ChaCha Closes $7 Million Round of Funding

ChaCha Thinks Latest Funding Will Propel it to Profitability

Answers service ChaCha announced today that it has closed a $7 million E round of funding. The service lets users go online, call, or text questions on mobile phones and receive answers "within minutes" for free. The service has an iPhone app and lets people ask questions via Twitter as well.

This round of funding might be particularly significant for the company. "We believe this latest round provides ChaCha the cash required to reach profitability," says CEO Scott A. Jones.

Over the past four years, since its inception, ChaCha has raised about $52 million from prominent tech leaders, venture capitalists, and angel investors. The company says its text service passed Google in mobile text traffic in Q3 2009. According to ChaCha, when the company's mobile service launched in January 2008, Google SMS had nearly 100% of he mobile text search market, but ChaCha now has more text traffic, coming from users mostly under the age of 25.

That may be why ChaCha is considering itself the "#1 way for advertisers to reach teens and young adults on their mobile phones."

"Given that we started our mobile text service less than 2 years ago, that also makes us the fastest-growing mobile text service that provides advertisers with a way to reach elusive teens and young adults," says Jones. " We have been monetizing from national brands and local businesses who want to be 'in the conversation.' We have provided a successful advertising venue for brands, including The CW Network, IKEA, Paramount Pictures, McDonald's, Palm, Coca Cola, AT&T, J&J, P&G, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and hundreds of other businesses."

"ChaCha acts as a 'smart friend' to answer any question via text (or voice, iPhone, or twitter), particularly from college-age and high school-age students," adds Mr. Jones. "While many headlines frequently report 'mobile web' search traffic stats, the reality is that 'smart phones' represent less than 20% of phones that are in users' hands today (iPhones represent about 6%). For the vast majority of mobile phone users, the common denominator of texting, which works on virtually all phones, is the more universal way to get answers. Interestingly, our new iPhone app gets MORE engagement from users than our mobile text service, which leads us to believe that ChaCha will be even more successful as smart phones (iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, etc...) continue to proliferate."

Between its mobile and online services, ChaCha has answered over 300 million questions in the past two years. The company cites data from Quantcast, which indicate it gets over 10 million unique monthly visitors in the US.

By Chris Crum

Opera: Facebook Most Popular Mobile Site in Africa

5% Jump in Global Mobil Internet Users

According to Opera, Facebook is the most popular site on the mobile web in Africa. In addition, a report from the company shows a 5% jump in global mobile Internet users.

Opera Mini has garnered more than 41.7 million users worldwide showing a 5.3 percent jump compared to the previous month, according to the report. The number of page views in November went up 9.5% and data consumption increased 8.3% compared to October.

In Africa, Facebook has taken a strong lead and ranks as the most popular site in six out of the top 10 countries, Opera says. The company highlights the following global trends:

- In November 2009, more than 41.7 million people used Opera Mini, a 5.3% increase from October 2009 and more than 154% compared to November 2008.

- Those 41.7 million people viewed more than 18.8 billion pages in November 2009. Since October, page-views have gone up 9.5%. Since November 2008, page-views have increased 231%.

- Opera Mini users generated over 285 million megabytes of data for operators worldwide in November 2009. Since October, the data consumed went up by 8.3%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 2.6 petabytes of data in November. Since November 2008, data traffic is up 213%.

- The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Vietnam and Poland.

Opera also highlights the following trends for Africa:

- The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in Africa are (in order): South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Tanzania and Namibia.

- Some numbers regarding Africa: From November 2008 to November 2009, page-views in the top 10 countries increased by 374%, unique users increased by 177%, and data transferred increased by 183%.

- Since our last spotlight on Africa, Kenya jumped from #4 to #3, Ghana jumped from #11 to #5 and Ivory Coast jumped from #8 to #7.

- Growth rates in Africa: Ghana and Kenya lead the top 10 African countries in terms of page-view growth. Ghana and Ivory Coast lead the top 10 African countries in growth of unique users. Kenya leads the top 10 African countries in page-views, with each user browsing 525 pages on average each month.

- Facebook has taken the lead in Africa; it is the most popular site visited by Opera Mini users in six out of 10 countries and the #2 site in the three countries where it isn’t #1. Google is also very popular, and is ahead of Facebook in a few of the top 10 African countries. Yahoo and Wikipedia are also ubiquitous in the top 10 lists of the various African countries.

- Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets are extremely popular in Africa, but Samsung is a significant exception, boasting the most popular phone used by Opera Mini users in South Africa, Zambia and Namibia.

