All posts by Jim Muttram

Paid by the second

An assisted search start up ChaCha Search has come up with a novel way of paying it’s “guides”.

From Wired: “Workers at ChaCha are experts in specific topics, and they help users of the search tool find information that, presumably, only somebody in the know would be able to uncover. The ChaCha guides earn between $5 and $10 an hour as a starting wage, and any money they earn can be dumped instantly onto a debit card and spent right away. The guides keep track of their earnings on the ChaCha site and can get their earnings by clicking a “Pay Me Now” button on their personalized page.”

Funny Money

Jeff Jarvis quotes the New York Post speculation that in the wake of the YouTube deal Gawker Media is worth $400 million, CraigsList $250 million, and Digg.com $200 million. He dismisses the valuation of Gawker as over-optimistic compared to the others. And he takes a poke at the NYPost; he was going to link to the original page but the Flash made his browser crash. I had a go at finding the piece, but gave up in the wake of so much tabloid online…