiple texts just to get one answer.
You have made some pretty nice points in your comment; just to let you know, I have had experiences with ChaCha and kgb_. I think ChaCha beats kgb_ in scheduling and flexibility. With ChaCha, you can log on to work at any time of the day without any fixed schedule, but kgb_is not like that.
I think both companies listen to their Guides/agents. Many of the policies and improvements with the ways things are done at ChaCha have input of the Guides. I can also say the same of kgb_.
ChaCha has every facet of customers, but since it’s free, you are sure of having those kiddies asking sex related questions all the time. I can attribute the free nature of ChaCha to these sex related questions.
What I don’t like about recent ChaCha update is the pay structure that was implemented today. They now pay Guides per category with most of the categories being 10 cents. That’s not just good enough in my opinion.
Overall, I think both companies are great, and since ChaCha now has a competitor, it should be careful with policy implementation that may drive away their Guides(many have left already) and customers.