ChaCha and Indiana University (IU) have formed an interesting alliance. According to the press materials (from 8/2):
This new partnership will incorporate the collective knowledge and experience of the university’s library and information technology staff into ChaCha’s new search engine architecture, which combines a sophisticated machine-based search with skilled human guides who can quickly bring focus and precision to the search product
Serving as guides, IU librarians, information technology staff and others will be available to help users conduct searches through a live instant message chat interface, identify exactly what information the user is seeking, refine the search for the user and then display only the most relevant results.
ChaCha (as well as its IM-based guides functionality) will also help power search on IU’s internal sites. ChaCha is one of the most intriguing of the new generation of general purpose search engines. The site and its use of guides has gotten much better over time, though it has yet to fully realize the promise of human-assisted search in real time. That involves matching the right guides to the right queries and ensuring that the guides do have actual subject matter knowledge.
There’s an interesting mobile extension of this coming at some point.
