ChaCha vs. KGB (or KGB vs. ChaCha, If You Prefer)
If you haven’t heard of them, ChaCha and KGB are online answer services. You type or text a question and, moments later, your answer arrives (free for the former, 99 cents a throw for the latter).
Apparently these services are for folks who have either never heard of Wikipedia or suffer from the rare-yet-crippling affliction known as ‘Google-phobia.’
Nevertheless, putting my skepticism aside, I decided to road test ChaCha and KGB. Who knows… if the services really can deliver, maybe I could use them to handle my day-to-day decisions, similar to the way Esquire Magazine’s A.J. Jacobs outsourced his life.
ChaCha promises ‘real people answering your questions!’ And you know a brand means business when they throw an exclamation point into their tagline.
While it was tempting to take a comedic approach (‘what number am I thinking of?’), I decided I’d rather push the service’s capabilities by asking a question with an answer that is both indisputable and unGoogle-able (well, at least it was unGoogle-able until this article posted):
“What is the 35th word in Chapter 1 of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms?”
(answer: ‘pebbles’)
ChaCha’s answer? Four Google ads plus a video commercial for Folger’s Coffee. So either ChaCha answered my question with completely meta Mr. Miyagi-esque riddle or we experienced a ChaCha fail.
(answer: ‘ChaCha fail’)
So, on to KGB…
KGB is an automated answering service that promises I’ll ‘get answers, not links.’ So to test its answer-finding prowess, I decided to toss it a softball:
“How can God be good if He allows suffering?”
Wait, did I say ‘softball’? I meant to say ‘I’m paying ninety-nine cents, so I want my money’s worth.’
I entered my question online, then promptly got a text acknowledging my query. To proceed, it stated, I needed to text back ‘YES.’ I complied and moments later I got another message: ‘Thanks and sit tight. kgb is researching your answer and will send it shortly.’
No more than a minute later, I get the following answer to my query:
“God is fair, but life sometimes isn’t. God is good, but people often do bad things. God is perfect, but we make mistakes that sometimes cost us dearly.”
Wow. Just… wow. I’m not going to say they already had that answer in their back pocket, but they already had that answer in their back pocket. And what’s more, it’s not bad. Doctrinally, it holds up. Plus, the English Lit part of my brain (and granted, that’s a tiny section) digs the couplet structure of the answer.
Advantage: KGB.
Oh, and just to be completely scientific, I sent my Hemingway question to KGB. Less than fifteen minutes later, I got this response:
“Pebbles” is the 35th word in Chapter 1 of Hemingway’s “A Farewell To Arms.” “Swiftly” is #50.”
Bottomline on the ChaCha vs. KGB question: you get what you pay for. ChaCha proved to be an unamusing waste of time while KGB delivered (then overdelivered) on theological and literary hardballs.
My findings– which I fully expect to be published in some kind of scholarly journal– proved KGB is top dog. But exactly how good is it? Think you can give it a challenge? Hit ‘reply’ now and leave your toughest yet find-out-able (man, I am just making up words all over the place here) question. I’ll pick the best one, send it to KGB, and bring back the results.
- Matthew Porter
16 Responses to “ChaCha vs. KGB (or KGB vs. ChaCha, If You Prefer)”
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hey Matt! try something like: “why do I keep getting taken from my bed at night, and get pulled into a ship for tests?” , or the simple but silly: “what did I have for breakfast a week ago?” this is the kind of stuff I remember you for Matt… keep it up! Keep being ’sticks’.
Excellent questions! Thanks for the suggestions and the kind words, man.
- Matthew
By the by, just got a lovely note from the folks at KGB:
“Dear Matthew,
Thanks for your kind words! We strive to provide the best for our customers and our Agents are always educating themselves to stay on top of all topics (past and current).
We’ll be happy to share this with our team!
P.S. – It’s a very well composed piece.
Sincerely,
kgb_ Customer Service Team”
Well, what can I say except that KGB’s performance is only matched by their taste in writing?
To them I say ‘keep up the good work.’ I’m always refreshed and re-energized to come across folks who are also dead-set on excellence.
- Matthew Porter
The writer of this article obviously has some sort of vested interest in proclaiming KGB the winner. I have sent numerous questions to ChaCha, receiving concise, accurate responses in return. I have never received a response containing only ads, as the writer claims he received. He also fails to give ChaCha a second chance before deciding it has failed, yet asks KGB a second question to further his point. Whenever I am out roaming around and need a question answered quickly, ChaCha delivers. ChaCha may have more ads than KGB, but it is free, after all. I say give it a try yourself…this guy wouldn’t know objective journalism if it smacked him in the face.
