Marketing Pilgrim

Could it be that human-guided search engine ChaCha has found its niche in a new partnership with blinkx?

ChaCha is a human-guided search engine. If you can’t find what you want using the search engine, you can be connected to a live human guide who will basically search for you. They began hiring guides in September (totally missed out on hiring me, guys!).

They received a new round of funding in January to the tune of $6M. Wonder if there’s some relationship between the funding and the development of this partnership.

Or perhaps it was Autonomy’s April acquisition of blinkx. Blinkx is the video search engine that has previously signed deals with Lycos and Microsoft. They gather video from sites from MySpace to MSNBC to YouTube, almost like a video metasearch engine. You can use a straight text search for a video via ChaCha and then click a link to ask for help from a guide if you’re not seeing the clip you’re looking for.

Unfortunately, I don’t think my guide will be finding me the 20-year-old Sesame Street clip I’ve been looking for for months now. Oh well.

Via R/WW

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