LISNews: Librarian News

mdoneil writes "A new search engine has sprung up to provide human powered search (I thought that is what librarians did) not as pretty as MsDewey.com, but interesting.
You can check it out at chacha.com

I tried it this morning using Droghdea as my search and the first human powered search person bailed on me and pawned me off on another search person who found some results, but I consider the result set to be inferior to what I could have found using any algorithmic search engine.
It is quite like an askalibrarian.org or any other ask a librarian service except that the search staff are not necessarily librarians.
It is an ad driven model and the search staff can earn $5-10USD per hour according to their website.
I doubt it will catch on, especially for Internet search, it may be something used in Enterprise search, but then again is is no different than an enterprise ask-a-librarian would be.
Have a look and tell us what you think."