Is ChCha Imploding or Growing

A post on TechCrunch yesterday suggested ChaCha was cutting the pay rate of its human guides to save costs as a prelude to "implosion." When I had last spoken to ChaCha the company had presented a very different picture so I decided to investigate and contacted co-founder Brad Bostic.

Some of the stats below are impressive... (CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE POST).

Here's a range of information that www.ChaCha.com provided to me:

* Millions of queries per month

* 90% month on month query growth from Jan-June

* Over 10,000 new users per day

* Over 25,000 guides in the system Advertising:

* Early advertising trials showed 5.2% conversion rates in mobile

* ChaCha also said that Nielsen Mobile found that Google SMS has approximately 37 million queries per month. This was achieved over a period of several years

* ChaCha's "mobile answers" service launched in January this year and the company said it expects to hit 30 million queries by December, this year User profile:

* 53% are repeat users

* 83% say they consider mobile ChaCha to be "very valuable"

* Average usage now more than 30 times per month. Compare average mobile search volume is nine times per month

* 88% hear about the service from a friend

* Users are 18-34; use it socially and for utilitarian purposes