I’ve been keeping an eye on the ramp of a new search service that has human search “guides” who interact with you in real time to bring you (hopefully) exactly what you are looking for. Cha Cha is currently operating live under the “beta” guise which has become quite popular these days.

Scott Jones, is the brainchild behind this potentially useful service. Just how useful is what I intend to find out by exploring their new platform from the inside out. I recently signed up as a guide and quickly received an invitation to a five minute basic training and 10-question test. The requirements for becoming a guide were simple:

• I can spell correctly, use correct grammar, and am fluent in English
• I like working with people and have a polite and courteous approach with people
• I have high speed internet (e.g. dsl, cable)
• I have 30MB+ of storage available on my computer
• I can navigate the internet with ease

Understanding that having a large amount of guides to both be available and eventually have expertise in specific areas, I worry that having such a loose standard for their guides could leave early users with a bad initial experience. Guides that sign up in hopes of making the big bucks will quickly find that earning a few cents a minute when actively searching does not add up to much. Cha Cha has incorporated a tiered structure, so as a guide gains clout they can potentially earn a bit more; just don’t go giving up your day job just yet.

The functionality of the service seems to be relatively simple. It is more focused on the communication and organization of information between the searcher and guide than actually enabling the guide with anything more than access to google and other major search engines. One thing that seemed interesting to me was the push for guides to use the paid search results, which I would imagine is a revenue stream for Cha Cha through google adsense.

I’ll keep reporting on my experience as a guide and would be interested to hear some feedback on how search users of the service are finding things with Cha Cha…