ChaCha wraps up $20 million funding round

Question and answer service ChaCha closed a $20 million financing round led by new investors VantagePoint Venture Partners and Rho Ventures. ChaCha's real-time, human-powered service has supplied close to a billion free answers to questions from over 15 million unique monthly users--the solution extends across SMS, the web, iPhone and Android applications, and the Facebook and Twitter social platforms. Brand partners include Paramount, AT&T, Palm, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Sonic--ChaCha adds that its year-to-date ad sales are up 292 percent, with Q3 revenue increasing 302 percent year-over-year. In addition, over 70 percent of its 2010 advertising campaigns to date are renewals.

ChaCha said the new funding will support the continued expansion of its service. The firm will soon introduce a new MMS service to deliver movie trailers, video clips, coupon images and rich media ads to smartphones and feature phones alike.

For more on the ChaCha funding:
- read this release

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