Cha Cha and KGB

What is the capitol of New Hampshire? How much are tickets to see The Lion King on Broadway? What's a good recipe for salad dressing? Is an asteroid going to hit Earth!? What's for dinner tonight? Questions that plague the minds of millions... but where to find the answers?

Recently two new services have emerged that offer to answer all of your questions: Cha Cha and KGB. These cell-phone based services offer to answer your questions -- all of them. However, don't be surprised when you check your cell phone bill if you use one of the two.

Cha Cha is a free service. Your cell phone is only charged standard messaging fees that are stated in your contract with your carrier. KGB charges $0.99 per answer plus your standard messaging fees. Is there a difference in quality? Not really. Both Cha Cha and KGB draw their employees who answer questions for them, from the work-from-home crowd. Both require potential applicants to take a qualifying test of researching abilities, grammar and spelling, as well as situational ethics.

At the beginning of this year, I spent some time as a Cha Cha guide. After about two weeks of weird questions --- ranging from sports scores to driving directions (I think I may have gotten some poor soul lost) --- I called it quits. There was even one night, where someone asked me to text them an erotic story. I can only wonder who would have asked to have something like that sent to their phone... Long story short, though, Cha Cha guiding is not for the faint of heart --- or for people short on time. The pay for both Cha Cha and KGB is minimal -- handing out a mere $0.10 per question answered, with some questions taking as much as half an hour to scrape up information on.

However, if you're on the sending end of Cha Cha or KGB, you're in for a lot of fun. Creativity is encouraged by these companies, so the weirder the question, the more interesting the answer. It's a great tool to make you seem like a know it all, or to quickly get a good joke to break the ice at a party. It may even save your butt, since Cha Cha and KGB can look up phone numbers. Sure you could call an operator, but Cha Cha would be cheaper!

So whether it's for a good time, a good laugh, a piece of trivia, a piece of wisdom, or the fate of Earth, these text answering services are here for your benefit!