Ever visited http://chacha.com? Chances are that you haven’t, especially since the site just went live. ‘ChaCha’ is a new search engine founded by Scott Jones, commonly considered the inventor of voicemail.

In contrast to Google, a site that takes your search query and returns a list of ‘hits’, ChaCha puts you in direct contact with a live researcher. First, you submit your query and then you interact with the researcher or ‘guide’ who seeks and then refines results based upon your dialogue/chat. While the guide is looking for your results, you watch a video advertisement that pays for the service.

Here’s a recent story on USAToday.com…

This blog has a sample interaction between the searcher and the guide…

What do you think? Is ChaCha the future? Will people be willing to watch an ad and interact with a human searcher or is Google the tried-and-tested method. Post your comments here and discuss in our forum!