"It is heartening to know that Opera Mini continues to grow consistently in all regions and categories — specially in continents like Africa where mobile phones are more likely the only way for people to access the Web," said Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. "At Opera, we are striving to bring the most innovative and affordable way for people to access the mobile Web and expect 2010 will prove just as successful for us as the case has been in previous years."

By Chris Crum

eBay Declares Mobile Success For Holiday Season

Volume of mobile transactions tripled year-over-year

If any of your Christmas presents were a bit odd-looking or seemed like impulse buys, it might be because the gift giver did his or her shopping using a small, accessible screen. eBay reported today that mobile transactions picked up dramatically this holiday season compared to last.

The volume of mobile transactions tripled on a year-over-year basis, according to eBay, and the current rate of unique mobile visits per day is around 750,000. People aren't just grabbing lots of cheap odds and ends, either, considering that a 23-foot boat recently sold for $19,108 and a Steinway grand piano sold for $10,000.

Then here's a curious detail: mobile commerce seems to have become especially popular in the Lone Star State, since "[f]our of the top 10 U.S. ZIP codes for number of people buying via their mobile phones are from Texas."

Anyway, Lorrie Norrington, the president of eBay marketplaces, concluded, "Mobile is changing the way people shop this holiday season. . . . eBay buyers and sellers have rapidly embraced mobile commerce this year, and this holiday season has been a mobile commerce tipping point. Shopping will never be the same again."

eBay sellers and regular retailers who haven't already done so are sure to spend the next several months adapting.

By Doug Caverly

Mozilla Exec: Mobile Version Of Firefox Almost Here

"Days away," at least for Nokia N900 owners

The mobile version of Firefox - also known as Fennec - is almost ready to launch. Indeed, a Mozilla exec was recently quoted as saying that a release could be "days away," so it's possible that the new mobile browser will appear in time for some tech-inclined individuals to play with it on New Year's Eve or even Christmas.

Word of this short-term goal comes via the BBC from Jay Sullivan, who's Mozilla's vice president of mobile. Apparently Fennec's going through a last phase of testing, and, barring any "showstoppers," will be available quite soon.

The catch relates to compatibility, meaning this rollout won't put Fennec in everyone's hands. Owners of Nokia's N900 phones will be the first to get their hands on the mobile version of Firefox. Then, as the BBC reported, "The organisation is also developing versions for Microsoft's Windows mobile and Google's Android operating system."

Something for the iPhone might follow, but not in the near future.

Still, given how long Fennec's been in development (well over a year), any release will still count as a major step forward. And this (probable) launch is especially interesting given that Firefox 3.5 recently topped all other desktop browser versions on a global basis.

By Doug Caverly

November Showed Significant Growth for Android

AdMob Shares Findings from Latest Mobile Metrics Report

AdMob, which is in the process of being acquired by Google (regulators are still eyeing the deal), has released its Novemeber Mobile Metrics report. The themes for this one are that the Launch of new devices drove Android growth and the rise of smartphones resulted in a sharp increase in WiFi usage.

"The launch of new Android devices in the second half of 2009 has accelerated the growth of the platform. Six months ago a single Android device, the HTC Dream (G1), generated 92 percent of Android traffic, while in November 2009 the same device accounted for only 37 percent of requests," says AdMob. "The Motorola Droid, HTC Magic, and HTC Hero generated 22 percent, 21 percent and nine percent of Android requests worldwide in November 2009, respectively."



Highlights from the report include:

- 55 percent of ad requests in the US came from devices with WiFi capability, up from only 19 percent a year earlier.

- The Top 5 US devices based on WiFi requests generated were the iPod touch, iPhone, Sony PSP, HTC Dream (G1), and Motorola Droid.

- 36 percent of iPhone traffic in the US was over WiFi, considerably higher than other WiFi capable devices. Less than 10 percent of traffic from the major Android devices came over WiFi.

- The iPhone accounted for 71 percent and the iPod touch accounted for 29 percent of total unique users from Apple devices.

- Android generated 27 percent of the requests from smartphones in the US in November 2009, up from 20 percent in October 2009.

- 88 percent of requests from Android devices came from the US in November 2009, the second largest Android market is the UK with four percent of requests.

The report, which can be viewed here (pdf), examines growth in unique iPhone and iPod touch users since January 2009, finding more rapid growth outside of the US. In November 2009, half of unique users were located outside of the US. This is an increase from 39% at the beginning of the year.

By Chris Crum

Source: webpronews