“As a writer and advocate of “change” in both individualistic and societal endeavors I truly believe that ChaCha, through its human interactions, will help instill in us a more profound sense of “connectedness to the world.”

Also, as a guide, I feel as though I am a librarian to the world –the type of librarian who’d make Benjamin Franklin proud.” Ricky J. Fico

(link)

for example, what i would really LOVE to see from this company (or another): a basic service catering to major public libraries under long term contracts…our nation is facing an impending super size shortage of librarians that’s almost on par with the dentist shortage…so why not turn chacha into a terminal service at every library in the country, so that all communities can have equal access?

on top of that, why not have these guides offer explanations and tutorials and walk throughs for these library patrons so that they might learn how to drink on their own?

there’s some great promise here, but it’s not about trying to help typically google/yahoo/msn type users find “a little more a little faster and better” - the harsh reality is that while our school have finally realized that, for example, they should be teaching basic finance in high school, they’ve completely failed when it comes to teaching people how to find information…

i hope that chacha is listening, and they’d like to ping me to talk about this further, i’d be happy to put them in touch with some much more hardcore librarian types who think about these issues all of the time…

Similarly, it is a little too late to beat Google. Better technology isn’t likely to raise their odds either. Google has over 15 billion webpages indexed. There is no way in hell that a startup can beat through Google’s ranks.

• Jawad Shuaib