Hi all,

Has anyone seen this new chacha service thats launched over here in the UK now. They are pretty big in the USA it seems and have now launched over here, the difference between them and 118118 and the like is that they dont charge for answers to your questions

Heres the speel...

"Life is full of questions - get your answers through ChaCha! Text any question to 85852 and a real person will answer it! Completely free answers and completely awesome!"

"Don't you hate when you get into pub fights over stupid disagreements? Try settling them with ChaCha - text any question to 85852 and a real human will answer it! Did we mention answers are free?!"

"What should you get your GF/BF for their birthday? ChaCha knows! Simply text any question 85852 and a real human will answer it! Answers are FREE! (They're relationship pros. Promise!)"

"Answers on the go - text ChaCha @ 85852 ANY question 24/7 for FREE answers! (Yes, I said free!)"


What you think? recon there is still a market for these sorta thing?

I recon they will be popular with the teenage kids on PAYG phones but not so much with the iphone/android brigade

I thought chacha was a HTC phone?

it is, but its also a new text message service as well..

I think I'd ask Google... or Jeeves.

i just gave it a go, its pretty good actually, accurate response, i think it will be big with the teenage crowd and people who dont have a smartphone or quick 3G as you get an answer back straight away near enough

Yeah, but is the answer just a copy-and-paste from Wikipedia?

nope, proper personalised answer, give it a whirl, its free to get answers, give it what you would class a tough question..

Hmm. I might do. Before I do, though, will you share what your question was and, verbatim, their answer?

I asked when a certain band played at the Leeds festival this weekend, at what date and time and got back the correct answer

I wonder how they are making money from this my guess is that it is a phone number harvesting service.

dont think so, look at their website they are HUGE in the US, answer more questions than google via text, did 1.7 billion questions so far and what not...

Tried it, but the message wouldn't send

I just text 85852 and it worked fine

As people have pointed out on other forums , the answer may be free but it costs one standard message to ask the question! (between 4p and 12p)

That's fine, I have unlimited text messages....Might give it a try out of curiosity later tonight....

Sound like the kind of thing that would interest stupid chavs.

I would normally agree but beyond their question/answer service they also seem to provide support for people who are in trouble, or quitting smoking or drink or whatever...it seems a very mixed bag of services and seem to go way beyond what the normal companies provide

Very few tariffs include texts to 8xxxxx shortcodes in their allowances. Which is why they say the service costs one standard message.