Do I have a ‘vested interest’ in proclaiming KGB the winner or do you, Adrian M. Gross, have a vested in interest in extolling ChaCha? Ha HA! Too-SHAY! I’m kidding. I actually tried three different times to get a response from ChaCha with no luck. But if it will make you feel better, I will come up with a less challenging question– open to suggestions– run it through ChaCha, and will bring you the results.
“this guy wouldn’t know objective journalism if it smacked him in the face.”
Adrian, thank you. I’ve been writing stuff on this blog thrice weekly for 4+ months and you’re the first person to shoot me some smack talk. Thank you. Feel like I finally got something going on here.
- Matthew Porter
So now go and Google “What is the 35th word in Chapter 1 of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms?” Care to guess what you get?
Duuuuude… spooky. Actually, I think that means the dilithium crystal that is SEO is alive and well. Strange though that it showed up with the tag ‘unamusing waste of time.’ Was that too harsh? Maybe I just needed a hug that day.
- Matthew Porter
Okay, for Adrian and anybody else who thinks I didn’t give ChaCha a fair shake, I ran a few more questions through it.
Test #1: What is 2 plus 2?
Result: ChaCha shoots and scores (answer: 4)
For the next question, I threw ChaCha a changeup…
Test #2: Where is Constantinople?
Result: A series of links that led to articles about Constantinople. High marks in my book because this requires more than just a one-word answer.
Now, ChaCha says they offer real people offering answers, so to test this claim, I tossed them a basic logic question. A person could field it, no problem, but not a search engine.
Test #3: If all directors are men, and Matthew is a director, is Matthew a man?
Result: Zip. Just ads and links. PS: the correct answer is ‘barely.’
In conclusion, it seems that ChaCha CAN deliver on some basic questions, but nothing you couldn’t find pretty quickly on your own with thirty seconds of Google-ing. It operates roughly similar to WolframAlpha.com and has that ‘not quite ready for primetime feel.’
Overall, I’d still say if you have a question that’s either hard to answer OR you just need the right answer quickly, KGB’s your best bet. While ChaCha is free, it doesn’t seem like there’s an underserved market between search engines and a 99 cent per question service (then again, I’m secretly a KGB PR flak, so of COURSE I would say that).
- Matthew Porter
Test #3
One thing that does bother me about KGB, aside from the hilariously anachronistic name, is that they don’t cite their sources. Their “God” answer is from http://www.wcg.org/lit/spiritual/trials/whysuffer.htm, author Paul Kroll.
On the flip side, this isn’t the first answer you get when you Google the question as you posed it verbatim. It’s on the first page, but somehow the KGB managed to dodge the Jehovah’s Witnesses page, which ranked higher. I guess someone had to have done SOME kind of work to weed out crap answers.
And on Googling verbatim — If I google the entirety of their response, “Hey Porter!” is number two on the list! Congratulations!
Huh… so KGB is also pulling from other sources like a search engine would (though seamlessly as opposed to ChaCha). The lack of attribution, though, seems a bit misleading.
Matthew
Both ChaCha and KGB operate in the same basic way. That is, there are people signed on to an internal website where all your questions are laid out, and they are the ones answering all these questions that are sent in. They can use any resource they choose, including Google (and I’m sure most do use Google or another search engine to find these answers). Basically, they are adding a middleman who determines the proper keywords for your question and finds an answer. They also both probably have some internal services that allow fast lookup of common questions, to speed up response times.
With that said, KGB, from what I’ve read, has stricter regulations in regards to the answers, which makes sense, as it is a paid service. That’s why the answers are generally better, because the agents actually have to uphold certain regulations.
Hey Vlad,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments and insights. Certainly paints in the picture as far as explaining why I had the experiences I did. It’s cliched, but true… you get what you pay for.
Matthew Porter
Thanks for writing this. I really feel as though I know so much more about this than I did before.
Thanks, Giovanni.
Matthew
i still think chacha is better
Hey Yom Omma,
Maybe it is. Just one man’s opinion. Hey, what would happen if you asked each service ‘which is better, ChaCha or KGB’? Any takers for such an experiment?
Matthew Porter